Martor No. 20 / Year 2015
“Some Weak and Ill Beings.” The Topic of Race Degeneration and the Representations of the Corporeality of the Rural Population in the Medical Discourse in Romania (1860‐1910)
Author: Constantin Bărbulescu
About the author:
Constantin Bărbulescu
Lecturer at the Department of Modern History, Archivist and Ethnology Studies, Faculty of History and Philosophy, “Babeş-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca
E-mail: barbulescuco at yahoo dot fr
Pages: 69-80
Keywords: body, peasantry, 19th century, physicians, race degeneration
Abstract:
The article aims at studying a particular aspect of the image upon the corporeality of Romanian peasants in the last decades of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th. The physicians are the creators of this discourse and image. They place an important topic on the public agenda: native race degeneration. In this particular context the image they portray upon the peasant, including his corporality, is an extremely dark one. The physicians’ peasant is an undernourished, alcoholised, sick being and, thus, on the verge of physical decadence.
How to cite this article:
Bărbulescu, Constantin. 2015. “‘Some Weak and Ill Beings.’ The Topic of Race Degeneration and the Representations of the Corporeality of the Rural Population in the Medical Discourse in Romania (1860‐1910).” Martor 20: 69-80.