This collection is an interdisciplinary edited volume that examines the circulation of Darwinian ideas in the Atlantic space as they impacted systems of Western thought and culture. Specifically, the book explores the influence of the principle tenets of Darwinism -- such as the theory of evolution, the ape-man theory of human origins, and the principle of sexual selection -- on established transatlantic intellectual traditions and cultural practices. In doing so, it pays particular attention to how Darwinism reconfigured discourses on race, gender, and sexuality in a transnational context. Covering the period from the publication of The Origin of Species (1859) to 1933, when the Nazis (National Socialist Party) took power in Germany, the essays demonstrate the dissemination of Darwinian thought in the Western world in an unprecedented commerce of ideas not seen since the Protestant Reformation. Learned societies, literary groups, lyceums, and churches among other sites for public discourse sponsored lectures on the implications of Darwin’s theory of evolution for understanding the very ontological codes by which individuals ordered and made sense of their lives. Collectively, these gatherings reflected and constituted what the contributing scholars to this volume view as the discursive power of the cultural politics of Darwinism.
Author(s): Patrick Sharp, Jeannette Eileen Jones
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 318
Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Figures......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Introduction: The Descent of Darwin in Atlantic Cultures......Page 14
Part I Genders and Sexualities......Page 22
1 Strange Birds: Friedrich Nietzsche, Djuna Barnes, and Queer Evolution......Page 24
2 “Sexual Selection” and the Social Revolution: Anarchist Eugenics and Radical Darwinism in the United States, 1850–1910......Page 46
3 The Birds and the Bees: Darwin’s Evolutionary Approach to Sexuality......Page 66
4 Love in the Age of Darwinian Reproduction......Page 86
5 Victorian Birdsongs: Sexual Selection, Gender, and Darwin’s Theory of Music......Page 103
Part II Race and Difference......Page 122
6 Rise And Fall: Degeneration, Historical Determinism, and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!......Page 124
7 What Is It?: Difference, Darwin, and the Victorian Freak Show......Page 141
8 The Mocking Meme: Popular Darwinism, Illustrative Graphics, and Editorial Cartooning......Page 156
9 Selective Affinities: Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in Adventure Novels by Jack London and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle......Page 183
Part III Colonization, Nation, and “Progress”......Page 202
10 Simians, Negroes, and the “Missing Link”: Evolutionary Discourses and Transatlantic Debates on “The Negro Question”......Page 204
11 Evolution in the Backlands: Brazilian Intellectuals and the Development of a Nation......Page 221
12 The Evolution of the West: Darwinist Visions of Race and Progress in Roosevelt and Turner......Page 238
13 Darwinism in Spanish America: Union and Diversity in José Rodó and José Vasconcelos......Page 250
14 The Miseducation of Henry Adams: Fantasies of Race, Citizenship, and Darwinian Dynamos......Page 273
Contributors......Page 296
Index......Page 300
