Politics of Criminology: Punitive Power and Lines of Insurrection
by Augusto Jobim do Amaral
pp. 126-147 Issue 19 (10,1) – January-June 2023 ISSN (online): 2539/2239 ISSN (print): 2389-8232 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14718/SoftPower.2023.10.1.8
Abstract
The article seeks to put the criminological criticism in check and produce a “politics of criminology”. The criticism of punitive power stems from three indispensable perspectives. First, assuming punitive power as a device that conveys knowledge, power, and subjectivities. Second, imploding the statist focus of its exercise, analyzing the modes of visibility that justify it and inquiring about the ways of life subjectively forged through punitive forms. Finally, questioning what it means to “punish”, oblivious to mere repression, but as a production, above all, of freedoms ready to be governed, to reach the central question of how the society punishes today. The article aims to expose the immediate struggles of autonomous movements such as those that make the government’s punishment strategies more visible and, above all, demonstrate other possible ways of life that never forsake destabilizing punitive power.