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The Act or Process of Dying Out: The Importance of Darwinian Extinction in Argentine Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2009

Adriana Novoa
Adriana Novoa*
Affiliation:
University of South Florida
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Argument

The spread of Darwinian ideas by the late nineteenth century in Argentina transformed the intellectual elites' notion of progress and civilization. While before Darwin, union, harmony, and assimilation were the ideas most commonly associated with the civilizatory process; variation, struggle, and divergence dominated the post-Darwin discussion. More importantly, unlike in Europe, in Argentina the theory not only triggered interest in the process of speciation, but also its relationship with extinction. Extinction became the benchmark of progress, and the sign of success for the nation. If the country was civilizing itself, the “natural” elimination of inferior individuals, unfit for the struggle for existence, had to be proved and displayed. The origin of modernity was here associated with the existence of evolutionary waste that revealed the work of natural selection on behalf of national improvement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 217 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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