Abstract

This article analyzes the discursive practices of female teacher trainees from the Angol Normal School through the study of magazines edited by students, teachers, and alumnae during the first half of the twentieth century in the La Araucania region (southern Chile). From a Foucauldian perspective, the press is approached as a dispositif involved in the reproduction of ideological matrices functional to the modernizing and civilizing project of the nation-state. Using a qualitative methodology based on content analysis, the study examined a newspaper and magazine corpus composed of articles published in the magazine Colmenar (1944-1948) and an alumnae magazine (2008). The findings reveal the centrality and persistence of the civilization/barbarism matrix as a structuring axis of normalist discourse, articulated with republican values and the educational mission, although traversed by discursive tensions. The study identifies texts associated with the state missionary mandate and the gender mandate, which configure a heterogeneous discursivity combining the reproduction of traditional feminine roles with reivindicative positions regarding women's rights. From an intersectional perspective, the study shows how gender, class, racialization, and territorial dimensions intertwine in the discursive production of the female teacher trainees, contributing to a complex understanding of normalist teacher education in La Araucania, Chile.