Abstract

Briefly tracing the origins of the debate, the article exposes the developments of the interdisciplinary tendency that, in the Italian context, claimed to identify the profession and craft as a physiognomic hallmark. Choosing a backward path, it compares the deterministic and fixist Lombrosian perspective (focused on the jobs of the criminal and the criminal as a job) and the different considerations of the profession as a habit (Mantegazza and the pioneers of the first half of the century). Far from being monolithic, such a comparison rather uncovers the intersection between the medical-anthropological and political-social planes, where the theatrical element constituted, metaphorically and otherwise, the real point of contact between the different traditions at stake.