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Stalinist Genetics: The Constitutional Rhetoric of T. D. Lysenko
Dmitri Stanchevici
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Baywood's Technical Communications Series, Series Editor: Charles H. Sides
Read the Introduction now
IN PRAISE OF
"Dmitri Stanchevici's work synthesizes history, global politics, mythos, science, cultural studies, and rhetoric in a way that is unique and prescient for technical communicators today, as they help society negotiate the unstable intersection of science, politics, and communication. Stanchevici's prose is full of insights that are always eloquently presented, while semantically precise."
—Ken Baake, Author, Metaphor and Knowledge: The Challenges of Writing Science
ABOUT THE BOOK
Stalinist Genetics focuses on the rhetoric of T. D. Lysenko, the founder of an agrobiological doctrine (Lysenkoism) in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Using not only scientific but also political and ideological arguments, Lysenko achieved an official ban on Soviet Mendelian genetics. Though the ban was brief and Lysenkoism, as a leading biological doctrine, was eventually deposed in favor of Mendelism, Lysenkoism remains a paradigmatic example of pernicious political interference in science.
In this study, the critical orientation for reading Lysenko's major speeches is constitutional rhetoric. It combines Kenneth Burke's dialectic of constitutions and rhetoric of the subject. Painting a nuanced picture of intellectual, economic, ideological, and political life in the Soviet Union of the 1930s and 1940s, the book demonstrates how the rhetorics of Lysenkoism and Mendelism interacted with Stalinist culture in the fight for dominating Soviet science. The reader will learn how Lysenko's constitutional rhetoric created a space where scientific terms transformed into political and ideological ones, and vice versa. The book also shows how, in a dialectical flip, the Lysenkoist rhetoric eventually turned from tool to master. Contrary to Lysenko's intentions, his language gave his opponents, Soviet Mendelians, grounds on which to defend their science and criticize Lysenkoism. Stanchevici forcefully reasserts the blurriness of the boundaries between science and politics, and argues that scientific language reveals more plasticity and adaptability to the political situation than has hitherto been assumed.
Intended Audience: Scholars in rhetoric, history, and philosophy of science; graduate or upper-division undergraduate course in the rhetoric of science or technical communication.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dmitri Stanchevici is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Memphis. He teaches courses in professional writing and rhetoric. He received his Ph.D. in technical communication and rhetoric from Texas Tech University. In graduate school, he became interested in the rhetoric of science, a discipline revealing the social and rhetorical aspects of the process of creating scientific knowledge. A Russian-speaking native of Moldova, a post-Soviet nation wedged between Ukraine and Romania, Stanchevici also studied Stalinist culture, which has left a deep imprint on all ex-Soviet republics. The intersection of these two interests gave rise to a project in the rhetoric of science in the Stalinist Soviet Union, the results of which have been presented at conferences, summarized in a dissertation, and elaborated further in this volume.
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