Els llocs de memòria mèdics i farmacèutics a la Catalunya contemporània: una anàlisi de la creació d'identitats professionals en el llarg segle XX

ENG- The aim of this doctoral thesis is to analyse the fabrication and socio-cultural processes of appropriation of two professional identities — medical and pharmaceutical —, through a set of places of memory from the end of the nineteenth century to the first decades of the twenty-first century in Catalonia. The thesis is framed within the research that follows the perspective of socio-cultural historiography, with a strong political historiographical component, and is structured in four parts. The first part provides theoretical and methodological reflections on the context in which the formula “lieux de mémoire” [places of memory] and the collective project led by Pierre Nora were conceived, as well as the strengths and limitations concomitant with its export, particularly with regard to its adaptation in Spanish historiography. The proposal lies in shifting the focus away from political identity to implement it in other collective identities. As a result, the rest of the chapters implement it for the “classe mèdica” [medical class] and the “classe farmacèutica” [pharmaceutical class]. The second chapter focuses on the posthumous cult of the physician and politician Bartolomé Robert in order to ponder the hierarchisation of both identities in their representations. The third chapter explores the museum of the Llivia’s chemist shop , which is subject to commonplaces that have turned it into an emblem for the professional (pharmaceutical) identity — as a result of the myth surrounding its origins and its ownership —, as well as for different political-territorial identities (local, provincial, regional and national). The fourth chapter examines the shaping of medical identity in obituaries and biographies between 1890 and 1936, in an exercise of prosopographical inspiration. The research concludes that the French factory methodology is applicable not only to political and territorial identities, but also to the analysis of the creation of social identities of a different nature. Political identities are in dialogue with professional identities, and their hierarchisation evolved as a product of negotiation between the social actors involved. The keystone of the profession was the academic degree: it built social cohesion and allowed professionals to differentiate themselves from the otherness constituted by the so-called “intruders”. The other elements that make up their identity are neither unequivocal nor unalterable. The different devices, despite the nuances in their elaboration, are part of broader politics of memory, linked to the individual themself, but also to the collectives that aspired to take over their legacy. In summary, the epistemological and methodological potentialities and limitations of this historiographical approach become apparent, insofar as it is an analytical spearhead for transregional, transnational and comparative exercises