Un/doing Differences. A History of Intelligence (Germany, Great Britain, ca. 1880-1990)

• Applicant: Dr. Susanne Schregel
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 322686211

Un/doing Differences. A History of Intelligence (Germany, Great Britain, ca. 1880-1990) Combining social history with political history and the history of knowledge, this project will write a history of intelligence as a means of forming socio-political distinctions in Germany and Great Britain. The study analyses how debates about intelligence contributed to the un/doing of differences and the assigning of social positions between 1880 and 1990. Since the late nineteenth century, debates about intelligence have been intertwined with various modes of creating difference and assigning social positions. Recourse to intelligence not only served to distinguish human individuals from each other. Attributions and evaluations of intelligence were also frequently coupled with statements about social stratification and class formation. Moreover, the discourse of intelligence coincided with aspects of social ordering that are not quite covered by the categories of social class (e.g. gender and race). Even non-human entities, such as animals and machines, were ranked and arranged in debates about intelligence. Given these interconnections, the history of intelligence offers a methodological opportunity to venture from a history of social inequality (between persons) towards the broader history of social practices surrounding categorisation and the assigning of social positions. Based on the assumption that intelligence took on social importance precisely because knowledge about it transcended expert circles, the study will focus on debates played out within the public sphere. The corpus of sources consists of publically well-received publications (to describe popular knowledge about intelligence), letters to the editor (to include concrete situations of speaking and writing about intelligence), caricatures (to cover non-conventional knowledge) and archival material (adding to specific topics). The analysis begins with debates about the human/animal distinction in the late 19th century; it concludes with the diversifications of intelligence in the late 20th century. The comparative approach will serve to evaluate interconnections between divergent categories of un/doing differences. In addition to its specialist focus and multidisciplinary perspectives, the project will contribute to several broader historiographical debates. The project aims to write a social history that does not tacitly set its subject ('the social') beyond scrutiny, but instead reflects upon it. In contrast to the literature of the 1970s and 1980s that rather focused on structural aspects, it enables us to consider to what extent we might gain insights by addressing equality and inequality as stabilized or destabilized in concrete situations of un/doing differences. Not least, the project will add to the debate about the political character of knowledge and knowledge-based practices.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants