Positivism in Latin America

Abstract

Positivism is both a program and a description of the end of the century's epistemological field – both an epistemological change accompanying specific political and social processes, and the transformation of the institutions which enable these processes. Its introduction and expansion in Latin America coincides with the processes of organization and centralization of the national states. Thus it becomes the master narrative that promotes regional modernization, normalizes the relationship between the population and the national states, and provides a new vocabulary for old dichotomies – such as civilization/barbarism, city/country, elite/people. Observing, controlling what exists, and using it through the scientific gaze is the equation that links positivism, perception, and visual technologies. Criminology adds the distress caused by concealment and camouflage among the crowd as a problem that also requires the use of an apparatus based on observation and control. The positivist genre, par excellence, is the essay, but positivism will also be present in the novel through naturalism.