Banca de DEFESA: ALANNY PAULO RICARDO DE ALMEIDA

“A MAN OF SCIENCE”: MEDICAL-EDUCATIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICES INTELLECTUAL FLÁVIO MAROJA IN PARAÍBA (1889-1964

Intellectual; Educational Practices; Health Education; Flávio Maroja; Paraíba

This thesis aims to analyze the performance of the public health doctor Flávio Maroja from the intellectual, scientific and sociopolitical universes responsible for defending the spread of health education in Paraíba in the first decades of the 20th century. The general objective is specifically divided into three: a) discuss the biographical discourses constructed about Flávio Maroja and his process of intellectual creation based on his different life itineraries, as well as investigating his production, cultural mediation and insertion in the press; b) evaluate the political culture, sociopolitical practices and spaces of power of the intellectual Flávio Maroja, his social political engagement and contributions to the dissemination of health and illness care in Paraíba; c) analyze the educational practices of Flávio Maroja based on the medical-sanitary knowledge written and disseminated by him in the Paraíba press and in knowledge institutions, aiming to instill health education in men and women. In view of the intended objectives, I outlined the following thesis argument: in addition to being a public health doctor, Flávio Maroja was an intellectual, politician and cultural mediator, inserted in the scientific, social and cultural scenario of Paraíba who sought, through his educational practices, to promote a “health education”. During his public life, the intellectual Flávio Maroja covered several areas of knowledge of power, in the political field he was a deputy in some legislatures, reaching the position of First Vice-President of the State in the government of Solon de Lucena (1920-1924), he served in public positions in area of health, in the press and in institutions such as the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Paraibano - IHGP and the Sociedade de Cirurgia e Medicina da Paraíba-SCMPB. Flávio Maroja's intellectual itinerary was varied and presented the different areas of activity, the faces of poet, chronicler, journalist, marked his insertion as a cultural mediator of the Paraíba press, his vast production made up the documentary corpus: magazines Era Nova, Revista do Instituto Paraíba Geographic History and Medicine magazine; by the newspapers A Imprensa, A União, O Norte and O Jornal; through correspondence and Presidential Messages sent to the Legislative Assembly. In the methodological design, I use the discourse analysis methodology proposed by Michel Foucault (2012), paying attention to the speeches, statements and discursive irregularities on the theme of health education promoted by Flávio Maroja. In the theoretical field I use the notions of intellectual (2003) and engagement (2003) by Jean-François Sirinelli, this debate around the intellectual, his engagement and cultural mediation and production places us at the heart of Cultural History. And to think about prophylactic discourses for bodies in Paraíba, I dialogue with the notion of biopolitics in the wake of Michel Foucault's (2014) thinking. It is concluded that Flávio Maroja's performance in the sociopolitical, intellectual and scientific universes of Paraíba enabled the amplification of his discursive power and his educational practices that aimed at educating the population's health. Such performance can be read as a biopolitical strategy, amplified through networks of sociability and intellectual engagement that allowed Flávio Maroja's normalizing speeches to have greater circulation in the press, as well as the creation, mediation and circulation of knowledge about health, aiming to instill in the reading population habits typical of health education.