William Max Nelson, "Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

The University of Chicago Press Podcast · Mar 28, 2025 · 1h 9m

In Enlightenment Biopolitics (U Chicago Press, 2024), historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopolitical thought emerged and circulated. He locates that context in the Enlightenment when emancipatory ideals sat alongside the horrors of colonialism, slavery, and race-based discrimination. In fact, these did not just coexist, Nelson argues; they were actually mutually constitutive of Enlightenment ideals.

In this book, Nelson focuses on Enlightenment-era visions of eugenics (including proposals to establish programs of selective breeding), forms…