17, Institute of Critical Studies
From Small Beginnings/Global Anti-Eugenics Centre
Colegio de San Ildefonso Futures Workshop
International Colloquium
Against «Perfection».
Towards a Non-Eugenic Future
This colloquium will serve as de ideas forum of the I Feria Internacional del Libro Pensamiento Crítico
January 19-24, 2026, Mexico City
Guest Curator: Benedict Ipgrave/Small Beginnings /Global Anti-Eugenics Project
Respondents Curatorship: Beatriz Miranda Galarza*
Hybrid event: in-person in Mexico City, streamed live via YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
English translation will be available
Colegio de San Ildefonso
Justo Sierra 16, Mexico City
Spanish version of this Programme
With:
Benedict Ipgrave (London), Miroslava Chávez-García (Santa Barbara, California), Marielena Hincapié (Philadelphia), Nora Groce (London), Mario Luis Fuentes (Mexico City), Diana Taylor (New York), Lauren Booker, Alberto Guerrero Velázquez, Linda Steele, Carlos Halaburda, Susan Antebi, Beatriz Miranda-Galarza (Mexico City), Rossana Reguillo (Guadalajara), Sergio Villalobos Ruminott (Ann Arbor, United States), Ariadna Acevedo (Mexico City), Laura Cházaro (Mexico City), Milton Reynolds, Katie Hasson, Grace Maria Eberhardt, Charlene Galarneau, Guadalupe Barrena (Mexico City), Patrick Devlieger (Leuven, Belgium), Koen Devriendt, Gerriye Mubungu, Stefan Timmermans, Takahiro Nanri (Tokyo), Jaehyung Kim (Seoul), Aya Homei, Paul Bookman, Kavitha Rajagopalan, Kavitha Rajagopalan, Edgar Lacolz (Mexico City), Aldel Urbina Serrano, Cristina Rosa (Mexico City), Lucía Cuba, Rosemarie Lerner, Patricia Cruz (Lima), Pietra Diwan, Shirley Krenak, Patrick Brock, Hugo Montes de Oca (Mexico City), Judy Dow, Liz Hingley, Richard Lou, Víctor Palacios, Yullia Ipgrave (London)
The colloquium will serve as the ideas forum of the I Feria Internacional del Libro Pensamiento Crítico
Presentation
Eugenics is often spoken of as a dark chapter of the twentieth century, associated with racial hygiene, forced sterilization, institutional confinement, colonial domination, the control of bodies and of women’s reproduction, and the genocide of those deemed “unfit.” However, reducing eugenics to a closed historical episode is not only counterintuitive but, above all, dangerous. Eugenics has not disappeared; it has transformed itself. It has learned to speak the language of science, public health, progress, prevention, and efficiency. It migrated from laboratories to clinics, from asylums to governmental institutions, from demographic censuses to algorithms. In this displacement, eugenic rationality became embedded in the normative frameworks through which we define the value of life: normality, productivity, beauty, intelligence, risk, and even our very understanding of truth and of what it means to be human.
Today, eugenic logic persists in reproductive control, in the pathologization of disability, in anti-trans legislation, in population-management policies, in migration surveillance, and in discourses of fear surrounding so-called “undesirable births.” It manifests itself in genetic screening technologies, fertility markets, and biotechnological capitalism. It is concealed in medical protocols, in triage criteria implemented during public health emergencies, and in certain responses to the climate crisis that silently decide which lives deserve to be sustained. Through data profiling and forms of predictive policing, artificial intelligence produces new modalities of digital eugenics, classifying, excluding, and hierarchizing lives under the promise of objectivity. These practices are legitimized through discourses of meritocracy, resource scarcity, and security, and are reinforced by cultural imaginaries—cinema, media, digital narratives—that normalize the idea that some lives are too costly, too risky, or too dependent to be fully recognized as part of the political community.
This colloquium proposes not to treat eugenics as a residue of the past, but to approach it as a contemporary rationality in constant transformation, one that cuts transversally across disability, gender, sexuality, race, class, migration, public health, governance, and projections of the future of societies and species. At the same time, the gathering places at its center the traditions of thought, resistance, and creation that have historically confronted eugenics, including disability justice and reproductive justice movements, feminist, queer, and crip critiques, postcolonial and Indigenous struggles, critical bioethics, race and migration studies, artistic and performative practices, critical approaches to artificial intelligence, and speculative imaginations that open the possibility of ways of life beyond the norm.
More than merely describing how eugenics operates, this colloquium formulates questions oriented toward its dismantling: what does it mean to construct social, normative, and cultural frameworks in which difference is not corrected, expelled, concealed, or domesticated under rhetorics of inclusion? How can we imagine forms of care, technology, kinship, and community that recognize interdependence as a constitutive condition of social life?
In this sense, the colloquium is not conceived solely as a space of resistance to eugenics, but as an invitation to rethink the criteria by which life is measured and valued. It calls for thinking futures in which the human is defined by the possibility of existing otherwise, under conditions of dignity, plurality, and shared care.
*The XL International Colloquium of 17, Institute for Critical Studies—which marks the beginning of our celebrations of the Institute’s 25 years (2001-2026) — is curated by From Small Beginnings/Anti-Eugenics Project, an international network of research, activism, and critical reflection dedicated to examining the historical continuities and contemporary reconfigurations of eugenics. For its part, on this occasion the Institute assumes the role of a critical host, incorporating the figure of the Discussant. This figure is intended to facilitate articulation among the different interventions, offer transversal readings, and contribute to building a dialogue between the Anti-Eugenics Network, and the community of 17, Institute.
Program
Monday, January 19
9:00–9:30 Registration
9:30–11:30 Welcome
With Benjamín Mayer-Foulkes and Beatriz Miranda-Galarza
11:30–12:00 Break
12:00–14:00 Panel: “Present, Futurity, Eugenics”
With Mario Luis Fuentes
Moderator: Benjamín Mayer-Foulkes
14:00–15:30 Lunch
15:30–17:30 Panel: Graduate student papers, Postgraduate Program in Critical Theory – I
Moderator: Elonora Cróquer Pedrón
17:30–18:00 Break
18:00–20:00 Panel: Graduate student papers, Postgraduate Program in Critical Theory – II
Moderator: Andrés Gordillo
Tuesday, January 20
9:30–11:30 Doctoral Degree Examination, PhD in Critical Theory
Doctoral candidate: Gilberto Betancourt, “Coming and Going: Traces of an Organizational History of Disability”
Committee: Ruud Kaulingfreks, Beatriz Miranda-Galarza, Andrés Gordillo
Moderator: Saúl Arellano
11:30–12:00 Break
12:00–14:00 Meetings by Student Cohort (internal activity of the Postgraduate Program in Critical Theory)
14:00–15:30 Lunch
15:30–17:30 Panel: Graduate student papers, Postgraduate Program in Critical Theory – III
Moderator: Carlos de la Torre
17:30–18:00 Break
18:00–20:00 Doctoral Degree Examination, PhD in Critical Theory
Doctoral candidate: Alejandro Espinoza, “Writing as Expansive Operation: A Writing Experiment in Three Events”
Committee: Miroslava Salcido
Moderator: Diana Taylor
Wednesday, January 21
9:30–11:30 Opening of the Colloquium Section curated by Benedict Ipgrave
With Benjamín Mayer-Foulkes, Beatriz Miranda-Galarza, Benedict Ipgrave, Miroslava Chávez-García, Marielena Hincapié, Nora Groce
11:30–12:00 Break
12:00–14:00 Panel: “Archive and Memory of Eugenics”
With Lauren Booker, Alberto Guerrero Velázquez, Linda Steele
Moderator: Miroslava Chávez-García
Commentator:
14:00–15:30 Lunch
15:30–17:30 Book presentation
Volume: Reading Eugenics
With Susan Antebi, Beatriz Miranda-Galarza, Ariadna Acevedo, Laura Cházaro
Moderator: Carlos Halaburda
17:30–18:00 Break
18:00–20:00 Opening of the I Feria Internacional del Libro Pensamiento Crítico (FILPEC) in the context of the Futures Workshop of the Colegio de San Ildefonso
With Benjamín Mayer-Foulkes, Diana Taylor and others, to be announced
Thursday, January 22
9:30–11:30 Panel: “Eugenics, Biotechnology, and Bioethics”
With Katie Hasson, Grace Maria Eberhardt, Charlene Galarneau
Moderator: Milton Reynolds
Commentator: Guadalupe Barrena
11:30–12:00 Break
12:00–14:00 Panel: “Cultural Logics of Disability: Anti-Eugenic and Posthuman Perspectives”
With Koen Devriendt, Gerriye Mubungu, Stefan Timmermans
Moderator: Patrick Devlieger
Commentator: Beatriz Miranda-Galarza
14:00–15:30 Lunch
15:30–17:30 Panel: “Eugenics: Memory and Present in Leprosy/Hansen’s Disease”
With Beatriz Miranda-Galarza, Takahiro Nanri, Jaehyung Kim
Moderator: Mario Espinosa
Commentator: Nora Groce
17:30–18:00 Break
18:00–20:00 Documentary screening and discussion:
“In Tribute and with the Desire to Continue the Legacy of Mark Bookman (+): A Call to Action”
Presented by Paul Bookman
Moderator: Aya Homei
Commentator: Edgar Lacolz
Friday, January 23
9:30–11:30 Panel: “Eugenics on the Right and on the Left”
With Rossana Reguillo and Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott
Moderator: José Hamra-Sassón
Commentator: Milton Reynolds
11:30–12:00 Break
12:00–14:00 Panel: “Eugenics, Media, and the Construction of Narratives on Migration”
With Marielena Hincapié, Kavitha Rajagopalan, Aldel Urbina Serrano
Moderator: Kavitha Rajagopalan
Commentator: Ana Lorena Delgadillo
14:00–15:30 Lunch
15:30–17:30 Panel: “Eugenics, Public Health, and Reproduction”
Moderator: Cristina Rosa
Commentator: Erik Post
17:30–18:00 Break
18:00–20:00 Documentary screening and discussion:
“Quipu: Calls for Justice”
With Rosemarie Lerner
Moderator: Lucía Cuba
Commentator: Patricia Cruz
Saturday, January 24
9:30–11:30 Panel: “Guardians of the Earth: Interconnecting the Past and Embracing Diverse Futures”
With Shirley Krenak (Zoom), Patrick Brock, Hugo Montes de Oca
Moderator: Pietra Diwan
Commentator:
11:30–12:00 Break
12:00–14:00 Panel: “Imagining an Anti-Eugenic Future: Artistic Showcase”
With Lucía Cuba, Liz Hingley, Richard Lou
Moderator: Judy Dow
Commentator: Víctor Palacios
14:00–15:30 Lunch
15:30–17:30 Panel: “Imagining an Anti-Eugenic Future – The Global Anti-Eugenic Community”
With Benedict Ipgrave, Yullia Ipgrave, Beatriz Miranda-Galarza, Benjamín Mayer-Foulkes, Susan Antebi, Pietra Diwan, José Hamra Sassón, Mario Espinosa, Milton Reynolds, Cristina Rosa, Kavitha Rajagopalan, Patrick Devlieger, Anna Vittinghoff, Aya Homei, Miroslava Chávez-García, Rosemarie Lerner, Judy Dow, Trevor Getz, and Hayley Serp
Moderator: Marielena Hincapié
17:30–18:00 Break
18:00–20:00 Ceremony for the Awarding of Honorary Doctorates to Nora Groce and Patrick Devlieger
With Beatriz Miranda-Galarza, Benjamín Mayer-Foulkes, Benedict Ipgrave