From a sick mind to a cultural soul: knowledge, legal and indigenous forms in Colombia

Abstract

With the consecration in the decade of 1990 of a special regime for the indigenous towns, an as old problem arises as complicated: the definition of the native like legal subject. Analyzing the relations between social practices, to knowledge and legal forms, this article shows the way in which the legal operators solve in two specific contexts the doubt on the behavior of the person who demands an indigenous identity. In first place, the republican regime, shows how with base in the theories of the degeneration, it defines the native as wild and the doubt is solved going to the medical knowledge produced by the forensic psychiatrist on the mental normality of the “non civilized native”. Secondly, the multicultural regime is analyzed, that at the moment is being constructed, which is based on the speech of the skillful anthropologists who provide to the judges the necessary knowledge on the cultural otherness.