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The Meaning of Alan García: Sovereignty and Governmentality in Neoliberal Peru

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13569325.2011.588514

1469-9575

Paulo Drinot,

Politics and Society in Latin America

Abstract This paper draws on Foucault's distinction between sovereign power and governmentality, and on subsequent theoretical developments of that distinction by, among others, Agamben, Butler, Wendy Brown and Aiwha Ong, to explore a key aspect of the neoliberal 'revolution' of current Peruvian president Alan García. I argue that García's instrumental conflation of political and biopolitical enemies in his denunciations of those who oppose his revolution reveals both how his project of rule is inherently racialized (and racist), premised as it is on the overcoming of indigeneity, and why, for this very reason, despite its apparently novel neoliberal veneer, it is best understood as the latest iteration of the myriad elite projects of rule enacted against the population that have characterized Peruvian history. Notes 1 I am grateful to two anonymous JLACS reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this article. This is a revised and updated version of my chapter in García Linera et al. (2010 García Linera, Álvaro. 2010. América Latina: 200 años y nuevos horizontes, Buenos Aires: Secretaría de Cultura de la Presidencia de la Nación. [Google Scholar]). 2 Although some, such as Nelson Manrique, argue that APRA's current iteration has far deeper roots in the party's history than many realise. See Manrique (2009 Manrique, Nelson. 2009. !Usted fue Aprista! Bases para una historia crítica del APRA, Lima: CLACSO/Fondo Editorial PUCP. [Google Scholar]). 3 Alan García, 'El síndrome del perro del hortelano', El Comercio, 28 October 2007. 4 El Comercio, 24 February 2008. 5 Of course, several parties in Peru claim the name Communist Party, including the Partido Comunista Peruano (a shadow of its former 1970s and 1980s self), the Partido Comunista del Perú-Patria Roja (partially influential by virtue of its influence in SUTEP, the teachers' union), and the Partido Comunista del Perú-Sendero Luminoso (again, largely moribund, with most of its leadership in jail). A useful overview of the genealogy of the various parties claiming the name is provided in the report of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, www.cverdad.org.pe. 6 I have written on this in Drinot (forthcoming Drinot, Paulo. Forthcoming. Creole Anti-Communism: Labor, The Peruvian Communist Party and APRA, 1930–1934'. Hispanic American Historical Review, [Google Scholar]) 7 As Slavoj Žižek Žižek, Slavoj. 2010. Living in the End of Times, London: Verso. [Google Scholar] has remarked, the anti-burqa discourse in France is marked by an ambiguous reliance on both universalizing claims (the burqa oppresses all women) and particularistic claims (it is anathema to French culture): 'problems […] begin with Sarkozy's statement that veils are "not welcome", because in a secular country like France, they intimidate and alienate non-Muslims … one cannot but note how the allegedly universalist attack on the burqa on behalf of human rights and women's dignity ends up as a defense of particular French way of life' (2010: 1). 8 To be sure, 'fear' is common trope in Latin American politics. 9 Badiou (2007 Badiou, Alain. 2007. De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?, Paris: Lignes. [Google Scholar]: 15) makes an indirect reference, via Deleuze, to this Foucauldian literature: 'Faut-il parler, comme nos amis deleuziens, de "société de contrôle", essentiellement différente de la "société de souveraineté"? Je ne le crois pas. Le contrôle se changera en terrorisme d'Etat pur et simple au premier tournant un peu sérieux des circonstances'. Deleuze (1995 Deleuze, Gilles. 1995. "Postscript on Control Societies". In Negotiations 1972–1990, 177–83. New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]) discusses Foucault's insights into disciplinary society. 10 Much of what has been written on governmentality has been based on two of Foucault's lectures included in Burchell, Gordon and Miller (1991 Burchell, Graham, Colin, Gordon and Peter, Miller, eds. 1991. "The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality". Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). It is only recently that the lectures have been published in toto in several languages. See Foucault 2007 Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978, New York: Palgrave. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and 2008. Useful discussions of these lectures include Valverde 2007 Valverde, Mariana. 2007. Genealogies of European States: Foucauldian Reflections. Economy and Society, 36(1): 159–78. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] and Donzelot 2008 Donzelot, Jacques. 2008. Michel Foucault and Liberal Intelligence. Economy and Society, 37(1): 115–32. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. See also the articles by Stuart Elden, Michael Dillon and Bob Jessop in the Rethinking Governmentality forum in the journal Political Geography 26: 1 (2007): 29–56. 11 See, among others, Prakash (1999 Prakash, Gyan. 1999. Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]); Hannah (2000 Hannah, Matthew G. 2000. Governmentality and the Mastery of Territory in Nineteenth-Century America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]); Joyce (2003 Joyce, Patrick. 2003. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]); Ong (2006 Ong, Aiwha. 2006. Neoliberalism and Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, Durham: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]); Legg (2007 Legg, Stephen. 2007. Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities, Oxford: Blackwell. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]); Li (2007 Li, Tania Murray. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of Politics, Durham: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Particularly useful for making sense of governmentality as an analytical approach are Rose (1999 Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]); Dean (1999 Dean, Mitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society, London: Sage. [Google Scholar]); and Miller and Rose (2008 Miller, Peter and Rose, Nikolas. 2008. Governing the Present: Administering Economic, Social and Personal Life, Cambridge: Polity. [Google Scholar]). 12 'First the state of justice, born in a feudal type of territoriality and broadly corresponding to a society of customary and written law, with a whole interplay of commitments and litigations; second, the administrative state that corresponds to a society of regulations and disciplines; and finally a state of government that is no longer essentially defined by its territoriality, by the surface occupied, but by a mass: the mass of the population, with its volume, its density, and, for sure, the territory it covers, but which is, in a way, only one of its components. This state of government, which essentially bears on the population and calls upon and employs economic knowledge as an instrument, would correspond to a society controlled by apparatuses of security'(Foucault 2007 Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978, New York: Palgrave. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 110). 13 For a useful discussion of these lectures, see Lemke (2001 Lemke, Thomas. 2001. 'The Birth of Bio-Politics': Michel Foucault's Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo-liberal Governmentality. Economy and Society, 30(2): 190–207. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 14 My argument in some ways connects but in other ways departs from the work of Hale (2002 Hale, Charles R. 2002. Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance, Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala. Journal of Latin American Studies, 34(3): 485–524. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and others on multicultural neoliberalism in Latin America. In my view, in Peru there is little of the hegemonizing or governmentalizing multicultural neoliberalism that is identified in other countries. See, however, García (2005 García, María Elena. 2005. Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Education, and Multicultural Development in Peru, Stanford: Stanford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 15 See Martín Tanaka's article in La República, 1 July 2010. 16 On the idea of a capitalist 'revolution' see Althaus (2007 Althaus, Jaime de. 2007. La revolución capitalista en el Perú, Lima: Fondo de Cultura Económica. [Google Scholar]). 17 It is worth noting how what once was called 'macroeconomic populism' now becomes 'textbook'. See http://www.newsweek.com/2009/07/28/peruvian-peaks.html. On macroeconomic populism, see Dornbusch and Edwards (1991 Dornbusch, Rudiger and Sebastian, Edwards, eds. 1991. The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America, Chicago: Chicago University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 18 Both NGOs that monitor mining investment and the World Bank concur with this assessment. See http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPERUINSPANISH/Resources/TheEnvironmentalandSocialDimensionsoftheMiningSectorinPeru.pdf. 19 See Seligson, Carrión and Zárate (2009 Seligson, Mitchell, Carrión, Julio and Zárate, Patricia. 2009. Cultura política de la democracia en el Perú, 2008: El impacto de la gobernabilidad, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. [Google Scholar]). 20 On institutional reform leading up to García's second presidency, see Crabtree (2006 Crabtree, John, ed. 2006. Making Institutions Work in Peru: Democracy, Development, and Inequality since 1980, London: Institute for the Study of the Americas. [Google Scholar]). 21 See Drinot (2011 Drinot, Paulo. 2011. The Allure of Labor: Workers, Race, and the Making of the Peruvian State, Durham: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). See also Li (2007 Li, Tania Murray. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of Politics, Durham: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 22 On the Bagua 'massacre', see, among others, Rénique (2009 Rénique, Gerardo. 2009. 'Laws of the Jungle in Peru': Indigenous Amazonian Uprising Against Neoliberalism. Socialism and Democracy, 23(2): 117–35. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) and Bebbington (2009 Bebbington, Anthony. 2009. The New Extraction: Rewriting the Political Ecology of the Andes. NACLA Report on the Americas, 42(5): 12–20. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). On conflicts in the mining sector see De Echave et al. (2009 De Echave, José. 2009. Minería y conflicto social, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos/CIPCA. [Google Scholar]). 23 See http://lamula.pe/2010/07/20/no-podran-huevearnos/40. 24 See http://elcomercio.pe/noticia/611284/policia-descolgo-supuesta-bandera-terrorista-que-realidad-era-obra-arte. 25 See, however, artist Natalia Iguiñiz's extraordinary photographic portraits of Peruvian women and their 'empleadas', which subtly challenges, and yet at the same time confirms, dominant perceptions of the racialized nature of this 'working' relationship. http://www.nataliaiguiniz.nom.pe/. 26 See Drinot (2006 Drinot, Paulo. 2006. "Nation-building, Racism, and Inequality: Institutional Development in Peru in Historical Perspective". In Making Institutions Work in Peru: Democracy, Development, and Inequality Since 1980, Edited by: Crabtree, John. 5–23. London: Institute for the Study of the Americas. [Google Scholar]). 27 Alan García, 'El síndrome del perro del hortelano', El Comercio, 28 October 2007. 28 On Vargas Llosa and the 'archaic utopia', see Franco (2006 Franco, Jean. 2006. 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