VITA Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment_João Biehl

 

 

Vita

Contents

 

Introduction: “Dead alive, dead outside, alive inside” 1

 

PART ONE. VITA

A Zone of Social Abandonment 35 Brazil 46
Citizenship 56

 

PART TWO. CATARINA AND THE ALPHABET

Life of the Mind 71 Society of Bodies 75 Inequality 82 Ex-Human 85

The House and the Animal 92
“Love is the illusion of the abandoned” 99

Social Psychosis 102
An Illness of Time 108 God, Sex, and Agency 111

 

PART THREE. THE MEDICAL ARCHIVE

Public Psychiatry 123
Her Life as a Typical Patient 126 Democratization and the Right to Health 130 Economic Change and Mental Suffering 138 Medical Science 146
End of a Life 151
Voices 159

Care and Exclusion 163
Migration and Model Policies 171

Women, Poverty, and Social Death 179

“  I am like this because of life” 187

The Sense of Symptoms 192

Pharmaceutical Being 199

 

PART FOUR. THE FAMILY

Ties 209
Ataxia 218
Her House 229
Brothers 235
Children, In-Laws, and the Ex-Husband 240 Adoptive Parents 248

“  To want my body as a medication, my body” 257

Everyday Violence 265

 

PART FIVE. BIOLOGY AND ETHICS

Pain 271
Human Rights 274
Value Systems 278
Gene Expression and Social Abandonment 282 Family Tree 292
A Genetic Population 297
A Lost Chance 307

 

PART SIX. THE DICTIONARY

“Underneath was this, which I do not attempt to name” 313 Book i 321
Book ii 322
Book iii 327

Book iv 327

Book v 330

Book vi 331

Book vii 333

Book viii 334

Book ix 335

Book x 335

Book xi 336

Book XIII 339

BookxIV 340

Bookxv 341

BookxVI 342

BookXVII 343

BookXVIII 346

BookxIX 348

 

Conclusion: "A way to the words" 353
Postscript: "I am part of the origins, not just of language, but of people" 359

 

AFTERWORD

Return to Vita 365

Acknowledgments 399 Notes 403 Bibliography 413 Index 431

 

 

 

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Introduction

"Dead alive, dead outside, alive inside"