The “new shape” of Médicos maleantes y maricas by Jorge Salessi (with the excuse of its reprinting by Editorial Planeta, 2023)

Abstract

When I had in its digital version the new edition (or avatar or rewrite) of Médicos maleantes y maricas, I had a shock similar to that of the founding memories. Actually, I had the image of a battered and distressing autumn. It must have been 1997, the cold classroom one of the School of History at the National University of Córdoba. Second or third year of my degree. A classmate of that time brought a white-covered book, in which I remembered a kind of snake or worm coming out of a man's head on the cover art. I also remembered the title without first capital letters, like that premonitory form that language sometimes acquires: doctors, crooks and fags. Only on the first inside page was the subtitle: Higiene, criminología y homosexualidad en la construcción de la nación Argentina (Buenos Aires: 1871-1914). I write this because, although Jorge Salessi is surely aware of the relevance of his book in the way of understanding the Argentine past, perhaps he does not know so much about how much impact it had on a generation -my own- that was wondering about some keys to redirect the reading of the national past, besieged by a memory without space yet, and marked by the dictatorial legacy that disguised as a defense of positivism what in fact was an apology for cruelty.