Andrea Westermann. Plastik und politische Kultur in Westdeutschland .Plastik und politische Kultur in Westdeutschland by Andrea WestermannReview by: By Beat   BächiIsis, Vol. 99, No. 4 (December 2008), pp. 878-879Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/597740 .

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icine. Psychiatric furor therapeuticus found itsclimax of sorts in the emergence of lobotomy.Szasz tells the sad story of the lobotomizedRosemary Kennedy, an unfortunate member ofthe Kennedy clan who, because of her alleged“mild retardation,” was regarded by her father,Joseph Kennedy, as a risk to the public image ofthe family. Even more horrifying is the tale ofHoward Dully, whose story became known(even to me in faraway Finland) in 2005, whenNational Public Radio broadcast a program fea-turing Dully, who was then a fifty-six-year-oldbus driver and a former “patient” of WalterFreeman, the best-known and most infamouslobotomist. In 1960, as a result of his stepmoth-er’s determination to get rid of Howard, Free-man operated on the boy, who was only twelveyears old and without any trace of psychiatricdisorder. As Freeman himself wrote in his notes,it was a question of “changing Howard’s per-sonality by means of transorbital lobotomy” (p.168). Indeed, ever since the operation, Howardhas felt as if something is missing from his soul.

True to his basic conviction that psychiatry isa harmful pseudoscience, Szasz is equally hos-tile toward psychopharmacology and its princi-pal excuse for prescribing drugs: that drugs pre-vent suicide. Szasz, a libertarian and a defenderof voluntarism as the prerequisite for humandignity, challenges this dogma by claiming thatsuicide is a human right: if a person wants to endhis life voluntarily, we should respect his exis-tential perspective, especially when we talkabout old-age depression. His account of the“mass drugging of American children” is dis-turbing, although he refers to a well-known phe-nomenon that has been critically discussed bymany concerned physicians and academics be-fore him. But few of them are ready to acceptSzasz’s verdict on child psychiatry: “I have longmaintained that child psychiatry is child abuse”(p. 206). His take-no-prisoners approach is whatdistinguishes him from most critics of mentalhealth care, who are much more moderate. Onesuch critic of psychopharmacology is the psy-chiatrist and historian David Healy, whomSzasz characterizes as “hypocritical” (p. 179).

Coercion as Cure is above all an angry andspirited manifesto: Szasz has set himself the taskof uncovering the true face of psychiatry, whichis that of a medically sanctioned instrument ofcoercion. All his arguments derive ultimatelyfrom the belief that the psychiatrist-emperor hasno clothes. And this belief seems to be foundedon his “somaticist” assumption that becausemental illnesses cannot be detected anatomicallyor physiologically, they do not exist (“schizo-phrenia is modern psychiatry’s foundational fic-

tion” [p. 186]). Also, as a libertarian, Szasz seespsychiatry as an outcome of “socialist-statist”ideology and politics, which unduly restricts thepolitical and existential freedom of individuals.His thesis easily lends itself to excesses (e.g.,“the psychiatrist tends to have contempt for thepsychotic” [p. xi]), but many of his argumentsmerit serious consideration. Historical researchon psychiatry has documented so many ques-tionable ideas, diagnoses, explanations, andmethods of treatment that Szasz’s criticismscannot be brushed aside. As long as we remainin the dark about the nature of mental illnesses,and as long as we do not have a true scientificbreakthrough in psychiatry, Szasz’s criticalvoice deserves our attention. His statementsmay be one-sided, extreme, and exaggerated,but they are certainly relevant and worth dis-cussing.

PETTERI PIETIKAINEN

Andrea Westermann. Plastik und politischeKultur in Westdeutschland. (Interferenzen,13.) 387 pp., figs., bibl., index. Zurich: Chro-nos Verlag, 2007. €38 (paper).

Floor coverings, drainpipes, wire insulation,window frames, shower curtains, rubber boots—these are just a few of today’s practicalities madeout of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). In Plastics andPolitical Culture in West Germany, Andrea Wes-termann presents a very dense and rich sketch ofthe first fully synthetic thermoplastic material,polyvinyl chloride. The manufacturing and uses ofPVC, which was developed in the 1930s by IGFarbenindustrie AG, heralded the arrival of “plas-tic” as a mass product in the German FederalRepublic during the 1950s. As a historian of tech-nology, Westermann uses the evolution of PVC todescribe the transformations of West German po-litical culture. The book’s leading question is,What function do technoscientific artifacts andtechnical infrastructure have in the development ofcollectivization? Westermann’s central interest isto analyze the effects that the introduction of plas-tic has had on the reproduction of social order, itsinfluence on political culture, and the factors thatdetermined social change in the German FederalRepublic between 1945 and 1980. In her discourseon the uses of PVC, she shows the interdepen-dence of technoeconomics and sociopoliticalchange in the Federal Republic of Germany. Ac-cording to Westermann, as an artifact PVC has hadnot only a material function but also the potentialto define cultural identity. From this perspective,PVC has functioned as a medium for societal self-reflection. Westermann proposes that PVC played

878 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 99 : 4 (2008)

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a role in the depoliticization of the early FederalRepublic of Germany, which advanced into agradual repoliticization by the end of the 1960s.

In the first chapter, Westermann charts themetamorphosis of the plastics industry and dis-cusses how industry leaders tried to repudiatetheir involvement in World War II. Their col-laboration with the National Socialist regime ledto a legitimization crisis for the industry afterthe war. Westermann also examines the profes-sional mentality of plastics “protagonists” from1900 to the 1960s—for example, in her ap-praisal of the “K’52” exposition. At this eventthe industry emphasized the scientific signifi-cance of plastic to the public. In the secondchapter, Westermann disputes the plastic actors’post–World War II central dogma of “a funda-mental new era” and exposes the continuitiesbetween 1945 and 1960. She looks at technicalnorms in the use and production of plastic for amass market as a form of solidarity, then dis-cusses plastic’s roots as a substitute material anda surrogate. The most important point in Chap-ter 3 is that many Germans started identifyingthemselves as “consumers” and even came toattach this identity to their German-ness be-tween 1945 and 1960. After World War II, plas-tic as a material was not only important for theredevelopment of West Germany; it was also acentral element in the emerging Verbraucherde-mokratie (consumer democracy). In this newlyformed democracy, choosing to take part in po-litical culture was demonstrated by the act ofconsuming. Chapter 4 treats the emergence ofproblems pertaining to PVC as a carcinogenicmaterial from 1965 to 1980. During this periodplastic went from being an unproblematic goodfor the citizen consumer to being a sign of thelimits to technological growth. First, the produc-tion of PVC was recognized as hazardous, caus-ing the “vinyl chloride” illness that sometimesled to death; second, plastic’s destructive effectson the environment were denounced. From thisperspective, plastic has become a central focusin criticism of the consumer society since the1970s.

Westermann’s main argument—that PVC isan artifact that enables historians to observechanges in political culture—is inventive,plausible, and fascinating. The book, how-ever, does not always demonstrate how syn-thetically produced materials have actuallycontributed to coordinate collective or indi-vidual actions. Overall, Westermann has writ-ten a theoretically well-informed analysis ofplastic as an important and even dazzling ar-tifact in German history. In addition, the bookreflects the advantages of dealing with arti-

facts from the perspective of the history oftechnology. Plastik und politische Kultur inWestdeutschland is worth reading, not onlyfor historians of science and technology butalso for those interested in the cultural andsocial history of Germany in the postwar era.

BEAT BACHI

f Sociology and Philosophy of Science

Karen Barad. Meeting the Universe Halfway:Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Mat-ter and Meaning. xiii � 524 pp., illus., bibl.,index. Durham, N.C./London: Duke UniversityPress, 2007.

Meeting the Universe Halfway is an ambitious,thought-provoking, challenging book. Drawing“on the insights of some of our best scientificand social theories, including quantum physics,science studies, the philosophy of physics, fem-inist theory, critical race theory, postcolonialtheory, (post-)Marxist theory, and poststructur-alist theory,” Karen Barad seeks to “provide atransdisciplinary approach that remains rigor-ously attentive to important details of special-ized arguments within a given field, in an effortto foster constructive engagements across (and areworking of) disciplinary boundaries.” She isself-confident, perhaps at times overly so, andbelieves that her approach “is sufficiently ro-bust” not only to build meaningful conversa-tions between the sciences and other areas ofstudy” but also “to contribute to scientific re-search” and to “the founding of a new ontology,epistemology, and ethics including a new under-standing of the nature of scientific practice” (p.25).

Quantum mechanics plays a central role inher approach. It is undoubtedly the most revo-lutionary physical theory propounded in thetwentieth century. Even more than the specialand general theory of relativity, it required afundamental reconceptualization of what aphysical theory describes and the nature of whatis meant by physical reality. The “Copenhagen”interpretation of quantum mechanics was, andis, the dominant interpretative framework ofquantum mechanics. It was synthesized princi-pally from the work of Werner Heisenberg, MaxBorn, Niels Bohr, Pascual Jordan, Paul Dirac,Wolfgang Pauli, and John von Neumann, withHeisenberg and Bohr the public spokesmen andPauli the deeply influential behind-the-scenescritic and important contributor. In its “Copen-

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