Immunization and militarization of the social body in Colombia: the State in permanent emergency

Abstract

In this paper I analyze how the strategies of counterinsurgency warfare undertaken in Colombia during the sixties and seventies recreate an immunity politics device. I argue that this device is based on a notion where the nation is understood as a social body threatened and infected by communist ideologies and where the idea of safety and protection involving the administration of violence. I argue that this immunity politics device operates under a self-destructive logic and a notion of delocalized threat that encouraged the militarization of society, the management of fear and the maintenance of State in a permanent emergency. These facts, in turn, enabled to the appeal to the constitutional exceptionalism as a form of standardized government.