The problematic gravitation of Cesare Lombroso in the work of José Ingenieros and in the journal Archives of Psychiatry and Criminology

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the critical reception of Cesare Lombroso´s work in turn-of-the-century Argentina, particularly considering the journal Archives of Psychiatry and Criminology, and several texts by the psychiatrist, criminologist and essayist José Ingenieros, the director of this publication and a key figure in the modernization of these disciplines in this country (and the rest of the continent).Drawing on theoretical and methodological input from intellectual history and discourse analysis, my reading is based on Bourdieu´s (1999) theoretical model, in order to consider the way in which Lombroso´s theory was refunctionalized in the new context of reception, responding to the social, cultural and political pressures of the field in which it was redeveloped.This work deals with a wide corpus of sources by Ingenieros and other authors linked to Archives..., analyzing the various rhetorical strategies through which this intellectual group took some critical distance with respect to criminal anthropology. In considering these strategies (which range from theoretical discussion to a parodic impugnation of the figure of Lombroso himself, in a sort of symbolic patricide), it becomes clear how national criminology and psychiatry were consolidated from an open confrontation with Lombroso, which challenged the international prestige of this figure and sought to reorient these disciplines at the continental level, against biological determinism.