Escenas en la vida de Srinavasa Ramanujan: Endemias, epidemias y pandemias desde una mirada biomédica y crítica

Abstract

The selected film, The man who knew infinity (2015), by Matt Brown, addresses issues which are fundamental to this article’s objectives. The film is about Srinivasa Ramanujan’s experience as an Indian mathematician at Trinity College (Cambridge) where he suffers racism, discrimination, poor housing conditions, malnutrition. Even so, he achieves recognition as a genius, and ultimately becomes an academic member of the College. During his stage in Cambridge, World War I begins, and he gets ill with tuberculosis. In this context, this article aims to explore affections that involve humanity as a whole, such as endemics, pandemics, war, discrimination, among others. It phocuses on phenomena that affect intensely entire populations’ health and wellbeing. In this sense, a critical vision given by the humanities can question the senses in which these three notions affect a whole population, and yet affect it in different ways and intensities. Thus, this work underlines the fact that some bodies are more vulnerable, more exposed to precarization, and have less conditions to overcome its effects. Scientific production of knowledge is not an exception to this distribution of precariousness, as the film shows. In this light, it is necessary to refocus on neglected diseases and precariousness diseases, in order to create egalitarian conditions for prevention and medical treatment.