STATE VIOLENCE, EXCEPTION AND DICTATORSHIP IN LATIN AMERICA: HISTORY, THEORY AND CONTEMPORARY DEBATES
In recent decades, historiography has undergone a significant shift in the analysis of the state and state violence, questioning the classical interpretations that, following Max Weber, conceived violence as a regulated and rational attribute of the state monopoly. By contrast, studies on Latin America have shown that state violence can be understood not merely as a deviation from the legal order, but as a constitutive element of certain historical forms of the state under capitalism. From this perspective, this panel proposes to approach the state as a material condensation of the relations of force among classes and class fractions, in line with the precepts developed by Nicos Poulantzas, as well as an active instance in the organization of hegemony and coercion, as problematized by Antonio Gramsci. It also seeks to foster dialogue with other approaches to state theory and with discussions within historiography, in order to broaden the interpretive scope of the contributions. In particular, the categories of the state of exception and state terrorism acquire analytical centrality insofar as they make it possible to understand historical configurations in which the suspension of legal guarantees and the systematic exercise of violence against sectors of the population were not only possible but functional to processes of restructuring power. Far from constituting mere ruptures of the institutional order, these forms can be analyzed as specific modalities of the state form under conditions of hegemonic crisis, in which the relations between coercion and consent, as well as the articulation of the power bloc, are reconfigured. Moreover, this panel situates these processes within the broader framework of Latin America’s dependent insertion into global capitalism, paying attention to the dynamics of imperialism and to the transnational circulation of doctrines, practices and repressive devices. In this sense, regimes of exception and forms of state terrorism cannot be understood apart from international power relations, nor from strategies for the global-scale reorganization of capital. The proposed approach thus articulates state theory, the history of forms of class domination, and studies on violence, while also incorporating perspectives that make it possible to add complexity to the analysis of relations of domination, such as coloniality, racism, classism and gender violence, understood not as external dimensions but as constitutive elements of the historical forms of state violence. Finally, this panel responds to a contemporary context marked by the resurgence of discourses of militarization, securitization and the legitimation of authoritarian practices. In this scenario, the historical analysis of states of exception and state terrorism not only retains its relevance but becomes indispensable for understanding the current transformations of state forms and the new configurations of political domination.
