Construire l’« homme nouveau » : le fascisme et l’eugénique « latine »
Type de matériel :
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Building the “New man”: fascism and “Latin” eugenics“Latin” eugenics has often been described as a “moderate” form of eugenics. This paper attempts to question that notion by shining a light on Fascist eugenics in Italy and, in particular, on the dominant role played by the statistician Corrado Gini (1884-1965) and the endocrinologist Nicola Pende (1880-1970) in the creation of a “Latin” model of eugenics, both at the national and international levels.The paper is divided into two parts. The first part explores the two main scientific and political aspects of Fascist eugenics. On the one hand, we have the “integral” demography of Corrado Gini, which combines demography, anthropology, economics, sociology and, of course, eugenics. On the other hand, we have the constitutional, biotypological medicine of Nicola Pende. The “reformist” eugenics of Corrado Gini and the “orthogenetic” eugenics of Nicola Pende stood in opposition to the Anglo-Germanic, Scandinavian “Nordic” model.This opposition, which was scientific as well as ideological and political, led to an institutional split when Italy left the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations (IFEO). It also led to the 1935 creation of the Latin Federation of Eugenics Societies, an alternative model whose founding coincided with the tensest period in the relationship between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The second part of this paper deals with the constitution of Latin eugenics as a kind of scientific, political and institutional distinction in the international context.
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