Tiago Saraiva
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035033
- eISBN:
- 9780262335706
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035033.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
The introduction places the book in the historical tradition of Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault of taking fascism as biopolitics. It stresses the fact that the biological dimension of fascist ...
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The introduction places the book in the historical tradition of Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault of taking fascism as biopolitics. It stresses the fact that the biological dimension of fascist regimes was not limited to human bodies but it included as well animals and plants bred by geneticists for food production. The focus on food as central component of fascist organic nationalism overcomes apparent contradictions between fascist obsession with the national soil and the modernist nature of fascism. Delving into the making and growing of technoscientific organisms, reveals their importance in the building of fascist alternative modernity. The introduction presents the narrative as a fascist ontology, a bestiary combining historians of science and technology and STS scholars’ organism centered narratives with political and cultural historians general concern for the nature of fascism.Less
The introduction places the book in the historical tradition of Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault of taking fascism as biopolitics. It stresses the fact that the biological dimension of fascist regimes was not limited to human bodies but it included as well animals and plants bred by geneticists for food production. The focus on food as central component of fascist organic nationalism overcomes apparent contradictions between fascist obsession with the national soil and the modernist nature of fascism. Delving into the making and growing of technoscientific organisms, reveals their importance in the building of fascist alternative modernity. The introduction presents the narrative as a fascist ontology, a bestiary combining historians of science and technology and STS scholars’ organism centered narratives with political and cultural historians general concern for the nature of fascism.
Tiago Saraiva
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035033
- eISBN:
- 9780262335706
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035033.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Political History
The sixth and final chapter is the most original in terms of methodology, for it takes a single technoscientific organism – Karakul sheep – and follows its role in the settlement of the frontier for ...
More
The sixth and final chapter is the most original in terms of methodology, for it takes a single technoscientific organism – Karakul sheep – and follows its role in the settlement of the frontier for the three fascist empires. The ability of Karakul to thrive under harsh environmental conditions and its high value in the fur market made it a perfect companion species for white settler’s imperial expansion. The Animal Breeding Institute at the University of Halle is taken as center of circulation, establishing standards and producing the rams to be used not only in white settlers farms in German possessions in Eastern Europe, but also in Italian settlement schemes in Libya and Ethiopia, and in Portuguese colonization of South-western Angola. The different local karakul sheep experiment stations located in frontier spaces are treated as experiments in colonial sociability, revealing the connections between sheep breeding and the genocides perpetrated by the three regimes.Less
The sixth and final chapter is the most original in terms of methodology, for it takes a single technoscientific organism – Karakul sheep – and follows its role in the settlement of the frontier for the three fascist empires. The ability of Karakul to thrive under harsh environmental conditions and its high value in the fur market made it a perfect companion species for white settler’s imperial expansion. The Animal Breeding Institute at the University of Halle is taken as center of circulation, establishing standards and producing the rams to be used not only in white settlers farms in German possessions in Eastern Europe, but also in Italian settlement schemes in Libya and Ethiopia, and in Portuguese colonization of South-western Angola. The different local karakul sheep experiment stations located in frontier spaces are treated as experiments in colonial sociability, revealing the connections between sheep breeding and the genocides perpetrated by the three regimes.
