A Likely Past: Abortion, Social Data, and a Collective Memory of Secrets in 1950s America
2010; Routledge; Volume: 7; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14791420.2010.523430
ISSN1479-4233
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes
ResumoAbstract This essay analyzes the collective mnemonics embedded in the statistical discourse of Planned Parenthood's 1955 conference, Abortion in the United States. Conferees recalled a culture that was diseased, remembered both through social data on abortion pathology and epidemiology. The essay conceptualizes how to think of social data as a collective memory of secrets that is incumbent to biopower, particularly regarding statistical anonymity as a form of strategic amnesia. Although primarily a study of this conference, the essay notes the broader importance of collective memory and secrecy for the study of biopower. Keywords: AbortionPlanned ParenthoodCollective MemorySecrecyBiopower Acknowledgements He thanks Laura Lindenfeld, Michael Socolow, Rich Powell, Mark Brewer, and Greg Gallant for their suggestions on an early draft. He also thanks Greg Wise and the reviewers for their excellent help with the manuscript, and the editorial staff for their work on polishing the essay. Most of all, he thanks Naomi Jacobs whose love is the most important thing of all Notes 1. Helen W. Bellhouse et al., ''Statement,'' in Abortion in the United States: A Conference Sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. at Arden House and the New York Academy of Medicine, ed. Mary Steichen Calderone (New York: Hoeber-Harper Book, 1958), 181. 2. Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1997), chap. 1; Rickie Solinger, Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 63–102. 3. Reagan, When Abortion, 197. See also Ellen Messer and Kathryn E. May, Back Rooms: Voices from the Illegal Abortion Era (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988); and Patricia Miller, The Worst of Times (New York: Harper Collins, 1993). 4. M.F. Ashley Montagu, "Introduction," in Abortion in the United States: A Conference Sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. at Arden House and the New York Academy of Medicine, ed. Mary Steichen Calderone (New York: Hoeber-Harper Book, 1958), 5. Future first references to different authors within this volume use only the title, Abortion, without publication information. 5. M.F. Ashley Montagu, "Introduction," in Abortion in the United States: A Conference Sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. at Arden House and the New York Academy of Medicine, ed. Mary Steichen Calderone (New York: Hoeber-Harper Book, 1958), 5. Future first references to different authors within this volume use only the title, Abortion, without publication information. 6. Reagan, When Abortion, 219. 7. Helen W. Bellhouse and others, "Statement" in Abortion, 181–2. 8. Helen W. Bellhouse and others, "Statement" in Abortion, 182. Ultimately some participants declined to sign the final statement due to the inclusion of this line. 9. Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, 2nd ed. (London: Free Association Books, 1999), xxi. 10. Maija Holmer Nadesan, Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life (New York: Routledge, 2008), 8–9. See Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: The Lectures at the College de France, 1978–79, ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchall (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); id., The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1990); id., Security, Territory, Population: Lecture at the College de France, 1977–1978, ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchall (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); id., "Society Must Be Defended": Lectures at the College de France, 1975–76, ed. Mauro Bertani, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003). 11. Christopher Tietze and others, "Report of the Statistics Committee," in Abortion, 180. 12. Bellhouse and others, "Statement," in Abortion, 181. 13. Jodi Dean, Publicity's Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 10. 14. Dean, Publicity's Secret, 23–34. 15. Michel Foucault, "Questions of Method," in Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, Vol. 3, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: New Press, 2000), 225. Also see Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 29–38. 16. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose, "Biopower Today," Biosocieties 1 (2006): 215. 17. Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff, "On Regimes of Living," in Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 22–39. 18. Space does not allow me to go into more detail. See James Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800–1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 95–8; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 217–44; Joseph J. Spengler, "Notes on Abortion, Birth Control, and Medical and Sociological Interpretations of the Decline of the Birth Rate in Nineteenth Century America," Marriage Hygiene 2, nos. 1–3 (1935): 42–53, 158–69, 288–300; Nathan Stormer, Articulating Life's Memory: US Medical Rhetoric about Abortion in the Nineteenth Century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), 21–39; Solinger, Pregnancy and Power, 54–62. 19. Janet Farrell Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in 19th-century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 281–8. 20. A. J. Rongy, Abortion: Legal or Illegal? (New York: Vanguard Press, 1933). 21. Rickie Solinger, "'A Complete Disaster': Abortion and the Politics of Hospital Abortion Committees," Feminist Studies 19 (1993): 241–68; Reagan, When Abortion, 132–59. 22. Mary Steichen Calderone to Christopher Tietze, February 15, 1954, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, call no. 179, box 2, folder 20, Schlesinger Library (hereafter MSC Papers). Calderone went on to found the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) in 1964, after which she engaged in extensive public advocacy for what today is called comprehensive sex education. 23. Mary Steichen Calderone to Christopher Tietze, February 15, 1954, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, call no. 179, box 2, folder 20, Schlesinger Library (hereafter MSC Papers). Calderone went on to found the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) in 1964, after which she engaged in extensive public advocacy for what today is called comprehensive sex education. 24. Mary Steichen Calderone to William C. Menninger, June, 4 1957, MSC Papers, call no. 179, box 2, folder 20. 25. H. R. Storer, Criminal Abortion: Its Nature, its Evidence, and its Law (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1868). 26. Frederick J. Taussig, Abortion Spontaneous and Induced: Medical and Social Aspects (St. Louis, MO: C.V. Mosby, 1936), 361. Taussig's book was commissioned by the National Committee on Maternal Health. 27. National Committee on Maternal Health, The Abortion Problem (Baltimore, MD: William and Wilkins, 1944). 28. Mary Steichen Calderone to William C. Menninger, June 4, 1957, MSC Papers, call no. 179, box 2, folder 20. An earlier volume, Therapeutic Abortion, edited by psychiatrist Harold Rosen, was an important moment in professional discourse about psychiatric indicators of abortion. The book developed from two psychiatric conference panels, the first at the Maryland Society of Private Practicing Psychiatrists in 1951 and the second at the American Psychiatric Association in 1952. See Harold Rosen, ed., Therapeutic Abortion: Medical, Legal, Anthropological and Religious Considerations (New York: Julian Press, 1954). 29. Dean, Publicity's Secret, 163; see also Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 55–63. 30. Montagu, "Introduction," in Abortion, 5. 31. Bellhouse and others, "Statement," in Abortion, 182. 32. Bellhouse and others, "Statement," in Abortion, 182. 33. Ian Hacking, "Biopower and the Avalanche of Printed Numbers," Humanities in Society 5 (1982): 279–95; id., Taming of Chance, 1–10. 34. Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller, "Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government," British Journal of Sociology 43 (1992): 179; Hacking, Taming of Chance, 120–3. 35. Nikolas Rose, "Governing Risky Individuals: The Role of Psychiatry in New Regimes of Control," Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 5 (1998): 180. 36. Hacking makes clear that the generation of statistics does not necessarily produce better management. See Hacking, "Biopower," and Taming of Chance. 37. Jan Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 81–100; Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. and ed. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 46–53; Jeffrey K. Olick, "Collective Memory: Two Cultures," Sociological Theory 17 (1999): 333–48; Jeffrey K. Olick and Joyce Robbins, "Social Memory Studies: From 'Collective Memory' to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices," Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 105–40; Barbie Zelizer, "Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12 (1995): 218–21. 38. Jeffrey K. Olick, The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility (New York: Routledge, 2007), 89. 39. Charles E. Scott, "The Appearance of Public Memory," in Framing Public Memory, ed. Kendall R. Phillips (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2004); Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Randall (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 77–90. 40. Olick, "Collective Memory"; Olick and Robbins, "Social Memory Studies"; see Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformations of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Random House, 1991); John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 41. Stephen H. Browne, "Remembering Crispus Attucks: Race, Rhetoric, and the Politics of Commemoration," Quarterly Journal of Speech 85 (1999): 169. For examples, see Barbara Biesecker, "Remembering World War II: The Rhetoric and Politics of National Commemoration at the Turn of the 21st Century," Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 393–409; M. Lane Bruner, Strategies of Remembrance: The Rhetorical Dimensions of National Identity Construction (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 2002); Marouf Arif Hasian, Jr., Rhetorical Vectors of Memory in National and International Holocaust Trials (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2006); Bradford Vivian, "Jefferson's Other," Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 284–302; id., "Neoliberal Epideictic: Rhetorical Form and Commemorative Politics on September 11, 2002," Quarterly Journal of Speech 92 (2006): 1–26. 42. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 36. For background on Halbwachs' influence, see Connerton, How Societies Remember, 6–40. 43. I am not arguing all remembrance of commemoration is self-aware. Notably, Connerton focuses on the non-reflective recollection of bodily habit within commemoration. Also see, Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 26–36. 44. Barbie Zelizer, Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 45. Michel de Certeau, The Capture of Speech & Other Political Writings, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 130. 46. Bradford Vivian, "'A Timeless Now': Memory and Repetition," in Framing Public Memory, ed. Kendall R. Phillips (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2004); Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1994), 3–22; Assman, Religion and Cultural Memory, 24–30. 47. Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 3. 48. Zelizer, "Reading the Past," 220. 49. Id., Remembering to Forget; Bruner, Strategies of Remembrance, 12–32; Leela Ghandi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 9–17; Kammen, Mystic Chords. 50. Edwin Black, "Secrecy and Disclosure as Rhetorical Forms," Quarterly Journal of Speech (74): 139. 51. Jeremy Gilbert, "Public Secrets: 'Being-with' in an Era of Perpetual Disclosure," Cultural Studies 21 (2007): 26, emphasis in original. 52. Joshua Gunn, "Death by Publicity: US Freemasonry and the Public Drama of Secrecy," Rhetoric and Public Affairs 11 (2008): 243–78. 53. Gilbert, "Public Secrets," 26. 54. Jack Bratich, "Popular Secrecy and Occultural Studies," Cultural Studies 21 (2007): 47. 55. Jack Bratich, "Popular Secrecy and Occultural Studies," Cultural Studies 21 (2007): 50. 56. Jack Bratich, "Popular Secrecy and Occultural Studies," Cultural Studies 21 (2007): 46–8. 57. Olick, Politics of Regret, 89. 58. Bratich, "Popular Secrecy," 46–7. 59. Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance, 118. See also Olick, Politics of Regret, 89. 60. Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 81–100; Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 21–44. 61. Iago Galdston, "Other Aspects of the Abortion Problem: Psychiatric Aspects," in Abortion, 119. All cited statements of participants during discussions are noted as authors. 62. Theodore Lidz, "Final Discussion," in Abortion, 162–3; Lidz also says abortion is either a sign of a sick person or a sick situation, 127. 63. Bellhouse and others, "Statement," in Abortion, 181. 64. Bellhouse and others, "Statement," in Abortion, 181. 65. Galdston, "Other Aspects of the Abortion Problem: Psychiatric Aspects," in Abortion, 118. 66. Sophia Kleegman, "Therapeutic Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 112. 67. Alfred C. Kinsey, "Other Aspects of the Abortion Problem: Psychiatric Aspects," in Abortion, 143. 68. Id., "Illegal Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 54, 56. 69. Id., "Illegal Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 54–5. 70. Calderone, "Final Discussion," in Abortion, 160. 71. G. Lotrell Timanus, "Illegal Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 59–62. Dilation and curettage refers to a procedure where the caregiver dilates the cervix and then carefully scrapes the lining of the uterus using a curette (a scraping tool of which there have been many varieties). 72. G. Lotrell Timanus, "Illegal Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 59–62. Dilation and curettage refers to a procedure where the caregiver dilates the cervix and then carefully scrapes the lining of the uterus using a curette (a scraping tool of which there have been many varieties). 65. 73. Calderone, "Therapeutic Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 87–8, 95, 110–11. When a passage of panel discussion is cited with multiple participants' comments, the editor of the proceedings is used. 74. Carl Erhardt, "Therapeutic Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 78–80. 75. Christopher Tietze, "Therapeutic Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 83–5; also see Robert W. Laidlaw, "Therapeutic Abortion in the United States" in Abortion, 107. 76. Calderone, "Therapeutic Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 108; id., "Other Aspects of the Abortion Problem: Psychiatric Problems," in Abortion, 128–32, 138–40. 77. Lawrence C. Kolb, "Other Aspects of the Abortion Problem: Psychiatric Problems," in Abortion, 140. 78. Bellhouse and others, "Statement," in Abortion, 181–2. 79. Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 20. 80. Amy Gilman Srebnick, The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers: Sex and Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 33–60. Mary Rogers advertised cigars. 81. Amy Gilman Srebnick, The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers: Sex and Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 97–108; Mohr, Abortion in America, 48–50. 82. Reagan, When Abortion, 19–45. 83. Spengler, "Notes on Abortion"; Stormer, Articulating Life's Memory, 21–39. 84. Calderone, "Therapeutic Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 77, 80, 93, 101. 85. Calderone, "Therapeutic Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 111–12; Bellhouse and others, "Statement," in Abortion, 183. 86. Kinsey, "Illegal Abortion in the United States," in Abortion, 55. 87. Kolb, "Other Aspects of the Abortion Problem: Psychiatric Aspects," in Abortion, 141–2. 88. Reagan, When Abortion, 195. 89. Stormer, Articulating Life's Memory, 21–39. Also see Laura L. Lovett, Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family in the United States, 1890–1938 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 93–102. 90. Calderone's papers contain the draft of the unfavorable review by Charles Miller and her response to the editors of Medical Economics. MSC Papers, call no. 179, box 3, folder 24. 91. James R. Newman, "A Conference on Abortion as a Disease of Societies," Scientific American January (1959): 2. MSC Papers, call no. 179, box 3, folder 24. 92. M. Edward Davis, Review, Science 129.3339 (1959): 36. MSC Papers, call no. 179, box 3, folder 24. 93. Id., memo to Best, MSC Papers, March 18, 1955, call no. 179, box 2, folder 13. 94. Alfred C. Kinsey to Morton Sontheimer, MSC Papers, April 5, 1955, call no. 179, box 2, folder 13. 95. Winfield Best memo to the Public Relations Department, MSC Papers, February 16, 1955, call no. 179, box 2, folder 13; Best memo to Fred Jaffe, MSC Papers, February 17, 1955, call no. 179, box 2, folder 13. 96. Vogt handwritten note to Charles McLane, MSC Papers, April 15, 1955, call no. 179, box 2, folder 13. 97. Winfield Best telegram to conference participants, MSC Papers, April 7, 1955, call no. 179, box 2, folder 13. For description of the negotiations with Sontheimer, see memoranda from Jaffe to Best, MSC Papers, March 18, and April 7, 1955, call no. 179, box 2, folder 13. 98. Jaffe memo to Best, MSC Papers, April 7, 1955, call no. 179, box 2, folder 13. 99. Morton Sontheimer, "Abortion in America Today," Woman's Home Companion October, 1955, 44–5, 96. 100. Christopher Tietze to Calderone, MSC Papers, April 29, 1957, call no. 179, box 2, folder 20. 101. Calderone to Alan Guttmacher, MSC Papers, July 1, 1957, call no. 179, box 2, folder 20. See Howard C. Taylor to Calderone, MSC Papers, May 2, 1957, call no. 179, box 2, folder 20. 102. Calderone to Guttmacher, MSC Papers, July 1, 1957, call no. 179, box, 2, folder 20. 103. Calderone to Guttmacher, MSC Papers, July 1, 1957, call no. 179, box, 2, folder 20. Calderone to Carl Ehardt, MSC Papers, May 21, 1957, call no. 179, box 2, folder 20. 104. Bellhouse and others, "Statement," in Abortion, 184. 105. Dean, Publicity's Secret, 30. I do not suggest a parallel between Freemasonry, which is the context for the quotation, and public health conferences in terms of their content; rather, it is in terms of the role secrecy played in legitimating private deliberation on public matters. 106. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 159–86. 107. Scott, "Public Memory," 147–56; Rose, "Governing Risky Individuals," 180. 108. Igo, Averaged American, 282. 109. Igo, Averaged American, 282. 110. Rabinow and Rose, "Biopower Today," 197. 111. Rose, Inventing Our Selves, 37–8. Rose discusses the need for "arts of memory" in terms of subjectification, but I argue collective memory has broader functionality within biopower. 112. Claire Birchall, "Cultural Studies Confidential," Cultural Studies 21 (2007): 15. 113. Gunn, "Death by Publicity," 253. 114. Bratich, "Popular Secrecy," 48, emphasis in original. See also id., "Public Secrecy and Immanent Security," Cultural Studies 20 (2006): 493–511. Additional informationNotes on contributorsNathan StormerNathan Stormer is the Bailey Distinguished Professor of Speech & Theatre at the University of Maine
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