The English Working Cat: Genetics, Socialism, and the Domestic Environment in the Mid-Twentieth Century

• In Event: Environment and the State: Authoritarianism, Democracy, and Notions of Modernity

Abstract

This paper explores the erasure of the boundary between modern biology and the domestic environment in the mid-twentieth century. Scholars have highlighted the importance of “model organisms” in the development of genetic science. These animals, which have included mice, guinea pigs, and fruit flies, were selected for their predictability and docility. Yet what happens if a geneticist chooses to study an animal with none of these characteristics? During the 1940s and 1950s, the controversial British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane selected to investigate heredity in house cats (Felis catus). Far from being able to extract knowledge from cats in a controlled environment, however, Haldane quickly became entangled in the lives of his animal subjects. This case study suggests that scientific encounters with domestic cats were mediated through the home environment. Haldane was essentially “domesticated” by choosing a domestic animal as his object of study, with his science directed by the agency of cats and the priorities of their human owners. As a Marxist with a particular view of how science and society should be organized, Haldane had repeatedly asserted that science should be “democratized,” opened to the participation of working people and tailored to their concerns. The enthusiastic reception of his cat project by the British public was, from a certain perspective, an unintended realization of his socialist ambitions. Outside of the home, non-human animals are translated into Western systems of capitalism and science. Within the domestic environment, however, close human relationships with cats exerted a significant influence on Haldane and his genetic research.

Author

• Matthew Holmes, University of Stavanger