In this article I discuss José Miguel Wisnik's book, Veneno remédio: o futebol e o Brasil [Poison cure: football and Brazil], published in 2008. I point out how the work's discussion of football enables a new approach to impasses already explored by modernists, reviving some of their fundamental uncertainties. I also analyze how the book forms part of the lineage of great inquiries into Brazil by refuting the hermeneutic enterprise of our classic essayists.
Brazilian social thought; Football; José Miguel Wisnik; Sérgio Buarque de Holanda; Gilberto Freyre; Mário de Andrade