Dystopia and Utopia of Mongrel Nationalism: Biological Inheritance and Genetic Determinism
Abstract
The notion that what characterizes a population can be explained by its biological heritage and that this heritage can define a fate of grandeur (or inferiority), far from being something new, permeates common sense and also the sciences for long. In the Brazilian case, the fact that our population has a origin in the racial mixing has been accompanied by a series of representations ranging from dystopia (“The mongrel complex”) to utopia (“The mongrel praise”), constituting what is here called a true "mongrel nationalism". The origins of these dystopias and utopias that have been accompanying the fact that the Brazilian population has a history of miscegenation are discussed in relation to the ideas of biological inheritance and genetic determinism. The conclusion is that the biological determinism that accompanies these myths is a scientific reductionism associated with diverse ideological influences.