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

 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).

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).

 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).

 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)

 7 As Slavoj Žižek 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: 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) 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). It is only recently that the lectures have been published in toto in several languages. See Foucault 2007 and 2008. Useful discussions of these lectures include Valverde 2007 and Donzelot 2008. 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); Hannah (2000); Joyce (2003); Ong (2006); Legg (2007); Li (2007). Particularly useful for making sense of governmentality as an analytical approach are Rose (1999); Dean (1999); and Miller and Rose (2008).

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: 110).

13 For a useful discussion of these lectures, see Lemke (2001).

14 My argument in some ways connects but in other ways departs from the work of Hale (2002) 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).

15 See Martín Tanaka's article in La República, 1 July 2010.

16 On the idea of a capitalist ‘revolution’ see Althaus (2007).

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).

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).

20 On institutional reform leading up to García's second presidency, see Crabtree (2006).

21 See Drinot (2011). See also Li (2007).

22 On the Bagua ‘massacre’, see, among others, Rénique (2009) and Bebbington (2009). On conflicts in the mining sector see De Echave et al. (2009).

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).

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).

29 On colonial governmentality, see Scott (1995). On commandement, see Mbembe (2001).

30 Alan García, ‘El síndrome del perro del hortelano’, El Comercio, 28 October 2007.

31 Wall Street Journal, 28 April and 3 May 2008.