The event “Victor de Aveyron”: drafting a genealogy of psychiatric action in childhood

Abstract

What is called as “event Victor de Aveyron” opens in the context of the XVIII century practices new questions for knowledge and medical and pedagogical practices, and new issues for this strange object of knowledge: “man”. This text intends to trace an outline of a historical genealogy, which was reported by the task of Jean Marc Itard, in an attempt to educate the wild boy found in the woods of Aveyron, from the perspective of the thought of Michel Foucault. This is the process of constructing the medical and pedagogical alliance and its devices have the capacity to discipline and standardize. In addition, these devices led to the expansion of psychiatry and the process had nointerest in crazy child, but in the idiot child. If the appearance of Victor to the civilization caused the production of knowledge settler about the body resistance to standardization, the pursuit of wild body limit, which was so incapable as the idiot, also led to the foundation of the medical and pedagogical alliance device that can be observed on the bodies of children even considering the differences in goals, technical, institutional practices and in attempts at social inclusion.