My topic focuses on the Lysenko affair, a time in which the Soviet Union denied the consensus of modern genetics. I will be mainly focusing on how the affair arose, and I have a couple different angles to analyze this from: a more philosophical approach focusing on the Marxist intellectual heritage or a historical perspective of the modernization of the Soviet Union. Thus, this map represents different ways to understand the Lysenko Affair.
My research topic is the Lysenko Affair, the Soviet rejection of Mendelian genetics, and its consequences for the formulation of science in the Modern era. The significance of my topic lies in how it can help us understand the roots of our current state-funded science policy and how we define science in a free society.
There are a couple veins in the current literature. One is the ideological analysis. There are many articles and books chronicling the link between Lysenkoism and Marxism or Stalin or other political concerns. While this is interesting to me, it also seems less applicable to today and I believe I would not be able to uncover something in the Soviet archives over the course of a two week assignment. Instead, I will be following the work of some scholars that analyze agrobiology in relation to the definition of science. My analysis will extend in two ways. First, I will incorporate the philosophy of science, either Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn, to explain why science during the Lysenko affair underwent such convulsions. This will give more rigor to the analysis of science. Second, I will integrate the philosophy of science into the ideological analysis, showing how even Lysenko’s relation to Marxism can be understood as an extension of Marxism’s epistemological claims. While this is mentioned in the work of Roll-Hansen, I believe I can extend it further to recast the relationship between agrobiology and socialism.
In Sarantakes’s article, one allegory to the Cold War is the tension between spreading democratic ideals and abrogating the freedom of other countries by intervening. This comes out in the analysis of “The Omega Glory.” The episode, which ends with Kirk successfully ending a war between the Yangs and the Kohms and imprisoning Captain Tracey, leads Spock to question “whether their actions have not violated [the prime directive] as well.”
This is an allegory to US foreign policy. America was founded in reaction to intervention/domination, yet Wilsonian foreign policy is built on the idea of spreading democratic ideals via intervention. This is paralleled in the prime directive, which is about non-intervention.
Science fiction is useful for critique of political culture for two reasons. First, the idea of a more advanced society lends scientific credence to the thesis of the criticism. A society with light speed travel is thought of as more advanced, so a critique advanced from said position is given the same advanced status. Mainly people conceptualize history as a teleological process, with technological and moral advancement being intrinsically linked, and science fiction plays off this.
But even more generally, science fiction allows creators to deal with larger ideas more explicitly. Because science fiction has almost infinite freedom in characters and settings, it can create a situation that expressly question political assumptions without feeling didactic. As Star Trek demonstrates, the ability to create new planets with new species tells us more about our planet and our species by placing humans in new situations with new morals. And thus, science fiction, through its expression of human creativity, can critique human power structures and hope for the creation of a better world.
“Yet both Jean-Paul Sartre’s oft-quoted description of Manhattan as ‘the great American desert’ and Albert Camus’s noir vision of New York as ‘a prodigious funeral pyre at midnight’ seemed to take on additional valence after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the fallen American city became a common media image, and even more so after the first Soviet atomic test in 1949.” – Matthew Farish, “Disaster and decentralization: American cities and the Cold War”
Part One
This quotation sums up the significance of Farish’s piece because it illustrates the transformative power of the atomic bomb that shifted the image of the American city from the culmination of progress to the site of mass destruction. Post World War II, as the specter of nuclear destruction hung over the United States, the teeming, diverse metropolises that at one point constituted the pride of America slowly turned into decaying “deathtraps,” in Edward Teller’s phrase, the place where the nation’s collapse would begin.
Of course, the decay of American cities was partly physical, with white flight and urban renewal slowly homogenizing and suffocating the landscape. But Farish’s argument focuses on the perception of the city, and how the confluence of military planning and increasingly scientific sociology began to reduce the complex city to bare cost-benefit analysis. Under this accrual format of the containment mindset, the city turned from strength to liability, as the value of intrinsic connectivity and diversity paled in comparison with the potential geopolitical and material damage of a nuclear strike. The milieu of Cold War America both glorified the suburb and denigrated the city, accelerating white flight, which further decreased the value of the city in the eyes of planners. Therefore, the combination of atomic threats and scientific methodology transformed the city into a danger point that, like all threats foreign and domestic, must be contained.
Part Two
As Farish indicates in his analysis of American cities through the work of E.B. White, the Empire City always held a unique place in the collective consciousness. As the largest population center as well as the capital of world diplomacy and finance, New York remained proof of America’s continued primacy in the world. While the nightmare of a nuclear attack never struck Manhattan, the 9/11 attacks gave partial realization to the destruction of America’s First City.
Images of the Twin Towers’ collapse therefore took on symbolic importance as representing the collapse of American power. In fact, I would extend the argument to say that because 9/11 did not totally destroy American power, that because central Washington D.C. and the rest of Manhattan stayed standing, the images of 9/11 became a constant reminder that the terrorists could have unfinished business. Instead of the total nuclear destruction of the Cold War, the partial devastation foreshadowed the continuous, asymmetric nature of the Global War on Terror. In this context, the constant imagery of 9/11 reminds America of the constant vigilance required to fight al-Qaeda.
In George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s adaptation Game of Thrones, the themes of apocalyptic warfare play out on a invented universe that parallels our own Cold War world.
Two major conflicts are occurring in these books. The vast majority of the pages cover the war for the Iron Throne, the seat of power in the mythical Seven Kingdoms. Simultaneously, Martin sets up a life-or-death struggle, between the ice-zombie Others and the realms of men. This dual struggle forms the core of the book, with much of the intrigue and character development found in the domestic conflict while the looming threat of annihilation adds a sense of scale.
It is the second conflict, and its symbolism, that echoes the Cold War most clearly. While the dualist vision of Good versus Evil comes out more explicitly in the show, the basic structure of the tale points to a message of forgetting domestic issues in order to focus on grander issues. The wars for the Iron Throne drain food, time, and men, while the inevitable crunch of the Others moves closer and closer to the living. Like the Postwar Consensus that suppressed domestic political issues in order to present a United America, Westeros seems to need a focus on more pressing issues.
The rhetoric of Jon Snow, one of the heroes of the story, echoes those of Cold Warriors in its defense of universal values:
HBO, Game of Thrones, Season 7 Episode 7, 2017
The rhetoric of Jon Snow, and the story in general, points to a war not for power, but for survival. Just as Hiroshima brought the stakes of conflict from the subjugation of people to the elimination of human life on Earth, the Others also represent a quantum leap in terms of the stakes.
George R.R. Martin has not finished his books yet. Many of his works tend to subvert fantasy tropes, to undercut our assumptions. But what’s clear from the first five books of the series, and the first seven seasons of the show, is that the rhetoric of the Cold War still echoes in the halls of the Red Keep. Like the apocalyptic vision of a nuclear winter, the ice-controlling Others haunt the nightmares of men. What’s clear is that Cold War rhetoric remains a key weapon in the arsenal of the living. Good versus evil never goes out of style.
The Rhetoric of Containment 