Abstract

The article aims at speculating on the relationship between forms of life and forms of the body, starting from the semantization of the child's body during the practices of medical and school check-ups in Italy during the fascist regime. The objective is to highlight a more general process of invention of a new «rejects' system», starting from the body, namely a new frontier between culture and extra-culture, which is established around the notions of normality and abnormality, and which is structured starting from the interaction between narrations, forms of the body and the space of everyday life.