[Eugenics in the Luso-Brazilian axis: correspondence between Renato Kehl and Mendes Correia]

This study uses a critical intellectual history perspective to examine letters between Renato Ferraz Kehl and Antonio Mendes Correia, who were active in eugenic discourse in Brazil and Portugal. This correspondence serves as a vehicle of scientific consecration, revealing a transatlantic field of asymmetric exchanges marked by disputes for prestige, editorial strategies and epistemic authority. Based on the categories of habitus and symbolic capital, the letters are seen as performative artifacts of eugenic rationality, located between the intimate and the institutional. Our analysis reveals not only the contents but also the silences and frustrations within this relationship, showing how eugenics was negotiated and instrumentalized in the Atlantic Luso-Brazilian Atlantic context.