Gendering the Obstacles to Progress in Positivist Argentina, 1880–1920
1997; Duke University Press; Volume: 77; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1215/00182168-77.4.645
ISSN1527-1900
Autores Tópico(s)Argentine historical studies
ResumoN K r E V E R believe in tears of a woman. On verge of becoming one of Latin America's leading intellectuals, Jose Ingenieros extracted this traditional wisdom from tale of legendary gaucho Martin Fierro and incorporated it into his medical thesis.' While Ingenieros did not usually quote from the most expressive of gauchesco poems, he frequently interpreted other historical narratives to find a pattern for current events. In this case, Ingenieros was explaining that women had always lacked physical strength with which to compete in struggle for life, and therefore their evolutionary survival had depended on refinement of fraudulent means to defend against brute force of men. Of course, as social boundaries shifted amid growth and mobility of turn-of-the-century Argentina, women were not only group whose appearances might belie their true intentions. But as warning suggests, they were a particularly troublesome group to positivist thinkers. The positivist response to women has considerable interest because these writers were central to project of modernizing a national ideology in years after 1880.2 Often considered the protagonists of a national
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