Educar a raça, governar a vida : biopolítica e a produção de sujeitos no boletim de eugenia (1929-1933).

Abstract

The present study analyzes and problematizes the propositions concerning education presented by the eugenic periodical Boletim de Eugenia (1929–1933). Aiming to understand the importance, function, and characteristics of an ideal education for the Brazilian eugenics movement, the research sought to examine how these discourses— which perpetuated scientific racism— shaped the subjectivities of the population in the early decades of the twentieth century, influenced state decisions, and how their legacies persist in contemporary Brazilian society. Through documentary research, the 42 issues of the eugenic periodical published between 1929 and 1933 were analyzed, as well as legal frameworks (such as the Federal Constitutions of 1934 and 1937), in addition to newspapers and other publications circulating at the time. The analysis of the eugenic document is justified by its importance as one of the main instruments for disseminating eugenic principles and by its circulation among the country’s economic, political, and intellectual elites. Eugenics was a social theory with strong racial connotations, created and developed by the English anthropologist Francis Galton (1822–1911). In Brazil, it received numerous interpretations, initially being associated with the sanitary-hygienist movement that was highly influential at the time, and later acquiring more deterministic contours. Focusing on Brazil and analyzing the theorization of the eugenicist Renato Kehl (1889–1978), this study engages in dialogue with Michel Foucault (1926–1984) and Berenice Bento (1966–), drawing on the concepts of Biopolitics, State Racism, the dispositif of sexuality, and necrobiopolitics to problematize and propose that eugenics in Brazil bears specific markings that constitute a singular theoretical formation within the country. These markings continue to persist in contemporary society and even permeate related theories that seek to relinquish such markers.