EUGENICS AS A SYNTHESIS OF MODERNITY: BIOPOLITICS, RACE AND SCIENCE

Abstract

This article, with some modifications and the inclusion of new discussions, is part of one of the chapters of my doctoral thesis, entitled “Eugenics, medical knowledge and racial issues in Santa Catarina: a discursive analysis of the newspaper O Estado (1915-1950)”, defended in 2025 in the Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Program in Human Sciences (PPGICH) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). The article developed here sought to reflect on the birth of eugenics in the 19th century, supported by the impetus of modernity. To this end, a biopolitical analysis of the category of race and the development of science in modernity was privileged. Thus, for the writing of this text, the bibliography of the work included authors from the Human and Social Sciences (HSS). To address biopolitics, Caponi (2009, 2021) and Foucault (1988) were used. In the analysis of the race category, Schwarcz (1993), Skidmore (2012), and Camilloto (2026) were used. To consider eugenics and modernity, Bauman (1999), Souza (2019), and Wegner (2025) were evoked for the discussion. Methodologically, the research was guided by qualitative methodology. The text allowed for an understanding of the development of eugenics in modernity and its unfolding in Brazil, Latin America, and the United States, as well as the mechanisms that legitimized it as a science.