Eugenic Fantasies Racial Ideology in the Literature and Popular Culture of the 1920's

Eugenic Fantasies is a brilliantly innovative work that combines interpretive strategies from the fields of psychoanalysis, anthropology, and literary theory to create a new model for theorizing race. Drawing on the 1920s prose works of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and H.D., the author offers a radically new reading of the eugenic discourses of the decade. Combining the theories of Kristeva, Bakhtin, and Kaja Silverman, Nies argues that the rise of eugenics served as a palliative for anxieties over war torn bodies, a means of repairing a loss of belief in the white male as defender of the nation through images of timeless racial continuity. The study offers a reading of the literature through a cultural lens, instigating not only the ambivalent responses of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and H.D. to the 'science', but also popular and academic reactions to the subject, evidenced in popular periodicals, newspapers, and scientific treatises of the time.Nies, Betsy L. is the author of 'Eugenic Fantasies Racial Ideology in the Literature and Popular Culture of the 1920's' with ISBN 9780415937382 and ISBN 0415937388.