Ethnic Modernism and Scientific Nationalism: Reflections on Biopolitics in Interwar Romania

Dr. Marius Turda

Panel 1 Greater Romania

Abstract

Biopolitics forcefully encapsulates the representation of the nation as a living organism, functioning according to biological laws, and subsumed to the authority of the secular state. Biopolitics placed the nation-state within a scientific realm, one whose legitimacy stemmed from the dual claim that it could improve the “health of the population”, and protect the “racial qualities of the nation”. As the modern state became increasingly obsessed with its historical mission, namely to create a nation which was racially, spiritually and linguistically homogeneous, it also resorted to coercive mechanisms — such as stigmatisation, discrimination, segregation, and ultimately cleansing — in order to protect its members and eliminate those who were socially, ethnically and sexually different.

In this paper, I propose the term ethnic modernism to describe the cluster of biopolitical ideas developing in Romania during the first decades of the twentieth century, whose main goal was the creation of a healthy nation, a process predicated upon protecting racial qualities deemed superior and upon introducing preventive measures against dysgenic individuals or racial groups perceived as inferior, and consequently a threat to the nation.

Biography

Before becoming an Academic Fellow in Biomedicine I was a Marie Curie Fellow at Oxford Brookes University. My current research interests are as follows: interrelated groups: a) the comparative history of racial thinking, Social Darwinism and nationalism in Europe between 1860 and 1940; b) the comparative history of eugenics and racial anthropology in Europe between 1900 and 1940; c) social hygiene, public health and social assistance in Romania and Hungary between 1900 and 1940; and finally d) theories of ethnic specificity and national character and ethnic utopias in modern cultures. At the moment I am working on two monographs: one dealing with the history of eugenics in Hungary; the other with the relationship between biopolitics and theories of human improvement in modern culture.

Relevant Publications

• Modernism and Eugenics. Houndsmill: Palgrave (forthcoming 2010).
• A Healthy Nation: Eugenics, Race and Biopolitics in Hungary, 1904-1944. Budapest: CEU Press (forthcoming 2010).
• and Diana Mishkova (eds.). Anti-Modernism: Radical Revisions of Collective Identity. Budapest: CEU Press (forthcoming 2010).
• and Christian Promitzer, Sevasti Trubeta (eds.). Hygiene, Health and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945. Budapest: CEU Press (forthcoming 2010).
• and Robert Pyrah (eds.). Re-Contextualising East Central European History: Nation, Culture and Minority Groups. Oxford: Legenda (forthcoming 2010).
• “Rasse, Eugenik und Nationalismus in Rumänien während der 1940er Jahre.” Wolfgang Benz and Brigitte Mihok (eds.). Holocaust an der Peripherie: Judenpolitik und Judenmord in Rumänien und Transnistrien, 1940-1944. Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2009: pp.161-171.
•  “Controlling the National Body: Ideas of Racial Purification in Interwar Romania.” Christian Promitzer, Sevasti Trubeta, and Marius Turda (eds.). Hygiene, Health and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945. Budapest: CEU Press, forthcoming 2010.
•  “Academic History Writing in the Balkans to 1945.” Juan Maiguaschca, Stuart Macintyre, and Attila Pok (eds.). The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. IV. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010.
•  “Race, Science and Eugenics in the Twentieth Century.” Alison Bashford and Phillipa Levine (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010.
• “History of Medicine in Eastern Europe, including Russia.” Mark Jackson (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010.
• “The Biology of War: Eugenics in Hungary, 1914-1918.” Austrian History Yearbook 40.1 (2009): pp.238-264.
• “‘To End the Degeneration of a Nation’: Debates on Eugenic Sterilization in Interwar Romania.” Medical History 53.1 (2009): pp.77-104.
• “National Historiographies in the Balkans, 1830-1989.” Stefan Berger, Chris Lorenz (eds.) The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008: pp.463-89.
• “Eugenics, Race and Nation in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940: A Historiographic Overview.” Marius Turda, Paul Weindling (eds.). ‘Blood and Homeland’: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007: pp.1-22.
• and Paul Weindling (eds.). ‘Blood and Homeland’: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007.
• “The First Debates on Eugenics in Hungary, 1910-1918.” Marius Turda and Paul Weindling (eds.). ‘Blood and Homeland’: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007: pp.185-221.
• “‘Fascismul clerical in Romania’.” Mirel Banica (ed.). Biserica Ortodoxa Romana, stat si societate in anii ‘30. Bucharest: Polirom, 2007: pp.9-15.
• “The Nation as Object: Race, Blood and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania.” Slavic Review 3 (2007): pp.413-41.
• “Race, Politics and Nationalist Darwinism in Hungary, 1880-1918.” Ab Imperio Quarterly 1 (2007): pp.139-64.
• “From Craniology to Serology: Racial Anthropology in Interwar Hungary and Romania.” Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences 3 (2007): pp.361-77.
• “‘A New Religion’: Eugenics and Racial Scientism in Pre-World WarI Hungary.” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 3 (2006): pp.303-25.
• “Craniometry and Racial Identity in Interwar Transylvania.” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie ‘George Barit’  XLV (2006): pp.161-72.
• “Heredity and Eugenic Thought in Early Twentieth-Century Hungary.” Orvostörténeti Közlemények 1/2 (2006): pp.101-18.
• “Transylvania Revisited: Discourse and Historical Representation in Contemporary Romania.” Begegnungen 9 (2005): pp.231-42.
• Turda, Marius. The Idea of National Superiority in Central Europe, 1880-1918. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005.