Abstract

APARICIO, Juan Ricardo. The Internally Displaced: Between the Positivities and the Residues of the Margins. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2012, n.43, pp.108-119. ISSN 0123-885X.

In this article I present a dialogue between the results of my ethnographic fieldwork on internally displaced persons and a discussion about the relevance and potential of the Foucauldian concept of biopolitics in contemporary times. The article starts by tracing the attention that Foucault gave towards the transformation of the Providential, omnipresent, and biopolitical State, to one that is satisfied with introducing an environmental technology that no longer governs through the subjection of individuals, but through a "disinvestment" that creates the conditions for the same subjects, now as entrepreneurs, to be in charge of resolving conflicts and contradictions. I use some ethnographic vignettes to understand the actualization of this "disinvestment" that ends up producing and maintaining "zones of social abandonment." Specifically, I am interested in understanding how this "disinvestment" occurs within a State transformation that through the mandates of participation and decentralization, makes these subjects into agents responsible for their own development. Lastly, I suggest that this "zones of social abandonment" can also be zones of desire that go beyond what might be called a low intensity biopolitics. I use the example of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó and their antagonistic practices that are currently challenging these technologies.

Keywords : Foucault; Biopolitics; Zones of Social Abandonment; Internally Displaced; Participation.

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