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ANIMA: Critical Race Studies Otherwise
The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century
In The Biopolitics of Feeling Kyla Schuller unearths the forgotten, multiethnic sciences of impressibility—the capacity to be transformed by one's environment and experiences—to uncover how biopower developed in the United States. Schuller challenges prevalent interpretations of biopower and literary cultures to reveal how biopower emerged within the discourses and practices of sentimentalism. Through analyses of evolutionary theories, gynecological sciences, abolitionist poetry and other literary texts, feminist tracts, child welfare reforms, and black uplift movements, Schuller excavates a vast apparatus that regulated the capacity of sensory and emotional feeling in an attempt to shape the evolution of the national population. Her historical and theoretical work exposes the overlooked role of sex difference in population management and the optimization of life, illuminating how models of binary sex function as one of the key mechanisms of racializing power. Schuller thereby overturns long-accepted frameworks of the nature of race and sex difference, offers key corrective insights to modern debates surrounding the equation of racism with determinism and the liberatory potential of ideas about the plasticity of the body, and reframes contemporary notions of sentiment, affect, sexuality, evolution, and heredity.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2017
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3654 people want to read
About the author
Kyla Schuller
2 books47 followersKyla Schuller is Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 3, 2021
The sex binary (the idea that there are only two, distinct, opposite sexes) is a 19th century colonial construction. While some cultures across the world had previously divided society into men and women, scientific developments particular to this time period enabled Western scientists to argue that sex difference (once considered energetic) was anatomical (different brains, skeletal systems, nervous systems). Sex dualism (two sides of the same coin) became seen as dichotomy (two distinct and opposite things).
Scientists argued that white people were superior because of their unique ability to display a visual difference between males and females. Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color (BIPOC) were regarded as sex indistinguishable. When using the word “women” scientists spoke exclusively about white women. Terms like “lower races” were used without reference to sex because scientists believed there were not significant sexual differences in BIPOC communities. In 1886 German sexologist Kraft-Ebbing wrote: “The higher the development of the race, the stronger the contrasts between man and woman.” In 1897, William Thomas echoed: “the less civilized the race the less is the physical differences of the sexes.”
Scientists did not believe that men and women of different races shared the same nature. Instead, they maintained that sex was race-specific. The belief was that as societies progressed from “savagery” toward “civilization” over time, the physical distinction between males and females increased. White people were seen as constantly evolving toward becoming the ultimate civilization on Earth, but Black people (in particular) were seen as stuck in primitivity/animality, unable to achieve sexual differentiation.
Physical sexual differences were regarded as evolutionary products of the social roles of each sex. According to Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, the reason that white women looked so different from white men, is because unlike their “primitive” counterparts they were homemakers. The understanding was that if “civilization” (binary gender norms) were brought to “primitive” peoples then they would eventually develop sex differences over time. This “scientific knowledge” was pervasive and dictated public policy. Even 19th century white feminists saw womanhood as “an advanced state of mental, physiological, emotional, and anatomical specialization only achieved by the civilized” (102).
Surgeon Dr. Mary Walker defined womanhood by genitalia and reproductive capacity because “the vagina served as the linkage between the body and the race” (108). The vagina was discussed as one of the last remnants of animality in the white race that had to be managed by women for the future of the race. Because other orifices (like the mouth and the anus) were not linked to racial reproduction, oral and anal sex were dismissed as uncivilized. Scientists referenced newly substantiated sex differences (like brain size and pelvis size) as evidence that women were inherently hyper-emotional and men inherently rational. They justified denying rights to white women, arguing that their only role was to be racial conduits and birth children.
Suffragists organizing for the right to vote were met with formidable backlash because their campaign challenged the sexual separation of spheres (the idea that women should remain in the private realm and men in the public realm), something regarded as a unique civilizational accomplishment of the white race. White men feared that granting white women the right to vote would cause the “effeminization of men and the masculinization of women,” and that this blurring of sex binary would lead “the civilized race to slide down the evolutionary timeline back to primitivism” (62).
We are still informed by this legacy today. Rather than fight alongside trans / intersex communities, mainstream feminism continues to deny this history and rely on a binary framework of male or female. There is nothing feminist about the sex binary, a device that was created to naturalize sexism and racism.
(This report includes some insights from Louise Newman’s White Women’s Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States to supplant this analysis).
Scientists argued that white people were superior because of their unique ability to display a visual difference between males and females. Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color (BIPOC) were regarded as sex indistinguishable. When using the word “women” scientists spoke exclusively about white women. Terms like “lower races” were used without reference to sex because scientists believed there were not significant sexual differences in BIPOC communities. In 1886 German sexologist Kraft-Ebbing wrote: “The higher the development of the race, the stronger the contrasts between man and woman.” In 1897, William Thomas echoed: “the less civilized the race the less is the physical differences of the sexes.”
Scientists did not believe that men and women of different races shared the same nature. Instead, they maintained that sex was race-specific. The belief was that as societies progressed from “savagery” toward “civilization” over time, the physical distinction between males and females increased. White people were seen as constantly evolving toward becoming the ultimate civilization on Earth, but Black people (in particular) were seen as stuck in primitivity/animality, unable to achieve sexual differentiation.
Physical sexual differences were regarded as evolutionary products of the social roles of each sex. According to Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, the reason that white women looked so different from white men, is because unlike their “primitive” counterparts they were homemakers. The understanding was that if “civilization” (binary gender norms) were brought to “primitive” peoples then they would eventually develop sex differences over time. This “scientific knowledge” was pervasive and dictated public policy. Even 19th century white feminists saw womanhood as “an advanced state of mental, physiological, emotional, and anatomical specialization only achieved by the civilized” (102).
Surgeon Dr. Mary Walker defined womanhood by genitalia and reproductive capacity because “the vagina served as the linkage between the body and the race” (108). The vagina was discussed as one of the last remnants of animality in the white race that had to be managed by women for the future of the race. Because other orifices (like the mouth and the anus) were not linked to racial reproduction, oral and anal sex were dismissed as uncivilized. Scientists referenced newly substantiated sex differences (like brain size and pelvis size) as evidence that women were inherently hyper-emotional and men inherently rational. They justified denying rights to white women, arguing that their only role was to be racial conduits and birth children.
Suffragists organizing for the right to vote were met with formidable backlash because their campaign challenged the sexual separation of spheres (the idea that women should remain in the private realm and men in the public realm), something regarded as a unique civilizational accomplishment of the white race. White men feared that granting white women the right to vote would cause the “effeminization of men and the masculinization of women,” and that this blurring of sex binary would lead “the civilized race to slide down the evolutionary timeline back to primitivism” (62).
We are still informed by this legacy today. Rather than fight alongside trans / intersex communities, mainstream feminism continues to deny this history and rely on a binary framework of male or female. There is nothing feminist about the sex binary, a device that was created to naturalize sexism and racism.
(This report includes some insights from Louise Newman’s White Women’s Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States to supplant this analysis).
July 8, 2019
Schuller examines how understandings of race and sex in the U.S. in the 19th century were intimately shaped by contemporary biological understandings (e.g. initially from Lamarck, then Darwin and Mendel).
You'd need an understanding of Foucault's concept of biopower (and ideally some background in Butler + social constructionist views of race/sex), but Schuller weaves historical evidence to support her theoretical point really well.
The introduction is incredibly dense, but if you spend enough time digesting it, you'll reap a substantial dividend when trying to understand how the political management of bodies was tied up with changing notions of heredity.
You'd need an understanding of Foucault's concept of biopower (and ideally some background in Butler + social constructionist views of race/sex), but Schuller weaves historical evidence to support her theoretical point really well.
The introduction is incredibly dense, but if you spend enough time digesting it, you'll reap a substantial dividend when trying to understand how the political management of bodies was tied up with changing notions of heredity.
March 27, 2018
Having read melancholy of race helps me digest this book!
Read
April 20, 2018303.372 S3864 2018
July 22, 2022
This book did a great job of connecting and explaining sex binaries, gender, race, and contraception as well as why and how people of the time developed their ideas on these identities. Unfortunately you can see how these ideas have permeated policies and are still strong today. This may be a challenging read for some due to vocabulary being used. There were several instances where I needed to stop and look up word’s definitions.
April 19, 2022
Really good. It and Becoming Human...by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson are the best of the anti-plasticity oeuvre.
Want to read
June 25, 2023Referenced in Ruby Hamad's "White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color."
April 18, 2024
Empathetic and Sympathetic identifications suckkk... ur so right schuller u ate this one up
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews