Construction of an etiology of rape through the discourses of legal medicine and chilean criminology (1900-1950)

Abstract

In this article we address the construction of an etiology of rape, from the field of Legal Medicine and Criminology, during the first half of the 20th centuryin Chile. We hypothesize that in the aforementioned process a biological and socialdeterminism was reinforced, articulated, in part, through the naturalization of malesexual violence perpetrated against women, as well as its association with certain socialgroups. Through the discursive analysis of monographs, didactic works and articles, weverify how, depending on the circumstances, the commission of this criminal typologywas assimilated within the confluence of two interpretative tendencies, compatible and,at the same time, not exempt from contradictions. In this sense, rape was interpreted as the materialization of a psychopathology associated with the categories of perversionand dementia, while conceived as an expression of a transversal, natural and instinctivemale inclination towards the exercise of violent sexuality. We consider that it was theresult of the interaction between socio-ethnic and gender ideological conceptualizationswith a particular reformulation of certain theoretical references, based on theEuropean fin-century positivist criminology