[The materialistic strategy of Henry Howard, a Québec alienist (1815-1887).]

At the end of the 19th century, Henry Howard appeared as the first Quebec "aliéniste" to attempt to develop an inclusive theoretical treatise on the question of madness. Why this sudden upheaval ? There existed numerous european theories ; that might have sufficed. The author attempts to show the multiple connections of this theoretical pro-lect to the socio-political problems of québécois society. Howard tries, from the perspective of the theory which he elaborates, to intervene in the major discussions affecting Quebec: ultra montanism, the problem of universal compusory education, public morality. At a more professional level he attempts to intervene in the legal dispute opposing judicial and medical competence in the cases of insanity pleas, as well as in the question of the scientific and social status of the "aliéniste". The involvement in these struggles manifests itself in Howard's treatise as much at the level of the concepts themselves, and their architecture, as at the thematic level and in the applications which he naturally draws. It is not onty external and contingent but works on the text from the inside as well. The article attempts to suggest that at the very moment that the treatise on the alienated-which would become the "science" that we know today- seeks to structure itself into a theory, it cannot break its attachment to its determining social context and that, ignoring its ideological role it, in truth, succeeds only in creating illusion and the impression of a progressive process, all the while being circumstantial and having a verted interest.