ABSTRACT
In a recent essay, David Harvey suggested that there were ‘strong ideas’ that geography could profitably explore in order to be more powerfully influential. One of these was geographic knowledge. How is geographic knowledge assembled or produced? In what ways does geographic knowledge become truth? How does what we know affect political or economic outcomes? In order to answer these questions Harvey pointed to a number of ‘sites’ that produce geographic knowledges, including cartography (see also Livingstone 2003). Harvey wondered why there has been such scant critical attention to the way cartography produces knowledge:
It is years now since Foucault taught us that knowledge/power/institutions lock together in particular modes of governmentality, yet few have cared to turn that spotlight upon the discipline of Geography itself. (Harvey 2001, 217)
In this chapter I discuss how race and eugenics informed the problem of Europe’s boundaries following World War I. Using Foucault’s somewhat neglected discussion of state racism, I explore how cartographic knowledge can act as a technology of government and biopolitics through a spatialization of race. In particular I look at the role of eugenic science in the American preparations for peace.