La différence sexuelle au cabinet des anthropologues parisiens à la fin du XIXe siècle

Abstract

In the last third of the 19th century in France, Biological Anthropology, and even more so Anthropometry, is confirmed to be a scientific approach that the standardization of methods and instruments must guarantee. Based on a direct naturalism, it claims to be an initiative of objectifi- cation and hierarchization of differences, mainly racial ones. In this paper, I will study how, in this anthropological corpus (especially in the work of the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris), sexual dif- ference, disturbing racial classifications, was re-defined as a variable difference dependent of race, at the risk of undermining the naturalistic foundations underlying this sexual difference.