Health and illness in the countryside and Mário de Andrade’s modernist project: problematizing the intellectual’s empathy

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze the representations of health and illness in texts on medicine and travel accounts to the countryside written by Mário de Andrade. We hypothesized that, contrary to the category of “empathy,” Mário de Andrade consolidated his modernist project grounded in conciliatory perspectives on the health of Brazilians through the construction of a homogenizing national identity, although his representations were more critical compared to medical depictions of the Brazilian countryside. Methodologically, we privileged two texts by Mário de Andrade, “O Turista Aprendiz” and “Namoros com a Medicina,” as primary sources, as they provide the writer’s perspectives on health and illness during the early decades of the 20th century, a period marked by the expansion of public education and health services in the country. We concluded that Mário de Andrade’s writings on health and illness support a nationbuilding project represented by the integration of regionalisms, giving visibility to popular culture while simultaneously transforming it into a national identity through a juxtaposition of popular knowledge and academic/scientific references, thereby homogenizing a national identity.