︎ Lancelot Hogben and the Bio-Aesthetics of Utopia

June 30, 2021

The aim of this talk is to excavate the forgotten zoologist and statistician Lancelot Hogben and his short-lived project of social biology attempted in the early to mid 20th century. Hogben is worth discussing because he was a fervent anti-eugenicist prior to, and during, the rise of Nazism and yet attacked eugenics (both at home and abroad) not only politically but also on statistical and biological grounds. Hogben's critique is needed in a time when eugenics is returning and the opposition to it is far too often broadly anti-scientific or depoliticizing rather than properly critical of the political forms of the life sciences.

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(Ben Woodard)