Locura y crimen en el discurso médico-jurídico. Argentina, Territorio Nacional de la Pampa, ca. 1900

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze a mental pathology, that of hysteria in relation to gender criminality and the ethic making of positive-negative referents, noting the ways in which they turn into discourse and into specific social practices. In the first place, affords the study a special approach towards the judicial question that connects madness and crime in an interior part of Argentina. The characterisation of a mental illness in particular allows us to comment on the application of fin-de-siecle positivist ideology in secondary levels and its adaptation to the solution of certain problems. Finally, it helps us examine not only medical and judicial behaviour but also the construction of professional’ discourse about feminine and masculine mental pathologies, within which an idea of the social problem of Argentina’s interior is embedded, one that includes gender relations.