The Signs of the Trade. Forerunners and Theorists of the «Physiognomy of Professions» in Nineteenth-Century Italy

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.