The essay aims to highlight the role of the repression in the course taught by Michel Foucault at the Collège de France Théories et institutions pénales of 1971-1972 and in the texts in which, during the same years, Foucault elaborates the genealogy of the modern penal system. During the 1971-72 course Foucault represents repression as a political device that beside the use of violence, simultaneously brings into play new tactics, new relationships, new balance of power, and above all, anticipates the (...) institutions and the fundamental practices criminal law of modernity. (shrink)

In Mexico, as in the case of the massacre of 1968 in Tlatelolco, there exists a long tradition of writing history in a tragic or traumatic key by starting from its founding moments of violence, as if the repetitive compulsion could be met only by the compulsion to repeat the trauma. And yet, this essay proposes that perhaps we should not forget that the compulsion to respond to the violence of repression with a sorrow song or a memorial of grievances (...) ends up being very much part and parcel of the effect of displaying the spectacle of sovereign power that was being sought after in the first place. Precisely because it is so terribly awe-inspiring, state violence when it is wielded serves not just as a symptom of vulnerability but also as a way of diverting attention away from the utopian dreams and efforts in resistance and self-government that were unfolding on the ground prior to the punctual onslaught of repression. Drawing important lessons from the experience of the disappeared students of Ayotzinapa, the point is not to let ourselves be blinded by the power of repression but to let ourselves be illuminated by the resistance that comes before it. (shrink)

The essay aims to retrace the thematic issues of Alessandro Pandolfi's research through his original reinterpretation of the work of Michel Foucault. From issues of the historiographical method of the social sciences to the problematizations of disciplinary discourses up to the postmodern outcomes of neoliberal devices, a path is outlined that marks innovative hypotheses and new research perspectives on the relationship between biopolitics and antagonisms.