This essay consists of a discussion on the intrinsic link between pathos, violence and power, against the backdrop of the story of Febronio Indio do Brasil, a mad assassin and the instigator of an entirely different and imaginative way to envisage madness. Thanks to the international repercussion of his story, he helped model an idea of what life in the tropics might have been. Here is a Brazilian tale that shows what Foucault described as "the zero degree of madness".
Febronio Índio do Brasil; Blaise Cendrars; Heitor Carrilho; history of psychiatry