Entre Dédalo e Ícaro: cosmismo, eugenia e genética na invenção do transhumanismo norte-americano (1939-2009)

• Autor(a) principal: Diwan, Pietra Stefania
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_SP
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.pucsp.br/jspui/handle/handle/24029
• topic: CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::HISTORIA; Transhumanismo; Eugenia; Genética; Transhumanism; Eugenics; Genetics

This research understands transhumanism as an invented process, permeated by the concept of improvement and only possible through a concept on the body displaced several times and for different reasons since the eighteenth century. This elasticity about the understanding of the body is evident in different relationships, but especially those between the field of science, technology and society. Within these relations, the history of eugenics will be observed, as a phenomenon born in England in the late nineteenth century, but mainly in the United States in the early decades of the twentieth century, and which disappeared as a political proposal at the end of World War II. From the investigation of the American eugenic movement it was detected the reorientation of this research field towards the studies of molecular genetics. In the process, geneticists under the from the utopian socialism and inspired by cosmism saw in genetics of population the opportunity to create conditions for freer humankind improvement only mediated by an international organization. Julian Huxley, a confessed eugenicist, part of this group, and first director of UNESCO, organized the debate to redefine the concept of race and from there consolidated the possibility of enhancing human potential via science, this time without linking any genetic trait to a specific individual, but populations. From now on, transhumanism will be built in two ways: as an intellectual, and future project. The guiding question is how it was possible for transhumanism to present itself as the viable solution for contemporary society? Our thesis is that transhumanism has appropriated the narrative structure of eugenics denying any kind of kinship or affiliation with it. This thesis will demonstrate that this discourse was engendered in the early decades of the twentieth century in the United States, re-signified and legitimized after 1945 by not only international agencies (such as the UN and UNESCO), but also massive investment in research and development by US federal agencies during the Cold War years, and research labs such as the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. This process of legitimation was consolidated, and naturalized, in 1991, with the beginning of the Human Genome Project and its completion in 2001, when the ground was completely 'sanitized' from any remnants that linked eugenics to biotechnology and, consequently, to transhumanism