Vita: Madness and Civilization Abandoned by Society Author: Joao Bill (Brazil) Translator: Yang Xiaoqiong Nanjing University Press

In Vita, the sick and homeless were left to die. The same was true in Catarina.

Through words on the verge of silencing and memories condemned to failure, everything around Catarina becomes a testimony;

When families, institutions, chemicals, and economic systems become complicit, how can one escape the black hole of social death?

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★A classic of medical anthropology that shakes your heart

Won seven awards including the Margaret Mead Award, the Victor Turner Ethnography Award, and the Sterling Prize for Best Psychological Anthropology Book

Kevin Klein, a well-known scholar in the field of global health and medical humanities, gave special praise

★Recommended by Professor Jing Jun of the Department of Sociology at Tsinghua University

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Socially abandoned spaces like Vita are popping up all over Brazil.

This haunting and disturbing story focuses on the experience of a woman named Catarina, who gradually became paralyzed and was considered crazy, spending the rest of her life in Vita. Anthropologist João Bill embarks on a detective novel-like journey to explore Catarina's life: through conversations with Catarina, interviews with her relatives, and tracking down her medical records, he unravels the mysterious and poetic words in the "dictionary" compiled by Catarina, tracing the complex network of family, medical care, state and economy behind her rejection and pathology.

The people of Vitari still recall the experience of being fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, grandfathers, and grandmothers, but they are excluded from the real world and become unclaimed lives. In this domain of social death recognized by bureaucracy and kinship, drugs become a tool for family governance, diagnosis cuts off moral obligations, and shelter becomes the ultimate name for depriving people of their rights. "Vita" is not just another story about abandonment - everything around Catarina becomes a testimony. It questions the social logic of letting people die, and also attempts to reclaim the meaning and dignity of being human.

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“How I wish Catalina could read the work we did together and see herself emerge from the pages, finding an alternative ending.”

【Recommended by media and celebrities】

João Bill's Vita is a compelling book, and Catarina's story will linger in the reader's mind. The book's central task is sure to become an anthropological classic. -- Kevin

This is an exceptionally good piece of ethnography, and it reads like a thrilling mystery novel. —Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society

The author captures a moving story of social abandonment through six years of conversations (with Catalina), and also depicts a woman's creative persistence in the face of the most appalling living conditions. - Award speech for the JI Staley Award of the Institute for Advanced Study

This book strikes a fine balance between theoretical discussion and careful fieldwork, offering a complex and original insight into the dynamics of social abandonment in contemporary Brazil. Bill's thought-provoking research not only brings to light the startling experiences of marginalized individuals in nursing homes, but also reveals the social, political, and cultural influences in Brazil that further deepen this desolation of the poor and the long-standing violations of basic human rights. - Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

【Editor's recommendation】

◎ "Vita" has become a representative work in ethnographic writing because of its common concern for social life and individual experience. The process of Brazilian social transformation, the changes in mental illness treatment and the life history of individuals are intertwined, forming multiple contexts for our understanding of life, thought and ethical conditions. It is therefore also a must-read in the field of medical anthropology.

◎ João Bill's research dismantles the tangled reality, stripping away the overlapping social factors, making the complex network of family, society and medical technology truly visible. Around Vita, a shelter named "life", we see how political and economic policies, kinship relations driven by cultural traditions and economic interests, institutionalized medical systems, moral environments, and the unfolding of human nature in each individual interact with each other in unexpected ways, creating the dynamics of social abandonment.

◎ Catarina, who compiled the "Dictionary", demonstrated the amazing dynamism that a person still possesses when excluded from reality, and became a witness to the vivid desire of life to find its own position in the face of rapid changes.

◎The unique narrative context brings the rhythm of a mystery novel to the work, and the author's keen observation of the individual's life state gives the work a profound emotional dimension in addition to theoretical insights. A "person left over from several eras" who "has been washed away of all characteristics and turned into a man-made ore" evokes our perception and memory of daily society.

◎Abandonment does not only happen in and outside the asylum. "Vita" brings us many close reflections and is a work full of practical significance that is worth reading for everyone.

◎ The article is accompanied by more than 40 photos taken by photographer Torben Eskorode. As the author said, "If these photos linger in your mind, it is because this is a continuous reality that is not far away from us.