Disability Studies and the Legacies of Eugenics

Potsdam Sessions: Opening Session

(Transcript originally completed for accessiblity purposes and should not be considered a verbatim account of the proceedings. This transcription is meant to represent a general sense and may include gaps and mistaken information. Please request permission to quote)

Welcomed by Sharon Snyder, the director:

I think there’s a lot of expertise in the room. I am by training a textual scholar. Most pertinently for this I have a book coming, two. One is "Eugenics in America", where I ran into Gerry’s material. And another book called "Cultural Locations of Disability" that uses eugenics ideology as the basis for forming disability identity

It is important to hang out, free time, and to not sit in a room talking everyday
But still important materials to discuss and hanging out and getting to know the city and the country
Potsdam beautiful
Lots to do here

We need to speak singly. And that hand raising isn’t mode of recognition
But after we go thru the itinerary we’d like everyone to be responsible for sharing speaking space – it would help for the first couple days for everyone to say names.

We want to have a meeting today everyday like we’re doing now. Then we also had some select evening sessions that are optional for reading discussion – morning sessions – let’s run thru itinerary – reading group for tonight – different participants in the group lead them – pedagogical models – if everyone – copies arrangements – any extras – arrange by me – or copies that one needs.

Killing centers – towards the end – Friedlander – we tried to organize in the reading – overview materials – then specific things like nurses and their roles – these are some of the materials that we know on these topics
People visiting will be bringing original materials in German to share with us – many unpublished –

American holocaust museum – has new exhibit – traveling exhibit on eugenics and the holocaust – they want all of us to help plan this – they’re willing to support us in the fall and want us to do preliminary work and one of these items for us to mull over
Saturday pick up vans – day open

Drive to Halle –
Evening – Memorial to t-4 victims in Brandenberg – memorial steles not a archive – the first exhibition of the utility of gas – 2 different groups – compared death rates and mercy of two groups of 8 men before an audience. Topics “uplifting” – important in an architectural sense – we’ve been to a number of these sites already and they’re very depressing – but nonetheless there’s been a recent effort to memorialize them – disability rights movement has been central – one is only talking about half a dozen sites where most of the murders. Later on we’ll come back from Buchenwald So we’ll decide when we’ll leave on Sunday

Volker has done work on history of psychiatric institution – Petra Fuchs – works in bundesarchive in Berlin – and original files for Hadamar with Uta George – we have people very invested in this materials – Volker has a huge file for us – maybe we should stop and ask for questions– Volker is planning on bringing his stuff on transparencies – we’ll have access – material not yet published. Buchenwald had a good bookstore – they have tons of materials – in German and in English – anybody who can work in German – Klee –good story – first scholar activists lives in Frankfurt—published several documents – when Sharon and David were here last time we showed Vital Signs – during the question and answer period we mentioned about deaths of disabled persons and our translator wouldn’t translate the comment – so we’re talking away and someone gets up and asks her why she’s not translating – and they had an argument – and it turns out it was Ernst Klee – who’s stuff has not been published. Some projects: a group of essays from this group – any of us – we’re welcoming anyone from the group to participate in this longer range project—Holocaust Museum in US as sponsor. The second project is this travelling exhibit with the Am Holocaust Museum.

Americans ahead and Germans felt far behind in sterilization policies and eugenical practices. And for the traveling exhibit we get to sculpt it from scratch. They’ve done one on Roma people. And they’ve done one on gay persons. And we can do this one. Nancy is working on a journal and will publish them. If we had a couple persons doing journals. Mouth magazine. Disability world. Keep track. I suggested that everyone keep minutes for one day. I’ll do today. Minutes. There’s been some media interest. Aren’t we visually interesting. We’re developing a website. Dave wants pictures. We have a couple cameras. Sumi is going to do a conference – no, she wants to do a panel – bioethics and anthropology panel – Nancy: getting back to the recording. She has a portable tape recorder.
Pam – doesn’t currently teach but thought of doing a community presentation – eugenics is a glitzy way to get people to get attention.
Debjani is going to do pedagogical materials – and will probably set something up for Northwestern – Kanta: as the topics are developing – wants to list items on website – and wants to have informal contact – she’s offering to piggyback a talk – she’s right outside of Seattle – Massachussetts – south of sumi’s home – small holocaust museum – people could do outreach with local holocaust museums – different audiences than the teaching audience

Sara – even though she grows up in Milwaukee – African American holocaust museum – or African German connection – that’s a good venue – there’s numerous nonprofit – facing history – there may be opportunities for local chapters of those kinds of organizations – she’s thinking that there’s a series of places where educational materials =--

Traveling exhibit and educational materials – disseminating material discussion— David encourages us to keep thinking

This forum intended to get material out so let’s keep discussing this.

Nancy: finds interesting about process – she’s discussing Winnipeg as a hotbed of disability studies and politics in Canada – and a very strong Jewish community – but 3 separate times she has contacted them – telling them what she is doing – she’s had no response – upcoming human rights museum that will be built in Winnipeg by 2006 – active lobby to have a disability component – if we ever think disability studies is a contentious field then holocaust studies is that much so too – and there are some things coming out now – such as black persons who were killed – and the holocaust field is becoming more diversified – and there’s a proliferation of ideas – but some Jewish centers are more or less open – so it varies in terms of acceptance – even for Edwin black on eugenics – there are the holocaust historians who don’t think we should be doing any of this – they make a discussion between biased holocaust “literature” written by Jewish persons and the real historical stuff by non-biased historians – they’re down on the political scientists – and it’s a very closed field – and an online list-serv is difficult and highly expert and they’re not open to talking about other groups in that academic realm.

So a lot depends on the local approaches to sexism and racism – part of our job is to start thinking about relations between eugenics, anti-Semitism – we need to make distinctions and show the different ideologies and groups involved in networking different attitudes to violent politics. Relation of holocaust eugenics to now – why does it matter for current policies – what is the relation of eugenics to genetics? What are the differences? What are the links and how might they be formulated and theorized? All of that work is open and needs to be done carefully. Wants to work on question about how can we have genetics without eugenics? Can one carry on a choice – genetics – free will and know the history – in general just the idea of the impact of the absence of eugenics history itself. How many people grew up knowing anything about eugenics? Germany was cordoned off as the site of violent eugenics and it has alleviated other countries and national sites from having to grapple with eugenic politics from at home. So this is intensely under theorized. It’s also the whole euthanasia question.

And then the de-institutionalization question – she finds it interesting when she talks to people and says that institutions are a result of the eugenics movement – so institutional history in terms of dis rights. political impact in US In Germany these are people who are young scholars – we need to be very hospitable – people who have lost jobs and been kicked out of medical groups and we need to be respectful of their principled professional stands. Brenda: one thing to do with the website – when we think about website – we build up a group cv and then a way to systematically locate our group – we’re always singularized – we can work against that by locating a group cv for the institute – group important in terms of a new politics of collaborative research – we’ve been invited to Einstein forum it’s important because prestigious – Nobel laureates give speeches there after Sweden – it’s a major forum and usually this seminar is held there we can’t do that because it’s inaccessible – but we are the Einstein forum – the hallways are narrow – the doors are tiny – those of us who can get there and get in one way or another are allowed to use their computers – one practical reason.

Sharon L. Snyder, Ph. D.,
Director, "Legacies of Eugenics" Summer Institute, Einstein Forum
Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Ph. D. Program in Disability Studies
Department of Disability and Human Development
University of Illinois at Chicago (MC 626)
1640 W. Roosevelt Rd. #207
Chicago IL 60608-6904 U.S.A.
E-mail: ssnyder@uic.edu Phone: (312) 413-1975 (Voice) Fax: (312) 996-0885