ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an image-making methodology that is central to a research project about a historical contraceptive, the ‘Prorace’ cervical cap. The cap was trademarked by Dr Marie Stopes in the 1920s. Whilst Stopes is primarily known as a feminist birth control pioneer, her campaign was motivated by a an eugenic agenda to improve the ‘fitness’ of the population. This aim was literally inscribed on the dome of the cap with the trademark name ‘Prorace’. This chapter argues that the ‘Prorace’ cap was a biopolitical consumer object through which Stopes aimed to intervene in the demographics of the British population in the first half of the twentieth century. The contraceptive is a necessary cure to the problem of unwanted pregnancy, as well as an object that is imbued with eugenic classism, racism, and ableism. It speaks of emancipation and oppression, of care and violence. This interdisciplinary research applies a ‘visual medical humanities’ approach to stage the complexity and ambiguity of the ‘Prorace’ cap. Research-collages and an interactive digital work complicate the presentation of the artefact. Touch emerges as both method and metaphor in this project: the visual work is activated by imagery of gloved and naked hands, which highlight and disrupt the notion of hygiene that was central to eugenic ideology.
