Why Tell This Parable? Some Ethical Reflections on the Dionne Quintuplets

Cultural studies dlscovers the Dionne Quintuplets. Inevitable and welcome: what better Canadian illustration of the power of professional discourses, the logic of "the gaze," the demarcation of the normal from the pathological? Quintland was Foucauldian theatre par excellence -- and although Michel Foucault is rarely mentioned in these articles, his spectre haunts almost all of them. Rather than merely adding new empirical material to Pierre Berton's 1977 account, these thoughtful articles suggest a new way of telling this story that unsettles all the old categories (even that of "childhood").Briefly and schematically, "Dionnology" has had three moments: an initial naive, heartfelt celebration, fed by their promoters and the state, and diffused through the newly refined arts of advertising, of the miracle of life and the cuteness of babies; a second - order liberal humanist, somewhat anti - modern historiography, discernibly echoing the politics of the 1960s, critical of the "exploitation" of the Quints and of the "excesses" of modern science, yet also reclaiming this experience for "Canadian culture"; and finally, this new skeptical school, turning its cool gaze on all those discourses and technologies of power through which the Dionne girls were transformed into "the Quints." For these third - generation Dionnologists, the crucial task is the analysis of categories and disciplines: the Quints are reconceptualized as sites, on which were staged the manoeuvres of priests and politicians, clinicians and hucksters, doctors and nurses, not to mention rival ideals of class, gender, and ethnicity. And insofar as this new narrative undoubtedly captures much of what was surely the case, and does so in the most disturbing and interesting fashion, it marks a real advance. And yet...IIAnd yet, I'm left asking myself some simple (some might say simpleminded) questions. Why did this happen? Should it have happened? Why are we retelling this story today? These sound like silly questions because they bring to Dionnology explicitly ethical considerations. Historians are largely trained to treat ethical discussions as embarrassing outbreaks, like acne, to be remedied with the clear, refreshing balm of empiricism and common sense; cultural studies is even more hostile to formal ethics, mainly because a theoretical tradition so influenced by Foucault (and consequently by Nietzsche) is bound to question any universal, teleological, or even general framework of ethical reason as a holdover from the discredited narratives of humanism.(f.1)Even so, I'm surprised by the absence in this particular case of much overt ethical reasoning: it just calls out for it. Not to be confused with a simplistic hunt for heroes and villains (wisely avoided by everyone here), this process of reasoning rather would mean being clear about the ethical assumptions that ground research. Yet nobody talks directly about ethics in this issue (with the honourable exception of Mariana Valverde, who makes powerful use of the deeply ethical concept of "tragedy"). But isn't it precisely the ethical gravity of this case that makes it so compelling? If these girls had merely grown up in northern Ontario, unnoticed and unexploited, or if they had enjoyed pleasantly remunerative careers endorsing soap and cigarettes, sheltered by a middle - class Anglo family and an adoring public, would we now still be talking about them? It's the garish juxtaposition of farce and tragedy, Quintland and legalized kidnapping, little people and massive forces, the pious liberal rhetoric of "rights" and the squalid liberal realities of property that make us remember the Dionnes. The tale of the Dionnes seems a parable that speaks to a condition of capitalist postmodernity, sharing as many of us now do a habitus eerily similar to theirs -- one experienced in the company of strangers, unfolding in the context of "cultures" (no longer taken - for - granted life - worlds but consciously, painfully contrived, artificial life - styles cobbled together from the ruins and wreckage of the liberal project), and destined to be remembered, if at all, only in the anonymous clinical records of professionals and superiors. …