Entre a ortopedia e a civilidade: higienismo e educação do corpo no Brasil

Abstract

This article intends to analize the discursive and institutional practices that were involved in the construction of the scholar body as a healthy and well-built body. It is aimed at highlighting the representations of the body present in texts that were produced in Brazil, between the end of the 19th century and the early 19th century. With this purpose, texts about School Hygiene as well as reading books designed specifically for children and their educators were elected as sources. The analysis of the «dos and don’ts» prescribed by these texts displays that they were inscribed on a project of social management of children body. The set of rules presented in those texts covers the way the children looked as well as the way in which their body organs worked. Hence, the body emerges as a result of a construction, of a balance between the flesh and the world through the word.