Darwin's progeny: Eugenics, genetics and animal rights

Abstract

On the Origin of Species reflects and furthers a shift towards the systemic organization of scientific knowledge about human beings, as well as other animal species that give rise to an enormous body of juridical and biological knowledge. I argue that eugenics itself, to a great degree, emerges as a prospect of human improvement after the successful improvement of non-human animals through controlled breeding over the Victorian period, and that this discourse, although it may be nominally repudiated with respect to human beings, goes largely unchallenged with respect to thinking about non-human animals well into the latter half of the twentieth century. Finally, I argue that the animal advocacy movement emerges at the end of the twentieth century and early twenty-first to constitute what can properly be termed a Darwinian response to eugenics that embodies an attempt to incorporate animals within the broader Enlightenment project of rights. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.