Childhood as “a cruelty-filled flora”

Víctor Mercante’s social hygiene perspective on abnormal childhood in early 20th Century Argentina

Abstract

This article addresses the history of Argentinian education from a perspective rooted in the history of philosophical/pedagogical ideas (Roig, 1993, 2009; Arpini, 2003; Ramaglia, 2020), focusing on the representations of childhood in the works on child criminology by positivist educationalist Víctor Mercante (1870-1934). The epistemological elements that sustain Mercante’s positivist and social hygienist discourse are analyzed, as well as their links with the complex discursive universe that interweaves and fosters it. Moreover, I offer a philosophical reading of the depiction of childhood and the role of the social hygiene movement in the deployment of biopolitical devices and strategies by the State through the educational policies around abnormal childhood. My object of inquiry is constructed on the basis of a restricted corpus, concentrating in the works on child criminality written by Víctor Mercante at the prison in Mercedes, Buenos Aires, throughout a three-year period (1902 - 1905) and later published as “Notes on Child Criminology” (1902), “Studies in Child Criminology” (1902a), and “Studies in Child Criminality” (1905) in the journal known as Archives of Psychiatry, Criminology, and related sciences.