Blood ties: heredity and coproduction of social and natural orders in the 19th century

This article, based on a bibliographical review, seeks to establish relations between the scientific discourse on heredity, which emerged in the 19th century, and a myth, which will provide the post-revolutionary bourgeoisie with an opportune symbolic weapon that will reconcile the notion of justice with the admission of the natural character of social inequality. Shaping itself perfectly to the myth of Genesis, Genetics, inscribing differences into a kind of natural justice, will play this role. So it is seen as a scientific theory presents itself as sublimation of the phantoms of a society. But if science wears them, fiction will undress them. For this reason, Émile Zola, whose novels deepen the mythical dimension of the statements of science, will have here one of his works analyzed. The result is that something comes to light that would otherwise remain hidden under the transparent mask of Science. Put another way, its unthinking, what it would not dar e to verbalize: the notion that lack weighs.
Source: Physis: Revista de Saude Coletiva - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research