Explicit and disguised eugenics: a premise

Introducing a special issue of the journal, the article summarizes the half-century long debate on eugenics, which brought to discover that the articulation between the scientific positions and the political measures proposed by eugenicists may vary broadly, not only following «multiple national styles», but also inside of them and at transnational level. As a consequence, eugenics has been described as a «multiform archipelago» rather than a coherent scientific movement. Yet there was not only variation, but also a transformation of eugenics along modern times. The origin of the new discipline are deeply rooted in the positivist milieu and in the intertwining of medicine and psychiatry with demography and statistics: the convergence between a growing focus on heredity and an interventionist ideology allowed then eugenics to couple a strong political significance and a relatively high level of formalization. Yet at this point differentiation emerged. Following a classification based on the US, it is possible to distinguish three different broad groups. «Mainline eugenicists» held conservative political views, and coupled their claims for coercive interventions to protect the breeding with strong racial, class and gender prejudices. «Reform eugenics» since the 1930s discarded such an attitude as non scientific and attached a social progressive meaning to eugenic interventions, focusing on the use of the knowledge of heredity laws for the amelioration of mankind as a whole and justifying coercive practices with the higher interest of the collectivity. Finally, a «new eugenics» emerged after WW2 was making use of genetics to suggest prophylactic monitoring and medical measures through expert authority, avoiding direct State coercion on individual family choices. An explicit refusal of surreptitious coercive practices emerged with the revolts of the 1960s for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. Looking outside of the US, however, shows that such a classification may hide shortcircuits and unexpected connections among these positions.