골튼(F. Galton)의 정상(normality) 개념과 우생학(eugenics) 그리고 성(性)

초록

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the scientific conceptualization of normality based on the statistical methodology of F. Galton, the founder of eugenics, and eugenics and gender identity. With this, I would like to reflect on how the distinction between normality and pathology, and related superiority and inferiority, which are unknowingly taking place in our images here and now, is no different from the eugenics of the past, which left a trace of cruel history. To this end, in Chapter 2, Galton’s application of the normal distribution and the scientific concept of normality and its implications, in Chapter 3, the correlation between normal body, intelligence, groups, and eugenics, and in Chapter 4, sex discourse as an example of this. At the time, Galton decided that normal was just the norm, and that it needed improvement. At the turn of the 20th century, eugenicists thought that in order to build the ideal country they wanted, they needed people with normal bodies suitable for it, and that these people were qualified as citizens of that country. Eugenics was an ambitious project to give birth to these beings, but in the end, it functioned as a violent tool to exclude and discriminate against unqualified beings. Therefore, when we connect eugenics and the normal body and examine our various existential aspects (gender- disability-class-race, etc.) It would be no different from the process of asking ourselves whether we are human beings. The eugenics principle and the way of thinking based on it may lie on the basis of the distinction between normal and abnormal, which may have been embodied without our knowledge. This may be why we must examine the history of eugenics here-and-now.

키워드