Contributions of Michel Foucault’s Thought for the Analysis of Latin American Dictatorships¹

Contribuições do pensamento de Michel Foucault para a análise das ditaduras latino-americanas

Abstract

This article analyzes the contributions of Michel Foucault’s thought for the analysis of dictatorships in Latin America, particularly those of the Southern Cone, and their consequences in today’s societies. First, I examine the ideas and tools that Foucault’s thinking offers for analyzing dictatorships in Latin America, some specific aspects or dimensions of these regimes and their derivations and consequences in terms of the continuities and ruptures between these regimes and post-dictatorial ones. I particularly examine his ideas on the production of the “human” in relation to the production of truth and power-government, biopolitics, governmentality, resistance, critique, and practices of freedom. Next, I review two core themes appearing in the works which feature Foucauldian ideas and tools for analyzing dictatorships in Latin America: the question of power and the hypothesis of war. I selected the works by Juan Villarreal “Los hilos sociales del poder” (1985), and by Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición. Los campos de concentración en Argentina (1998), Política y/o violencia. Una aproximación a la guerrilla de los años 70 (2005), and De matar a dejar morir. Biopolíticas de selección de la vida (2025), on the basis of their relevance and scope, even when they refer specifically to the Argentine experience, in so far as their developments and conclusions can be applied to other cases in the region. Finally, I briefly present a series of conclusions on the scope and potentialities of the ideas and tools analyzed showing the relevance and value of Foucault’s contributions for the critical analysis of Latin American dictatorships and their consequences.

Keywords:
Foucault; Dictatorship; Latin America; Power; Resistance.

Resumo

Este artigo analisa as contribuições do pensamento de Michel Foucault para a análise das ditaduras na América Latina, particularmente aquelas do Cone Sul, e suas consequências nas sociedades contemporâneas. Em primeiro lugar, examino as ideias e ferramentas que o pensamento foucaultiano oferece para a análise das ditaduras na América Latina, aspectos ou dimensões específicas desses regimes e suas derivações e consequências em termos de continuidades e rupturas entre esses regimes e os pós-ditatoriais. Analiso, em particular, suas ideias sobre a produção do “humano” em relação à produção da verdade e do poder-governo, biopolítica, governamentalidade, resistência, crítica e práticas de liberdade. Logo depois, reviso dois problemáticas centrais presentes nas obras que incorporam ideias e ferramentas foucaultianas para a análise das ditaduras na América Latina: a questão do poder e a hipótese da guerra. Selecionei as obras de Juan Villarreal “Los hilos sociales del poder” (1985) e de Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición. Los campos de concentración en Argentina (1998), Política y/o violencia. Una aproximación a la guerrilla de los años 70 (2005) e De matar a dejar morir. Biopolíticas de selección de la vida (2025), com base em sua relevância e alcance, mesmo quando se referem especificamente à experiência argentina, na medida em que seus desenvolvimentos e conclusões podem ser aplicados a outros casos na região. Finalmente, apresento brevemente uma série de conclusões sobre o alcance e as potencialidades das ideias e ferramentas analisadas, mostrando a relevância e o valor das contribuições foucaultianas para a análise crítica das ditaduras latino-americanas e suas consequências.

Palavras-chave
Foucault; Ditadura; América Latina; Poder; Resistência.

Introduction

Michel Foucault’s thought offers valuable ideas and tools for analyzing dictatorships in general and especially those in Latin America. It should be noted, however, that there is not a particular text in which Foucault openly and deeply addresses the issue of Latin American dictatorships. Nevertheless, we can draw on his general ideas about the production of the world and “the human” in modernity, linked to the production of truth, or rather, veridictions, to reflect on this question. At the same time, we cannot fail to point out that the issue of dictatorships is addressed tangentially by Foucault in his developments on biopolitics, when he refers, as an illustration of this notion, to 20th-century European totalitarianisms, in particular the cases of Nazism and Stalinism. Despite this, the reference to Latin American dictatorships appears clearly in some of his political writings, such as the first of the articles that make up the Iran dossier. In “L’armée, quand la terre tremble”, when speaking of the role of the army in the context of the popular uprisings against the Pahlavi monarchy that took place in Iran in 1978 and preceded the revolution the following year, Foucault explicitly mentions Pinochet and Videla and their political projects in the South American context. In fact, Foucault states that, unlike what happened with South American armies since the wars of independence, in Iran we find neither a political or national project on the part of the army nor a solid economic-military structure (1994a, p. 666). Fortunately, he emphasizes, “a dictatorship exercised under the direction of a caste of officers who are united despite their personal rivalries,” in the style of those implemented by the South American dictatorships, cannot occur in the Iranian context (1994a, pp. 666-667).

Now, if we consider the array of ideas and tools that Foucauldian thought provides for thinking about Latin American dictatorships, and in particular the so-called Southern Cone dictatorships, that is, those that emerged and consolidated during the 1960s to 1980s in the southernmost part of Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia), we must emphasize that these ideas and tools do not refer only to the moment of the exercise of domination by dictatorial regimes, but also to the possibility of the exercise of resistance to these regimes and the consequences of these regimes in later moments. Following these ideas, Foucault not only offers fundamental concepts for thinking about the production of a model of society, social discipline, and the repressive apparatuses and mechanisms of dictatorial regimes, but also allows us to think about the multiple ways in which spaces and actions of resistance to these regimes took shape, as well as the continuities and ruptures between these regimes and post-dictatorial ones, in dimensions or aspects such as neoliberalism, denial, or the production of memory through the exercise of parrhesia.

In this framework of thematic analysis and theoretical-methodological possibilities of Foucauldian thought, we must not forget the use that has been made of the Foucauldian matrix to think about a similar experience to that of Latin American dictatorships, such as the policies carried out by Nazism. Even considering the differences of both cases, the use of Foucauldian thought to think and reflect on the Nazi experience was more successful. Perhaps the best-known case is the work of contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben. But, certainly, on the one hand, the historical experience referred to is different, and, on the other, Agamben draws on Foucault to develop his own ideas, which do not necessarily coincide with those of the French philosopher. To cite just one example, his use of the notion of biopolitics maintains fundamental distances and differences from the concept that Foucault elaborates and puts into practice. As a matter of fact, unlike Foucault, Agamben traces biopolitics back to the ancient European world and even further, to any civilizing process, in a relationship between life and power that refers to being, a formulation completely foreign to Foucault’s ideas on this issue.

As for the idea of “use” or “application” of conceptual notions or tools, especially in the field of humanities and social sciences, I would like to present a brief digression. Every time we talk about the use of a thought in the sense of applying it to a particular case, what we are actually doing is recreating or reformulating that notion or conceptual tool, rather than “applying” it according to a kind of instruction manual. In my opinion, what happens every time we talk about the “use” of theoretical-methodological notions is an appropriation of a thought and a reformulation of that thought to think about the case we are analyzing.

Now, if we review the state of the art on the use of Foucault’s thinking to critically analyze Latin American dictatorships and their consequences on today’s societies, particularly those of the Southern Cone, we find only a few studies, perhaps fewer than we might expect. I will mention only a few of the most important ones, in a field that draws on a varied range of works.

In the first place, we can highlight general research works on these dictatorships, such as the following three:

• • the pioneering work of Juan Villarreal, “Los hilos sociales del poder” (1985);

• • the books by Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición. Los campos de concentración en Argentina (1998), Política y/o violencia. Una aproximación a la guerrilla de los años 70 (2005), and De matar a dejar morir. Biopolíticas de selección de la vida (2025);

• • the research of Marcelo Raffin La experiencia del horror. Subjetividad y derechos humanos en las dictaduras y posdictaduras del Cono Sur (2006), which was updated and republished in French in 2017 under the title Droits de l’homme, sujet et devenir. L’expérience contemporaine du Cône sud d’Amérique latine.

Alongside these works, it is necessary to highlight others that also addressed, from a Foucauldian perspective, certain dimensions or aspects of dictatorial regimes, such as the following:

• • the research conducted by José Joaquín Brunner in the late 1970s and early 1980s on education and culture in authoritarian contexts such as that of the Chilean dictatorship, including, among others, La cultura autoritaria en Chile (1981) and La cultura política del autoritarismo (1982);

• • the book by Emilio De Ipola on his analysis of imprisonment during the 1976-1983 dictatorship in Argentina (2005);

• • the research of Mariela Ávila on the implementation of torture by the Chilean dictatorship (2013a and 2013b), that of María Laura Guembe (2024) on death flights in Argentina, and that of Luis Blengino and Iván Dalmau “La programación biopolítica de la Capital Federal durante la última dictadura cívico-militar en Argentina (1976-1983)” (2023);

• • similarly, it is worth highlighting a series of investigations into some of the consequences of dictatorial regimes, such as those of Valeria Thus (2020) and Juan Cruz Goñi (2025) on denial and the subjective effects of criminal trials, respectively; and that of José Giavedoni on the transition to democracy in Argentina in the 1980s (2024);

• • at the same time, we must include in this survey of the state of the art, other works on different situations of alteration of democracy in Latin America, which also implied authoritarian regimes, analyzed from a Foucauldian perspective, such as those that refer to the consequences of the internal armed conflict in Colombia and the violence that this situation entailed. From this perspective, we can mention the research by Nelson Fernando Roberto-Alba on the experience of the Mothers of Soacha (2019), or that of María Helena Restrepo-Espinosa on forced displacement and exile (2017).

But returning to the case of Latin American dictatorships, and especially the so-called Southern Cone dictatorships, it is necessary to emphasize the scarcity of research developed from a Foucauldian theoretical perspective. We can formulate several hypotheses for this: the ignorance of Foucauldian thought itself, its confinement to the field of philosophy, the zeal of certain representatives of philosophical thought in not mixing philosophy with the mire of reality or the hegemony of other matrices of thought to address this problem. Whatever the reason for this situation, it is necessary to emphasize again that Foucault did not specifically develop this issue (which is an additional factor for not revisiting it as a tool for the analysis of such an issue) and that, in addition, the specific situation of Latin American dictatorships requires different and specific tools for its analysis, which we need to take from other theoretical matrices.

Taking into account the ideas I have just presented, I will now develop the following points in this article:

• 1 - I will examine the ideas and tools that Michel Foucault’s thinking offers for analyzing dictatorships in Latin America, particularly those in the Southern Cone;

• 2 - I will review some of the core themes of the works mentioned above, which feature Foucauldian ideas and tools for analyzing dictatorships in Latin America;

• 3 - I will briefly present a series of conclusions on the scope and potentialities of the ideas and tools analyzed.

Michel Foucault’s Ideas and Tools for Analyzing Dictatorships in Latin America

As stated above, Michel Foucault’s thought offers a series of ideas and tools for analyzing dictatorships in Latin America.

Firstly, in my view, it is necessary to revisit Foucault’s general proposal on the production of “the human” in Western modernity based on what he calls power-knowledge (pouvoir-savoir) relations, which also produce truth or, to be more technical as regards the notions developed by the philosopher, certain specific truths, or veridictions. Foucault particularly explains these ideas in the early 1970s based on the intertwining relationship between life and power or biopower, which he characterizes in The Will to Knowledge, volume I of The History of Sexuality, as “what brings life and its mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations and makes power-knowledge an agent of transformation of human life” (1995, p. 188).² Biopower or biopolitics³ is considered by Foucault to be the decisive event in the modern Western world, operating from two poles in tension, that of the individual body and that of populations, through the technologies of discipline and regulatory controls, respectively. Discipline, as a political technology of the body that establishes a “political economy” of the individual body (Foucault: 1997a, pp. 31, 33 and 34), operates through surveillance and control, following the standard of the norm. But the body is only one of the targets of this technology; the other target is the “soul”. Discipline ultimately produces what Foucault calls the “double body” of modern subjectivity: the material and the incorporeal, the latter as “the element in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which power relations give rise to a certain possible knowledge, and knowledge redirects and reinforces the effects of power” (Foucault: 1997a, 38). But power-knowledge relations operate, at the same time, through another political technology on the generic body of populations by means of the apparatuses (dispositifs) of government, regulation, and administration, which attend to the conditions of health, development, production, and reproduction of populations, contributing, in turn, to the production of modern “man” (Foucault, 2004a, p. 81).

Foucault complements the notion of biopolitics with that of governmentality, which he elaborates particularly in his 1978 lectures at the Collège de France, Security, Territory, Population, when he reformulates the question of power in terms of government. This allowed him to analyze that particular technology of power called “government” that became hegemonic in Western modernity, understood as the determination of human conduct. Consequently, Foucault conceives governmentality as a certain form of exercising power-government and as a certain way of rationalizing this exercise of power-government, of understanding its operating principles and its points of legitimation based on the fundamental and decisive intertwining that occurs in Western modernity between life and power, at the two poles of the individual body and populations. In this analysis, according to Foucault, liberalism and then neoliberalism constitute the ontological-political forms of this governmentality, inscribed in an archaeo-genealogy of government as a technology of power and in a “history of governmentality”. In this sense, Foucault himself points out that his study of liberalism and neoliberalism is part of a broader analysis of biopolitics, as its general framework. In fact, he argues that only once we know what this governmental regime called liberalism is can we understand what biopolitics is (Foucault: 2004b, p. 24).

In Foucault’s characterization of the concept of governmentality in his 1978 lectures, we can distinguish two fundamental elements: a “genealogy of government” and a “history of governmentality” (Foucault, 2004a, pp. 111-112). Salinas Araya states that the “genealogy of government” refers to the “line of force” understood as the antecedents of the technology of power that Foucault calls “government”, and that this is not limited to political institutions properly speaking. For its part, the “history of governmentality” refers to the “process” by which the political institutions (the State, parastatal and supranational governance institutions) of modernity become governmentalized (Salinas Araya, 2020, p. 46).

Biopolitics and governmentality aim to account for a specific and decisive phenomenon of modern Western society, namely the configuration of life, whose central epiphenomenon is the equation between animality and politicality, within the broader framework of Foucault’s analysis of the production of modern society as a correlate of the market.

All these developments relating to the apparatuses of individual discipline and government, regulation and administration of populations, as the fundamental elements in the creation, preservation, and reproduction of social order, which Foucault places within the framework of biopolitics and governmentality and which create a general effect of social discipline, are highly relevant for the analysis of dictatorial regimes in Latin America. In fact, dictatorships in Latin America, and particularly those in the Southern Cone, implemented security apparatuses clearly aimed at disciplining and governing these societies, while at the same time relying on and building a terrorist state that was also accompanied by the imposition and production of a certain social model and a culture of fear. As regards the governmental rationality of neoliberalism, it is worth remembering the link it clearly had with Latin American dictatorships, which, among other aspects, was evident in the legitimacy that its main representatives gave in particular to the Chilean experience. Both Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman supported the dictatorial regime, providing advice on the design of its economic policies and the training of technical personnel. Furthermore, during one of his visits to Chile on April 12, 1981, in an interview with the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, von Hayek openly expressed his preference for a liberal dictator over a democratic government lacking liberalism.

Now, as stated above, the notions of biopolitics and governmentality refer to a very particular relationship of intertwining between life and power-government, whereby life is shaped by power and, above all, configured in a certain way that prevents any other possibility. But at this point, it is necessary to emphasize that for Foucault, while life is shaped by power-government, this does not mean that life cannot resist the power-government that shapes or subjugates it. Life always exceeds and escapes power-government because it is itself also power-government. Consequently, Foucauldian developments on power and government must be understood not only in terms of control, domination, and determination of conduct, but also and above all in terms of resistance, critique, and freedom, that is, also as the exercise of power-government and as practices of subjectification. These concepts allow us to understand the discipline, government, regulation, and administration of individual life and populations, but also the resistance that these individual lives and populations can exercise.

In this sense, the notion of resistance to power-government in Foucault’s work begins to take on more specific contours in his 1978 and 1979 lectures at the Collège de France, since, among other aspects, already in Security, Territory, Population, Foucault focuses on “counter-conduct” and its importance as an act of resistance to pastorate and governmentality. Foucault states that the notion of counter-conduct allows us to analyze “the components in the way in which someone actually acts in the very general field of politics or in the very general field of power relations” (2004a, p. 205). He concludes that the history of governmental reason and the history of the counter-conducts that opposed it cannot be dissociated (2004a, p. 365). This conclusion will be revisited and reinforced in the 1979 “Omnes et singulatim” lectures, when Foucault insists on the possibility of resistance, rebellion, and uprising (1994b, p. 161). However, the idea of resistance had already been clearly raised by Foucault in The Will to Knowledge, in 1976, when he states that where there is power, and we might add, domination through its effects, there is also, at the same time and for that very reason, resistance (1995, p. 125). This idea also appears in “Society Must Be Defended”, the lectures at the Collège de France of that same year (Foucault, 1997b, particularly, pp. 26 and 39).

As regards critique, one of Foucault’s main conceptualizations of this notion appears in the lecture “What is Critique?”, delivered in 1978 before the French Philosophical Society, where he basically conceives it as the will not to be governed in a certain way (2015, p. 37). This concept of critique is added to the exercise of resistance as an exercise of power that allows for the de-subjectification of the relationships that led to a certain configuration of subjectivity, thus enabling new subjectivities based on one’s own desires and needs, in a gesture that is both individual and intersubjective. These elements were completed a few years later with the notion of practices of freedom, understood by Foucault not as a concession or permission, but as a potentiality of life, which leads us, at the same time, to question the conditions of what we consider our freedom or, in other words, why we feel free within the framework of our societies and our states.

Some Core Themes Related to Foucauldian Ideas and Tools for Analyzing Dictatorships in Latin America: The Question of Power and the Hypothesis of War

Of the works mentioned in the first section of this article that take a Foucauldian approach or use the philosopher’s tools and categories to analyze dictatorial regimes in Latin America, I will now focus on two core themes: the question of power and the hypothesis of war. I chose these two issues based on their relevance and scope in the works considered, even when they refer specifically to the Argentine experience, in so far as their developments and conclusions can be applied to other cases in the region.

The core theme relating to the issue of power is particularly addressed in the work of Juan Villarreal, “Los hilos sociales del poder” (1985). We are struck by Villarreal’s excellent and insightful knowledge of Foucauldian perspective, at a time when there was much less material available from the French philosopher than there is today (although all his books had already been published), as well as the originality and relevance of having taken this perspective to analyze the network of social relations that the dictatorial regime wove in order to understand the changes in social structuring as effects of power. In effect, Villarreal takes Foucault’s notion of power to account for the profound restructuring of Argentine society produced by the dictatorship, particularly in terms of occupational and social structure, which, in his words, tended to “strengthen the bases of domination, fragment the subaltern classes, individualize social behavior [and] rearticulate the constitutive forms of civil society” (1985, p. 202). To this end, Villarreal revisits the pair repression-production of Foucault’s notion of power. He thus asserts that “dictatorial power-in its various manifestations throughout society-did not act solely in a repressive manner, but also as a consensus builder and, even more so, in its ‘productive’ character” (1985, p. 202). He therefore warns us that the most extreme aspects of this repressive policy, “which left a trail of death, disappearances, and destruction, should not cause us to lose sight of other facets of the dictatorship’s actions that tended to change society” (1985, p. 202, italics in the original). Villarreal argues that this change or restructuring of Argentine society, which reinforced a trend that had been emerging in the moments prior to the coup d’état, allowed the consolidation of the foundations of domination by the large property-owning sectors, homogenizing their social situation and fragmenting the social bases of subaltern groups. Hence, Villarreal concludes that, at the end of the dictatorship, an image of Argentine society emerged that he characterizes as “homogenization at the top and heterogenization at the bottom,” reversing the historical relations that had defined Argentine society before the 1976 coup d’état.

At the end of the first section of his work, Villarreal explains the notion of power to which he appeals and his debt to Foucault’s thinking. He defines power as something much more diffuse, general, and complex than a form of government, its protagonists, or its laws (1985, p. 214). He reinforces these ideas with the following definition:

[Power] is constituted from a variable network of force relations that runs through the whole of society, producing diverse effects, from a complex intertwining of relations of domination that cannot truly be recognized in the simple opposition between rulers and ruled, nor located in a single point identifiable as the government of state power. Thus, it is not a struggle between sectors, classes, or parties vying for power that, as a thing, is external to them and which they can seize. Rather, it is the coexistence of multiple power relations at distinguishable points and levels, which run like a complex network through institutions, parties, social groups, state apparatuses, and ideological tendencies. Here we see the interweaving of diverse interrelated strategies and tactics, the fragmentation-homogenization of the social bases of power of different groups, and the permanent movements of accumulation or loss of power, with their continuous shifts (1985, pp. 214-215).

Villarreal explains the relationship between his conceptualization of power and Foucault’s thought, revisiting some of the central ideas stated by the philosopher at the beginning of point 2, chapter 4 of The Will to Knowledge, in which he highlights, in Foucault’s characterization of power, precisely

a multiplicity of force relations immanent and specific to the domain in which they are exercised and which are constitutive of its organization; the interplay that, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, reinforces, and reverses them; the support that these force relations find in one another, so that they form a chain or system, or, on the contrary, the disjunctions, the contradictions that isolate them from one another; lastly, the strategies in which they take effect, and whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in social hegemonies (1985, pp. 214-215, note 5).

This conceptualization of power is consistent with and reinforces one of the strong hypotheses that Villarreal uses in his research to account for the changes in the Argentine social structure at the end of the dictatorship, namely the idea of molecular action in which multiple initiatives without a subject are combined (1985, p. 209).

Without failing to clarify that other theoretical perspectives on his research object are also valid, this conceptual framework, based on Foucauldian thought, allows Villarreal to explain the dictatorial experience of 1976-1983 as an expression of a regressive social process that specifically combined the action of multiple social forces (military, religious, political, etc.) as an authoritarian, disciplinary, and repressive response to the advances of radicalization and the struggle of the popular sectors in previous years. This process enabled the production and reproduction of a government rationality and, beyond that, in his view, also implied a high concentration of power, which found support in two plans for redesigning society, political and economic. In this sense, Villareal states that

the military regime generalized the power apparatuses of disciplinary society, generated repressive mechanisms based on generalized personal suspicion, and instituted a culture of fear in which power exercised maximum individualizing control over the popular sectors. A change was promoted in the constitution of the subaltern classes that aimed to convert solidarity into individualism, cooperation into competition, and homogeneity into fragmentation (1985, p. 206).

At the same time, and consistent with Foucault’s notion of power in terms of resistance, Villarreal highlights the memory of the struggle of workers and other subaltern classes, who “were able to overcome the control mechanisms of the ruling bloc” (p. 207), despite not having been able to prevent the restructuring of society.

Without detracting from the value of Villarreal’s work, it should be noted that even when he takes care to specify and explain that he understands power in the Foucauldian sense, that is, from a non-traditional perspective that does not identify power with the classical view of political science, the legal field or even the Marxist tradition, at times, in some references or statements, he still oscillates in a conceptualization that identifies power with the institutions of political power or directly with the state.

The works by Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición. Los campos de concentración en Argentina (1998), Política y/o violencia. Una aproximación a la guerrilla de los años 70 (2005), and De matar a dejar morir. Biopolíticas de selección de la vida (2025), revisit Foucault’s hypothesis of war as a grid of intelligibility for the underlying conflict in the socio-political relations that led to the 1976 coup d’état in Argentina and the dynamics of repression of the regime, and the conception of power in Foucault’s thought.⁴

Foucault’s hypothesis of war and his conception of power appear both in Poder y desaparición and in Política y/o violencia as central assumptions of the proposed analysis of the concentration camp apparatus of the Argentine dictatorial regime. The hypothesis of war is clearly thematized in the second book, when Calveiro returns to the period preceding the coup d’état and focuses her analysis on one of the key players of the political dynamics of that moment. In this sense, we could say that both books constitute two parts of the same research: that of analyzing the conditions of the confrontation that took place in Argentine society between the Armed Forces and the guerrilla organizations during the 1970s, before and after the 1976 coup d’état (Calveiro, 2005, p. 187). But this reading, centered on the dynamics of the political confrontation of the 1970s, goes beyond this time framework to propose, in the same gesture, a retrospective reading of 20th-century Argentine history. Calveiro draws on Foucault’s hypothesis of war as an analyzer of social and political relations, which the philosopher expounds in “Society Must Be Defended”. Indeed, in these lectures, Foucault seeks to show how the binary scheme of war, struggle, and the clash between forces can really be identified as the basis of civil society, as both the principle and motor of the exercise of political power (1997b, p. 18).

In Poder y desaparición, Calveiro states that, from a military point of view, the notion of war seemed to justify the methodology used. The goal was to triumph over subversion through its annihilation. The guiding principle was efficiency in achieving this goal, and the means were concentration camps and widespread terror (Calveiro, 1998, p. 138). This implied a policy of terrorist repression as an institutionalized and massive state policy, which combined legal and clandestine forms. Precisely at the core of this configuration are “concentration camps” or “clandestine detention centers”-as certain legal and political language preferred to call them- as the metaphor for the social order⁵ created by the culture of fear. Camp and society are part of the same weave in which the camp acts as a turning point for society: the concentration camp not only as a repression apparatus, but as a central production apparatus for the regime.

The concentration camp functions, in turn, as a bureaucratic machine that swallows people. The concentration apparatus requires each person to behave like a “cog,” “but in fact, the ‘machine’ is made up of men; each of them has a different function and a definable responsibility” (Calveiro, 1998, p. 140). The figure of the “disappearer” (“desaparecedor”) then appears in Calveiro’s analysis on a human scale, that is, in terms of what can be valued and judged. “Neither monsters nor crusaders,” Calveiro argues, “but ordinary men, of whom there are thousands in society; these are the men who are useful to the concentration camp” (1998, p. 146). Furthermore, the concentration camp apparatus establishes a normality that makes the acts that occur within it, which seem exceptional, “perfectly rooted in the daily life of society; that is why they are possible. They are linked to an accepted ‘normality’. It is the normality of obedience, the normality of absolute, unappealable, and arbitrary power, the normality of punishment, the normality of disappearance” (Calveiro, 1998, p. 147).

Expanding on the issue of power, in Política y/o violencia, Calveiro asserts that the Armed Forces, and particularly the Army as their core, as they became the backbone of political institutions throughout the 20th century, took on the task of disciplining society to mold it in their image (2005, p. 75). But, in 1976, Calveiro emphasizes, this was not enough and “they needed more than just orderly barracks: they needed a docile and terrified social body” (2005, p. 75).

In De matar a dejar morir, Calveiro clearly draws on Foucault’s categories of biopolitics and thanatopolitics. For Foucault, biopolitics as a technology of power aimed at the production of life does not, paradoxically, exclude the production of death, a phenomenon that the philosopher later refers to as “thanatopolitics” (Foucault, 1994c, p. 826). However, in his diagnosis of the modern and contemporary world, the production of life and the production of death, biopolitics and thanatopolitics, coexist in a relationship of permanent tension, in which racism plays a particularly important role (Foucault, 1995, p. 180). Following these ideas and combining them with other perspectives, Calveiro proposes an analysis of genocidal practices and the biopolitical apparatus of disappearance in the experiences of Nazism and fascism, the dictatorships of the Southern Cone -which she characterizes as bureaucratic-authoritarian governmentalities-, contemporary Mexico, and current forms of neoliberalism and governmentality as a technology of power. The analysis therefore focuses more on current forms of the exercise of power and does not delve deeply into state terrorism and state violence in Latin America in the 1970s, although it does refer to these issues within the framework of the core themes considered. It should be noted that, in her analysis of biopolitics and thanatopolitics, Calveiro does not fail to emphasize the possibility of resistance to the new configurations of governmentality, which always escape biopower (2025, p. 10).

Conclusions

At this point, after having examined the ideas and tools that Michel Foucault’s thought offers for critically analyzing dictatorships in Latin America, as well as some core themes in research works that have taken these ideas and tools, I would like to propose a series of conclusions weighing the scope and potentialities of these ideas and tools, as an epilogue to the questions raised.

1 - It should be noted that Foucault’s conceptual battery and his analytical perspectives, in particular his ideas on the production of the “human” in relation to the production of truth and power-government, biopolitics, and governmentality, are valuable and relevant tools for critically analyzing dictatorships in Latin America, particularly those in the Southern Cone, and allow us to shed new light on these experiences or on particular aspects and derivations of these experiences.

Similarly, we cannot fail to point out that this conceptual battery in Foucault would be incomplete if we did not also relate it to his ideas on resistance, critique, and practices of freedom, understood as the exercise of power-government and as practices of subjectification, which allow life to become subject of their own existence. In this sense, if biopolitics and governmentality presuppose the production of certain forms of “the human”, it should also be noted that these forms can offer resistance and exercise power-government that transform and reverse these relationships and configurations.

2 - The analysis of the selected core themes showed the potentiality of Foucauldian contributions to critically address the issue of dictatorships in Latin America, as well as the scarcity of works that have used these tools to perform this task, which remains a field to be developed.

3 - Furthermore, in analyzing dictatorships in Latin America, and in particular in the Southern Cone, it is necessary to take into account, at the same time, the particularities of each case, which involve a series of elements such as the history of each society, the dynamics of the actors involved, their democratic and authoritarian traditions, their specific problems, and their capacities for negotiation and the projections for the future, which will determine a fundamental part of the construction of a democratic culture and regime.

4 - In this sense, the use of Foucault’s conceptual battery does not exclude the use of other perspectives and analytical frameworks that also contribute with their specificity and meet the needs and requirements imposed by the cases to be analyzed.

5 - In sum, we could say that Foucauldian thought has left us with a valuable work plan for critically analyzing dictatorships in Latin America, which we can develop to shed new light on these historical experiences.

Data availability statement

The main focus of this article is contributions of a theoretical or methodological nature, without the use of empirical data sets. Therefore, in accordance with the journal's editorial guidelines, the article is exempt from being deposited in SciELO Data.

¹

This article presents some of the results of my research at the UBA and the CONICET of Argentina. It also revisits some of the ideas presented in the lectures “Michel Foucault: contribuições para a análise das Ditaduras na América Latina” and “Vigiar e Punir como crítica ao intolerável das ditaduras na América Latina”, delivered at the conferences “Michel Foucault: 40 anos” and Celebração dos 50 anos do livro “Vigiar e punir”: “A genealogia dos poderes e sociedade da vigilância e punitiva”, organized by the Laboratório Transversalizando of the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences of the Federal University of Pará, Belém do Pará, in July 2024 and April 2025, respectively. I am grateful for the collaboration and exchange of ideas with Mariela Ávila, Adán Salinas Araya, Gabriela Seghezzo, Iván Torres Apablaza, and Tuillang Yuing Alfaro, which were extremely useful in the preparation of this article.

How to cite:

Raffin, Marcelo. Contributions of Michel Foucault’s Thought for the Analysis of Latin American Dictatorships. Revista de Filosofia Aurora, Curitiba, v. 38, e202634051, 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1590/2965-1557.038.e202634051

²

Unless otherwise indicated, the translation of works in a foreign language is the responsibility of the author of this article.

³

Although Foucault makes a distinction between biopower and biopolitics when presenting the concepts in the last chapter of The Will to Knowledge, I will not make a distinction here between the two terms because he quickly takes the latter as generic to account for the phenomenon he seeks to explain.

⁴

It should be noted that Calveiro generally draws on Foucauldian categories in her later research, which in a sense extends the work discussed here. I am referring particularly to Violencias de Estado. La guerra antiterrorista y la guerra contra el crimen organizado como medios de control global (2012) and Resistir al neoliberalismo. Comunidades y autonomías (2019). These works were not analyzed in this article as they deal with different specific topics.

⁵

In a somewhat similar vein, let us recall that Agamben identifies concentration and extermination camps as nomos of modernity in his Homo Sacer philosophical saga (Agamben, 2005, p. 185 and 198).

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Correspondence

e-mail: [e-mail]

Editores responsáveis:

Léo Peruzzo Júnior e Jelson Oliveira.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  12 Oct 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  26 Jan 2026
• Accepted
  11 Aug 2026