Imagining Cognitive Disability: Recursive Reading and Viewing Processes in Henry H. Goddard’s The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeblemindedness

Since Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, the photographs of Henry H. Goddard’s The Kallikak Family have anchored scholarly discussions of ideology and science. In the 34 years since the publication of Gould’s seminal work, the intrigue of the images has yet to fade. Jay Dolmage, in his 2014 article, argues that the adoption of Goddard’s photographic protocols at immigration centers reminds scholars that “the most important surface of emergence to study when examining any photograph” is “the existence of the image and its rhetorics in our own thoughts and actions.” This essay investigates how these images and rhetoric are taught to readers via recursive reading and viewing processes. It responds to a scholarly inclination to analyze the moment of viewing, during which the viewers formulate their impressions of the photographic subject. Rosemarie Garland Thomson argues that the viewer’s stare “creates disability as a state of absolute difference rather than simply one more variation of human form” (57). The moment of the stare is of inarguable import, but this moment is capitalized on by a larger recursive pedagogy. This eugenic education is effected by visual and textual evidence that compels viewers to re-see images so that they can make important revisions to initial impressions. Goddard prompts his reader to test and apply the claims of the eugenic movement, and this participation functions as the means by which eugenic theories of cognitive disability are internalized.

Reader participation is privileged before the book officially begins. Goddard dedicates the Kallikak Family “to Mr. Samuel S. Fels, friend and philanthropist, a layman with the scientist’s love of Truth, and the true citizen’s love of humanity, who made possible this study and who has followed this work from its incipiency with kindly criticism and advice.” This dedication distills a partnership between the expert and the lay reader that not only lies at the heart of The Kallikak Family’s persuasive appeal, but also made possible a national eugenic movement. Goddard’s authority becomes more trusted because he invites the reader to play an active role in the discovery of “scientific” truth. By allowing his reader to participate in his eugenic project, most notably by interpreting and reinterpreting pictures, Goddard gains his reader’s trust when disseminating the essential proof of his argument via other visual means, namely hereditary charts. To see the epidemic of feeblemindedness for what it is, the reader depends on Goddard’s charts, which capture a long view of history, not the misleading moments that pictures do. Such analysis enriches our understanding of the persuasive means of eugenics texts and deepens our understanding of how expert writers appeal to lay audiences while preserving authority and expertise.

As a new technology, photography laid a persuasive veneer of objectivity over scientific argument, and scholars often depict readers who passively internalize popular eugenic theories in light of visual evidence. Anne Maxwell writes, “at a time when photography was widely perceived as the most objective visual medium, many scientists saw photography not only as a scientific tool, but also as the most effective way to relay their racial theories to the public” (2). Martin A. Elks echoes Maxwell’s beliefs, arguing that “Goddard’s first purpose for publishing photographs in The Kallikak Family was to convey the image of objective scientific documentation of the Kallikak family members by using realistic illustrations of his thesis of the hereditability of feeblemindedness” (269). Retouching of the Kallikak photos was done, in Elks’s view, to enhance the reader’s ability to “see” feeblemindedness. After retouching, Goddard’s images “screamed feeblemindedness” (278). Elks alludes to the fact that the images served as learning aids for an untrained audience. They magnify the salient stigmata of the feebleminded so that the reader can begin to hone his or her own trained vision. However, like Thomson and Gould, Elks assesses the purpose and impression of the picture to the neglect of the educational process into which Goddard inducts his reader.

The Kallikak Family frames the...