Del “cura pederasta” al “sacerdote pedófilo”. Elementos para la genealogía de un monstruo biopolítico (España, siglo XIX al XXI)
ISSN: 0719-4862, 0719-3734
Year of publication: 2022
Issue Title: Dossier: Deconstrucciones del monstruo biopolítico en América Latina (siglos XX y XXI)
Issue: 19
Pages: 55-80
Type: Article
More publications in: Meridional. Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos
Abstract
This paper follows a track proposed but not developed by Michel Foucault. In his lectures on the Abnormal (1975), the author linked the character of the criminal religious with the figure of the “political monster” but focused only on the type of tyrant. Following this suggestion, our work explores the genealogy of the ecclesiastical man abusing minors. On the one hand, the profile of the “pederast priest” is traced as a biological enemy of the nation and of the class, in the context of the Spanish culture at the end of the colonial Empire, in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. On the other hand, this form of subjectivity is contrasted with that of the “pedophile clergyman”, as it currently appears in the testimonies of the victims, in the media and in the social sciences. The intention is to show the belonging of both classes of person to very different biopolitical scenarios, despite the continuity of the teratological motive