ABSTRACT The goal of the article is to explore what often is placed in opposition—the secular and the theological—in order to interpret their historical intersections in the production of Argentinean citizens. Through a genealogical discourse analysis, I investigate how religious discourses become interrelated and even undistinguishable as a system of reasons that shaped the Argentinean citizen in the early 19th century. In fact, theological patterns of ordering and interpreting human experience shaped to a large degree the conditions, possibilities and limitations of the early Argentinean citizen. In order to analyze how Catholic narratives shaped the Argentinean republican citizen, the article examines Spanish Colonial narratives and republican ones. pp. 36–54

Keywords: Catholicism; republicanism; citizen; 19th century; Argentina; schooling