BATISTA, B. S.; http://lattes.cnpq.br/3371457450163360; BATISTA, Beatriz Dos Santos.
Resumo:
This dissertation aims to analyze the journalistic discourses in circulation in Paraíba about
cancer in the first decades of the twentieth century. These are news that talk about the
vertiginous growth of cases in men and women, generally over forty years of age. The
periodicals tried to disseminate information about cancer control, which should be based
on prevention, carried out based on health education in addition to investments made by
state governments that had to make an effort to create diagnostic posts. I delimited as
specific objectives, to understand the history of this disease in Paraíba from the discursive
ways that the journals presented the disease to society, showing them the meanings and
meanings of the disease, to problematize the medical knowledge contributed and put into
circulation in the geography of Paraíba on the disease, which was still little known, and
in general, deadly. This medical knowledge, possibly, generated speeches capable of
guiding the population to read about the forms of prevention; and, finally, to discuss the
performance of the doctor Napoleão Laureano, who dedicated his professional and
political activities to the treatment of people at the time called “cancerous”. It is a disease
that in its discursive order was presented with the nickname of tumor or cancer. When
searching for the word cancer in the journals in circulation at the time, as in A União and
d'O Norte, little could be found, growing considerably when the identifier migrated to
metaphors that referred to “that disease”, or to “tumors ”. Thus, I already inform you that
cancer was a disease discussed among doctors in Paraíba, providing a strong investment
in it that culminated in the circulation of knowledge about a disease that gained attention
and concern of doctors in Paraíba. Thus, we rely on Michel Foucault's (2009) concept of
biopolitics, understood as a form of power responsible for defending life and warding off
disease, regulating populations to make them healthy to discuss the topic at hand. In this
case, biopolitics may be verified in the way of treating the disease as a possibility of
defending life through the search for a cure for the ills of the body, we also use the concept
of Disease as a Metaphor by Susan Sontag. Methodologically, we problematize through
the analysis of the discourse along the lines of Michel Foucault (2014), the news from
newspapers in circulation in Paraíba, in special, A União, O Norte and Revista de
Medicina. It is concluded that since the early years of the twentieth century there was an
investment in the circulation of information about a disease that gained attention and
concern from doctors in Paraíba.
