Importing Freud and Lamarck to the Tropics: Arthur Ramos and the Transformation of Brazilian Racial Thought, 1926-1939*
If, in the work of Nina Rodrigues, we substitute the terms culture for race, and acculturation for mestiçamento, for example, his concepts acquire complete and perfect modernity. —Arthur Ramos, 1939 Popular legend suggests that a mysterious curse fated Nina Rodrigues’ death in 1906. Though a pioneer of Afro-Brazilian studies, he posited that Afro-descendants possessed a genetic atavism predisposing them to crime and argued that widespread racial miscegenation had contributed to the fin-de-siècle “negro problem” in Brazil. Almost four decades following his death, the curse was reborn, striking Arthur Ramos shortly after he had revived the stagnant field of Afro-Brazilian studies using a modified version of Rodrigues’ methodology. Both Brazilian men died in Paris in their midforties, just as they were reaching the summit of their respective careers.