Abstract
The article analyzes the relationship between eugenics and modernism, seeking to understand how eugenic language mobilized social thought and modernist literature in the 1920s. I propose to understand how eugenics inspired plots, images and representations about Brazil and Brazilians, which fueled discussions about national modernity, Brazilian racial identity, the creation of a eugenically controlled societies and even the proposition of extreme measures of human extermination in the name of racial utopias. My interest is to analyze eugenics as a movement that spread beyond the medical and scientific field, used as a cultural expression of modernity. More than a discourse centered on medical and biological theories, I propose to understand eugenics as a modern philosophy that had a strong impact on cultural and social life at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to analyzing the work of a group of modernist writers (among them Paulo Prado, Alfredo Ellis Junior, Monteiro Lobato e Adalzira Bittencourt), I also explore the existence of public dialogues and debates that provide evidence about these writers’ beliefs in eugenics, as well as their dialogues and relationships with the eugenics movement.
Keywords:
eugenics; Modernism; race; racism; national identity