Taguieff, Pierre-André
Racisme aryaniste, socialisme et eugénisme chez Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936)
- 2005.
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From the end of 1880 to 1900 Georges Vacher de Lapouge proved himself to be the true founding father of Social Sciences or “Political Sciences”. His theoretical project was to study the interaction between biological and social in order to explain the evolution of societies according to hereditary mechanisms and selection. His social evolutionism including “Racial theory”, “Anthroposociology” or “Selectionism” proved to be an imaginary science, accepted as such by most of his contemporaries, at least in France. At the same time, Lapouge was also a political “revolutionary” activist engaged in the social movement. He also was, until his death in 1936, a theoretician and propagandist of eugenics, which he believed to be the true social reform. Lapouge the eugenicist had a great number of followers only in the United States and in Germany. His personality (that of a racist aryanist, a socialist and eugenicist) will be remembered as a French historical and intellectual figure of the end of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century, as well as in relation to the history of cultural interchanges between France, Germany, England and the United States.