“Misfits” in Fin-de-Siècle France and Italy : Anatomies of Difference

As the 19th century drew to a close, France and Italy experienced an explosion of crime, vagrancy, insanity, neurosis and sexual deviance. “Misfits” in Fin-de-Siècle France and Italy examines how the raft of self-appointed experts that subsequently emerged tried to explain this aberrant behavior and the many consequences this had.

Susan A. Ashley considers why these different phenomena were understood to be interchangeable versions of the same inborn defects. The book looks at why specialists in newly-minted disciplines in medicine and the social sciences, such as criminology, neurology and sexology, all claimed that biological flaws – some inherited and some arising from illness or trauma – made it impossible for these 'misfits' to adapt to modern life. Ashley then goes on to analyse the solutions these specialists proposed, often distinguishing between born deviants who belonged in asylums or prisons and 'accidental misfits' who deserved solidarity and social support through changes to laws relating to issues like poverty and unemployment.

The study draws on a comprehensive examination of contemporary texts and features the work of leading authorities like Cesare Lombroso, Jean-Martin Charcot, and Théodule Ribot, as well as investigators less known now but influential at the time. The comparative aspect also interestingly shows that experts collaborated closely across national and disciplinary borders, employed similar methods and arrived at common conclusions.

This is a valuable study for all social and cultural historians of France and Italy and anyone interested in knowing more about the history of medicine in modern Europe.

“Ashley’s study offers a detailed and nuanced account of diverse understandings of deviance.” – American Historical Review

“Ideengeschichte (the history of ideas), when done well (unarguably the case here), provides a clear and sympathetic understanding of the diachronic development of an idea, fully exploring the intellectual and social matrix informing that development. Here, the author focuses on the view of “misfits” as understood by criminologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, sociologists, anthropologists, physiologists, forensic doctors, and jurists in fin-de-siècle France and Italy. In their writings and lectures (based on clinical observations, case studies, anthropometrics, and statistics), intellectuals strove to understand the causes and symptoms of their society’s geniuses, lunatics, neurotics, vagabonds, criminals, and sexual deviants. Sharp disagreements ensued as the data, organized in ever more refined classificatory “anatomies of difference,” raised questions of causality (congenital/acquired, biological/social), occurrence (occasional/habitual), transmissibility, and degeneracy (individual/societal). But Ashley (Colorado College) also identifies the commonalities among the thinkers with respect to their empiricism, the privileging of heredity (whether Lamarckian or Darwinian), a focus on epilepsy (the “quintessential degenerative disorder”), accepting the inherence of energy in matter (nervous system), a disdain for the metaphysical suppositions and vocabulary of classical jurisprudence, and a conviction that their research was both timely and important for their colleagues in law, public policy, and government. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries.” - CHOICE

“[This book] will be useful to scholars of the social, cultural, and intellectual history of the fin de siècle … Misfits helps us understand the anxieties about civilization, whom it was leaving behind, and whom it was harming.” - H-France