The clinical creation of sex norms. Nosology, pathologization and sexual counter models at the Penitenciaría Nacional de Buenos Aires (Argentina, 1901-1904)

Abstract

This paper’s object is the creation of medical-psychiatric nosologies referring to sexuality in cases of sexual inversion (transvestism) analyzed by Francisco de Veyga in the Servicio de Observaciones de Presuntos Alienados de la Penitenciaría Nacional (National Penitentiary’s Presumed Alienated Observation Service) in Argentina, at the beginning of the 20th century. Our interest lies in the operation by which the alienist built ex nihilo nosographic categories to account for the forms of life and subjectivation that certain subjects developed, which threatened the canon of normality. In addition, we will consider that the voice of De Veyga showed some aspects about morality in the life of Buenos Aires that contrasted with a scene of danger he wanted propose. Our interest is to analyze a specific case where local alienism intervenes and theorizes about dissenting bodies and subjectivities, with the construction of a grotesque discourse to qualify forms of life in the margins of normality, typical of the normalizing power effects that Foucault recognized in medical legal examinations.