Author(s):
Jeremy Crampton* - Georgia State University
Abstract:
In his work on governmentality and bio-politics, Michel Foucault argued that race-based divisions were central to modern governmental rationalities, not only in colonization, but provocatively also within colonizing societies themselves. However, the geographical component of race was never made explicit in his work.
In this paper I examine archival papers from 20th century proponents of eugenics (such as American eugenics leader Charles Davenport and American Geographical Society board member Madison Grant) to bring forth how and why biological racism was produced cartographically and geographically. I show that maps at this time were essential in creating spaces for supposedly innately populations based on popular ideas of race and biology. Although decades of anthropological research has shown that race divisions are arbitrary and have no biological component, then, as now, race was construed as the intersection of socio-biological traits, in which group membership was often circumscribed by geographical boundaries.
Similarly, today's biological conceptions of race have geographic implications. The first race-based federally approved drug, BiDil, will be marketed in the South and in largely black urban areas. Companies such as African Ancestry in Washington DC offer home DNA kits in order to trace African ancestry to specific tribes despite the fact that DNA does not follow sharp linguistic or cultural boundaries.
Comparing these events to those of a hundred years ago, I examine Foucault's claim that biological notions of race are necessary to government, and explore how the geographical reinscription of race may be countered and resisted.
