An American Utopia and the “Only Indians”
Eugenic societies in literature raise significant concerns about the utopian imagination of white America at the turn of the twentieth century. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland both present visions of utopias that rely on eugenic principles and therefore depict a white supremacist utopia that marginalises or removes non-white individuals, perpetuating segregation and indigenous displacement. One of the implicit consequences of implementing eugenics in utopian literature is the displacement and erasure of indigenous peoples, their knowledge, and their practices. Utopian narratives often depict the construction of a new society based on Western socio-economic models, excluding or eradicating non-white cultures, practices, and traditions. This perpetuates the notion that Western ideals are uniquely progressive while denigrating non-Western standards as barbaric or uncivilised. The process of "civilising" these spaces, as depicted in the narratives, necessitates conquest and violence, leading to the subjugation or complete erasure of indigenous populations.
Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward envisions a future society which has eradicated social and economic inequality through cultural hegemony and a form of state capitalism. However, this utopia marginalises and removes non-white individuals relying on unspoken segregation and indigenous removal to uphold its idealised vision. Looking Backward implies a white supremacist utopia that disregards humanity's multifaceted nature and seeks to homogenise individuals into an archetype which is fundamentally delusory. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, the notion of eugenics intersects with gendered expectations, presenting a society inhabited solely by women who reproduce a utopian population. Gilman challenges traditional gender roles and critiques the patriarchy by portraying a society where women are the central authority. However, this utopia is undoubtedly white and marginalising of non-white people, particularly indigenous prequels. By exploring the eugenic vision of Herland, we find a white American society colonising indigenous land to construct a utopia founded on its eugenic project. By critically examining the racialised, eugenicist, and colonial aspects embedded within Looking Backward and Herland, we expose the violence begotten by the American utopian imagination and birthed by a eugenic literary hegemony.
The eugenic project envisaged to achieve utopia is deeply problematic. It relies on racial segregation, not only marginalising but removing non-white persons from narratives of utopian progression. Indeed, it is a genocidal project. White supremacist Utopias ignore the complexity of human beings and homogenise people into an archetype as is imagined in Herland and Looking Backward. In the wake of Darwin's On The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, which theorised humans as malleable and ever-evolving, writers imagined the possibility of controlling evolution to achieve utopian ends. Francis Galton, who coined the term "eugenics" in 1883, suggested that intervention in the evolutionary process could make "the Utopias in the dreamland of philanthropists" a reality. Galton suggests a racist "utopia" founded on a white supremacist model, suggesting the subjugation, oppression and marginalisation of non-white people and cultures as a way in which to empower the capitalist and enforce their hegemonic colonial hierarchy. Utopian eugenics, therefore, assumes that people should and can control nature to improve its process, as if it were an organic machine, perpetuating a capitalist tellurian idea of innate anthropocentric authority. Eugenicist ideas suggest a dangerous view of humanity which has led directly to environmental degradation, resource exploitation, our current climate crisis and the genocide of indigenous populations. Eugenic utopian literature does not acknowledge that we are “in the biospherical net or field of intrinsic relations[…]” inhabited by all terrestrial organisms and so to segregate the human animal implicitly leads to the marginalisation of other organisms. Furthermore this separation replicates itself in White supremacist thinking: perceiving non-white people as non-human allows for a more rigorously enforced white racial purity in the eugenic project, without risking the Protestant American self-perception of kindness. Therefore the eugenic utopian imagination makes allowance for the violence toward and genocide of non-white people.
The eugenic project and its application in utopian literature are grounded in a phobia of degeneration, a discourse popularised in the 19th century by Ray Lankester's Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism and Max Nordau's Degeneration. A fear of degeneration is rooted in a belief that certain types of humans are inferior and that degeneration can be prevented through selective breeding, thereby removing those apparently inferior individuals from the otherwise pure gene pools of, in this case, white Euro-Americans. This belief is fundamentally racist, based on what are now known to be pseudo-scientific theories such as physiognomy, and falsely assumes that differences in the expression of certain arbitrary phenotypes such as skin colour imply significant genetic difference. However, white Euro-American utopian eugenics also purports that certain cultures and ways of life are faulty, therefore, certain people or groups of people who considered faulty are inferior. It is not only the genetic, ethnic and racial characteristics of the people whom such eugenic projects would scrub but also their cultural, economic and political practices, especially if they do not conform with those socio-political systems practiced in the West. Implementing eugenics in Utopian literature often implicitly displaces indigenous people, knowledge and practices by either ignoring their existence or colonising their land. Gilman's construction of Herland exemplifies this as it is an uncharted and isolated island where the supposedly civilised society of women is surrounded by indigenous peoples described as “savages". Gilman does not address the violence that would be required to construct Herland but she implicitly constructs a displacement simply by positioning the surrounding indigenous communities on the periphery of Herland and by declaring them uncivilised in comparison to the civilised centre.
The Euro-American utopian tradition frequently depicts new societies built from Western socio-economic models, where non-Western cultures, practices and traditions are excluded or have been eradicated to achieve their construction. This utopian tradition suggests that Western ideals are uniquely progressive by insinuating that non-white standards are barbaric, savage or uncivilised, a racist assumption which Gilman frankly states in Herland. Narratives like these imagine that their utopias are civilising physical spaces and must do so to construct their ideal societies. These are societies which are modelled on Western standards, even when they imagine that they improve upon them, suggesting that they civilise only by practising Western standards. This means people who do not practice those standards are uncivilised. The Euro-American barbarity of the colonial project’s apparent civilising process necessitates conquest, which requires the violent displacement and subjugation of indigenous people or, even more insidiously, their total narrative erasure. This is because indigeneity is seen as an obstacle to eugenicist and capitalist utopian visions, such as in Bellamy's Looking Backward and Gilman’s Herland. Natural spaces are similarly transformed through violence to meet the needs of the utopian society which is founded on a capitalist ideology, often leading to environmental degradation and the destruction of ecosystems, as the land in which the utopia is formed is not recognised as inherently valuable nor the home of other people who are indigenous to that location.
The capitalists' regressive vision of indigeneity requires a ‘Salvage Ethnograph[ic]' vision of indigenous people fundamental to the authoritative positioning of "settler colonialism" and its colonists. Critics Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith describe "Salvage Ethnography" as the anthropological practice of recording and imagining indigenous cultures as stable artefacts. "Native bodies, cultures and communities" become antiques in a perpetual state of possible extinction. Furthermore, Smith and Simpson state that "The theory [of Salvage Ethnography] produced out of these anthropological modes of inquiry served to displace not only intellectual agency but also political agency, with deeply damaging consequences." The displacement of "intellectual agency" and "political agency" is the main disconnect required by "settler colonialism" in order to dehumanise and segregate indigenous people from apparent civilisation, a civilisation that colonists believe their violence would bring. Patrick Wolfe writes that "settler colonialism is an inclusive, land-centred project that coordinates a comprehensive range of agencies, from the metropolitan centre to the frontier encampment, with a view to eliminating Indigenous societies." Wolfe continues by stating that: "Settler colonialism was foundational to modernity [as it] presupposed a global chain of command linking remote colonial frontiers to the metropolis. The "land-based" colonial attitude that Wolfe illustrates requires the connection of "colonial frontiers to the metropolis", an idea connoted in Herland as this uncharted isle is discovered by the enlightened scientific men who visit, connecting them (the patriarchal American centre) to Herland (the frontier). However, Gilman problematises this idea as the men wish to hide their discovery, to retain in their findings a virginal purity usually not protected by colonialism. Gilman, in explanation of this, writes at the text opening "I haven't said where it was for fear some self-appointed missionaries, or traders, or land-greedy expansionists, will take it upon themselves to push in." Here, unintentionally, Gilman practices an ironic doubling of the "salvage ethnograph[ic]" and "settler colonialis[ts]" mindset, where the male scientist imagines Herland as a stable artefact, one which is sequestered to allow it to remain civilised. The protection of Herland is afforded because it is home to white people. Furthermore it connotes male protectionism over women, a typical patriarchal construction of femininity requiring male defence. The indigenous peoples on the island are only ethnographically "salvaged" in Gilman's depictions of their apparent primitivism. The urbanised society of Herland is not "salvaged" to better subjugate its inhabitants but rather to retain its feminine purity and to protect the utopian dream of Herland's civility. On arriving the men declare, "This is a civilised country!" as they do not expect to find a centre akin to theirs in a peripheral space.
In the context of eugenics in utopian literature, this regressive vision of indigeneity necessitates a "salvage ethnographic" perspective of indigenous peoples, which is fundamental to the authoritative positioning of "settler colonialis[ts]”. This perspective treats indigenous cultures as static artefacts and perpetuates the idea that they are on the verge of extinction. Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith describe "salvage ethnography" as an anthropological practice displacing intellectual and political agency, damaging indigenous communities. By diminishing indigenous agency, settler colonialism seeks to dehumanise and segregate indigenous peoples from the perceived civilisation that colonialism promises. Wolfe highlights that settler colonialism is a "comprehensive project" centred around the "land", aiming to eliminate indigenous societies. The erasure of indigenous peoples' intellectual and political agency is a deliberate strategy that settler colonialism employs to establish dominance and control. The erasure of people begins with conquering their land, as Wolfe explains, which in the eugenic utopian model is problematised as Gilman and Bellamy imagine a non-violent conception of their American utopias.
Gilman describes the area in which Herland is located in the first chapter, where the men are travelling to find this hidden land: "The expedition was up among the thousand tributaries and enormous hinterland of a great river, up where the maps had to be made[…]". The noun "hinterland" suggests a periphery in which "savages" live, a location "where the maps had to be made", connoting that it is marginal to the civilised centre of Herland. Gilman implies that the definition of an unknown space in one that white people don’t know about. The indigenous peoples will have intimate knowledge of the area, their home, even if they don’t use the same cartographic systems as Western communities do, so once again Gilman suggests that the Western standard is the only one. The vision for Gilman here is that the centre is utopian, an irradical place where the unjust disparity is in relation to binary gender norms. That binary relationship has been imaginatively altered by removing one element. However, the marginal positions beyond gender, literally positioned outside the settlement, are further marginalised. Gilman achieves this by asserting that Herland's surroundings are unmapped and home to "savages", meaning they are uncivilised according to the practice of settler colonialism. Therefore, it is a white supremacist centre Gilman constructs, imagined as unquestioningly racist and colonial.
Mathew Beaumont contends that utopia "occupies what Derrida describes as 'the virtual space of spectrality' (11), a liminal territory between practicability and impossibility, reality and unreality." The society that Bellamy constructs ignores the practicability of achieving such a space without violence which is required to marginalise groups who are not part of the utopian standard constructed. Bellamy writes that revolutionary action only "hinder[ed]" the efforts made to establish his utopian society as he writes:
"'What part did the followers of the red flag take in the establishment of the new order of things? They were making considerable noise the last thing that I knew.' 'They had nothing to do with it except to hinder it, of course,' replied Dr. Leete."
Bellamy's utopia is an imagination of an irradical nature, which we may now colloquially term liberalism, a right-wing positionality which often claims socialist ideals. Capitalism necessitates competition which in turn necessities violence; it is a colonial pattern as both are born of each other. The incessant hunt for resources in search of increased capital requires displacing those who used those resources before the colonial arrival. Bellamy does not question this relationship and is seemingly unaware of the underlying violence required to found The United States of America and to continue developing its system of capital, all of which intentionally eradicated, displaced and marginalised indigenous peoples in North America. Bellamy states that his Utopia in Looking Backward could not be founded without popular support, writing: "In the United States, of all countries, no party could intelligently expect to carry its point without first winning over to its ideas a majority of the nation, as the national party eventually did." The naivety and ignorance expounded by Bellamy belies an unconscious bias which ignores the patterns of violence required in the United States for those in power to "to carry its point". The negation of the history of non-white subjugation and oppression, which continued past the writing of Looking Backward and is still an American reality today, belies a racist white supremacist bias in Bellamy, of which he is unaware. The political system which he constructs fails in its imagined socialism, for it is capitalist in its most primordial elements. Yet, furthermore, it is an unjust society claiming its justice is founded on a state practising indigenous genocide, segregation, apartheid, and institutional violence against non-white individuals and communities.
Bellamy is unaware of his complicity in colonial imagination. He writes, "The most patriotic of all possible parties, it sought to justify patriotism and raise it from an instinct to a rational devotion, by making the native land truly a father land[…]". Bellamy has no "native land", for he lives on land stolen through violence, land that was home to others before soon-to-be-Americans enacted their "land based project". Utopia, in the colonial mind, is itself a land-based project. Bellamy and Gilman express an interest in the position of their utopias, and Bellamy's construction of making one's "fatherland" through a "rational devotion" of patriotic justification only further justifies settler colonialism and capitalist violence. As William Morris stated: "The only safe way of reading a utopia is to consider it as the expression of the temperament of its author. [...] This temperament may be called the unmixed modern one, unhistoric and unartistic; it makes its owner (if a Socialist) perfectly satisfied with modern civilisation, if only the injustice, misery, and waste of class society could be got rid of; which half-change seems possible to him."
Bellamy and Gilman's utopian literature primarily reflects white America's problematic utopian imagination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Looking Backward and Herland present visions of utopias that rely on eugenic principles to perpetuate colonial practices that marginalise or erase non-white individuals. This depiction reinforces the notion that Western ideals are superior and encourages the erasure of non-Western cultures and practices. Grounded in a fear of degeneration and bound by White supremacist beliefs, the American hegemony centred in both texts not only targets non-white individuals but also seeks to erase their cultural, economic, and political practices. Gilman and Bellamy achieve this by employing a "salvage ethnographic" perspective where settler colonialism seeks to dehumanise and segregate indigenous peoples from what they imagine is a civilised society. However, they construct a violent society that implicitly employs genocide to hegemonise and retain authority. Gilman says, 'They were a clean-bred, vigorous lot, having the best of care, the most perfect living conditions always', but an American hegemony could only achieve this through the violence of White supremacy.
Notes:
1. Charles Darwin, On The Origin of Species , 6 edn (Hazleton: The Pennsylvania State University, 2001).
2. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, And Selection in Relation to Sex (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
3. Francis Galton, 'Preface', in Hereditary Genius, galton.org (1892).
4. Arne Næss, ‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement. A Summary”, Inquiry, 16.1-4, (January 1973) p.95
5. E. Ray Lankester, Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism (2019) <https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/59171/pg59171-images.html> [accessed 10 May 2023].
6. Max Nordau, Degeneration (2016) <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51161/51161-h/51161-h.htm> [accessed 10 May 2023].
7. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (2022) <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32/32-h/32-h.htm> [accessed 5 May 2023].
8. Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith, 'Introduction', in Theorizing Native Studies(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), p.1-30
9. Patrick Wolfe, 'Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native', Journal of Genocide Research, 8.4, (2006), 387–409.
10. Simpson and Smith, p.5
11. ibid
12. ibid
13. Wolfe, p.393
14. Wolfe, p.394
15. Gilman, introduction
16. Gilman, Chapter 1
17. Gilman, Chapter 1
18. Matthew Beaumont, Spectres of Utopia: Utopian and Science Fictions at the Fin de Siecle (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012). p.10
19. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000-1887, ed. by Mathew Beaumont (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2009). p.148
20. Bellamy, p.149
21. ibid
22. William Morris, 'Looking Backward', Commoneal, 22 June 1889, p.194
Bibliography:
Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith, 'Introduction', in Theorizing Native Studies(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), p. 1-30
Arne Næss, ‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement. A Summary”, Inquiry, 16.1-4, (January 1973) 95-100
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species , 6 edn (Hazleton: The Pennsylvania State University, 2001).
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, And Selection in Relation to Sex (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (2022) <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32/32-h/32-h.htm> [accessed 5 May 2023].
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000-1887, ed. by Mathew Beaumont (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2009).
E. Ray Lankester, Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism (2019) <https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/59171/pg59171-images.html> [accessed 10 May 2023].
Francis Galton, 'Preface', in Hereditary Genius, galton.org (1892). Accessed: 10th of May, 2023
Matthew Beaumont, Spectres of Utopia: Utopian and Science Fictions at the Fin de Siecle (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012).
Max Nordau, Degeneration (2016) <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51161/51161-h/51161-h.htm> [accessed 10 May 2023].
Patrick Wolfe, 'Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native', Journal of Genocide Research, 8.4, (2006), 387–409.
William Morris, 'Looking Backward', Commoneal, 22 June 1889
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