The reorganization of repression during the Great Recession: The Antiterroristm Act and the Anti-Picketing Protocol in today?s Argentina

JUAN CRUZ GOÑI

A Coruña

Conferencia; Crisis, Economy and Punishment: The influence of the Great Recession on Crime and Penalty; 2016

Universidade Da Coruña

The present phase of the globalized capitalist system has generated profound transformations in all aspects of social life. In the economic context, globalization has imposed the neoliberal economic model as the only possible one; in the political sphere, the hegemonic model consists of a restricted democracy. In addition, globalisation has led to a reorganization of the concept of repression, by introducing major changes into both the ?ordinary criminal subsystem? and what has come to be called the ?exception criminal subsystem?. Seen from the punitive perspective, globalisation has led to a double-strengthening process of its functioning subsystems. Regarding the ?ordinary criminal subsystem?, among other aspects, a grow in the incarcerating rates as much in the Global North, as in, for example, South America, has been noted. As for the ?exception criminal subsystem?, the new global order has featured a sounded trend to create new figures of exception that have been transformed into a permanent government instrument, destined to making a type of extraordinary estate violence possible, potentially apt to repress all kind/sort/type/form of social protest or resistance. The economic-financial crisis that initiated with the Housing Market crash in 2007/2008 -called the Great Recession- has implied certain reconfigurations in the punitive systems which have been analyzed by the criminological literature of the Global North, epicentre of the above-mentioned crisis. In Argentina, where the influence of the Great Recession begins to be noted with increasing force, certain new repressive methods which complement the old punitive practices -now reinforzed- start to emerge. In this context, and based on the Foucautian thesis, according to which inquiring into the punitive field is a way of questioning the anatomy of power, this work aims to analyze how the exception criminal subsystem in Argentina is set, and what bonds are weaven along with the global imperial order. The Anti-terrorist Act (2011), enacted under the presidential period of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the recent Anti-picketing Protocol (2016), passed during President Mauricio Macri?s administration, even when they vary in some aspects, they share the core charateristic of serving to the conventional necessities of the sovereign power for repressing the resistance movements and imposing the order. Both bio-political instruments avail themselves of the exception ?now the rule- in order to deactivate entire zones of citizenship of persons or categories of persons who, for various reasons, are considered not to be a part of the political system and are, therefore, exposed to a global sovereign power which aims to control, now under new forms, even the ?bare life?.