Abstract
In this chapter, I shall explore some of the ways in which Foucault’s theorisation of sexuality and power thematised the family, especially through the concept of biopower developed in his later thought. In doing so, I shall move away from a focus on the family itself, to shift the analysis instead to family politics. More precisely, I propose to reflect upon Foucault’s ideas on biopower and sexuality in the context of a specific area of politics of the family in modern liberal states: eugenic policy-making, which aimed at improving the biological ‘quality’ of the national population.
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Notes
Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, 1st edn (London: Macmillan, 1883), 25.
Karl Pearson, ‘The scope and importance to the state of the science of national eugenics’, in Lucy Bland and Laura Doan (eds), Sexology Uncensored: The Documents of Sexual Science (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998 [1909]), 176–7 at 177.
My arguments on eugenics in these sections of this chapter are developed at greater length elsewhere: on gender and sexuality in Swiss eugenics, see Véronique Mottier, ‘Narratives of national identity: sexuality, race, and the Swiss “Dream of Order”’, Swiss Journal of Sociology, 26 (2000), 533–58
Véronique Mottier, ‘Eugenics and the Swiss gender regime: women’s bodies and the struggle against “difference”’, Swiss Journal of Sociology, 32 (2006), 253–67.
On eugenics and social-democratic thought, see Véronique Mottier and Natalia Gerodetti, ‘Eugenics and social democracy: or, how the European left tried to eliminate the “weeds” from its national gardens’, New Formations, 20 (2007), 35–49.
On theorising the state in eugenic policy-making, see Véronique Mottier, ‘Eugenics, politics and the state: social-democracy and the Swiss gardening state’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 39 (2008), 263–9
Véronique Mottier, ‘Eugenics and the state: policy-making in comparative perspective’, in Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 134–53.
See also Véronique Mottier, ‘From welfare to social exclusion: eugenic social policies and the Swiss national order’, in David Howarth and Jacob Torfing (eds), Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy, Governance (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 255–74.
See Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias (eds), Woman-Nation-State (London: Macmillan, 1989).
Eugen Bleuler, Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1916), 476.
Bericht des Bundesrates an die Bundesversammlung über das Volksbegehren, ‘Für die Familie’, Bundesblatt, 96 (10 October 1944), 868.
Gunnar Broberg and Mattias Tydén, ‘Eugenics in Sweden: efficient care’, in Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen (eds), Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilisation Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2005), 77–149 at 109.
These Swiss historians include: Geneviève Heller, Gilles Jeanmonod, Regina Wecker, Jacob Tanner, Roswitha Dubach, Beatrice Ziegler and Gisela Hauss. Much of their work is collected in Véronique Mottier and Laura von Mandach (eds), Pflege, Stigmatisierung und Eugenik: Integration und Ausschluss in Medizin, Psychiatrie und Sozialhilfe (Zurich: Seismo, 2007).
Regina Wecker, ‘Vom Verbot, Kinder zu haben, und dem Recht, keine Kinder zu haben: Zu Geschichte und Gegenwart der Sterilisation in Schweden, Deutschland und der Schweiz’, Figurationen, 02/03 (2003), 101–9 at 108.
Roswitha Dubach, ‘Zur “Sozialisierung einer medizinischen Massnahme”: Sterilisationspraxis der Psychiatrischen Poliklinik Zürich in den 1930er-Jahen’, in Marietta Meier, Brigitta Bernet, Roswitha Dubach and Urs Germann (eds), Zwang zur Ordnung: Psychiatrie im Kanton Zürich, 1870–1970 (Zurich: Chronos, 2007), 155–92 at 191.
Béatrice Ziegler, ‘Frauen zwischen sozialer und eugenischer Indikation: Abtreibung und Sterilisation in Bern’, in Veronika Aegerter, Nicole Graf, Natalie Imboden, Thea Rytz and Rita Stöckli (eds), Geschlecht hat Methode: Ansätze und Perspektiven in der Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte (Zurich: Chronos, 1999), 293–301.
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Mottier, V. (2012). Gender, Reproductive Politics and the Liberal State:. In: Duschinsky, R., Rocha, L.A. (eds) Foucault, the Family and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137291288_7
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