Marcelo Raffin

Marcelo Raffin is Full Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), and Principal Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) of Argentina at the Gino Germani Research Institute of the UBA. He holds a Ph.D. and an HDR in Philosophy from the University of Paris 8. He is also Director of the Program of Foucauldian Studies (PEF), the Group for Critical Studies in Politics, Law, and Society (PoDeS) at the UBA, and the UBACyT Project 20020190100141BA Mod. I "Scope and Potentialities of the Notion of Politics in Michel Foucault", (2020–2025). His areas of work and research include contemporary philosophy, political and social theory, critical thinking of coloniality, human rights and memory, and Michel Foucault’s thinking.

The project 

Title: The Production of "the Human" in Western Modernity Through the Tension Between Biopolitics, Thanatopolitics, and Necropolitics: The Case of the Indigenous Peoples of Patagonia at the Universal Exhibitions of Paris in the Late 19th Century

"This research project seeks to broaden our understanding of certain processes involved in the formation and production of the idea of 'the human' in Western modernity by analyzing the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that it entailed. It does so through the study of a particular case: the Indigenous peoples of Patagonia who were brought to the Paris World’s Fairs at the end of the nineteenth century. To this end, the project takes as its starting point the critique of the modern subject developed by Michel Foucault throughout his work, particularly the ideas presented in The Order of Things (Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines, 1966). It also draws on the shift in Foucault’s analysis during the mid-1970s toward the interrelationship between life and power—what he conceptualized as biopower—which he identified as a decisive feature of the modern Western world. By examining the exhibition and representation of Patagonian Indigenous peoples within the context of the Paris World’s Fairs, the project aims to explore how modern regimes of knowledge and power contributed to defining the boundaries of humanity, citizenship, and otherness, while simultaneously producing forms of exclusion that were central to the constitution of the modern subject."

Hosting institution: LSCP, Laboratoire de Changement Social et Politique, Université Paris Cité

Selective Bibliography

• Cuerpos, disciplinas y subjetividad: la matriz foucaultiana como caja de herramientas para el análisis de la conquista y la colonización de América, en Hybris. Revista de Filosofía, vol. 16, nº especial “Discursos y tecnologías de poder. Aportes foucaultianos al debate teórico-político contemporáneo”, septiembre de 2025, Cenaltes ediciones, Viña del Mar.
• Alcances y potencialidades de la noción de política en Michel Foucault, director y autor, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Editorial Teseo/IIGG-UBA, 2025. ISBN 978-987-723-480-0.
• Una lectura foucaultiana de la tensión entre biopolítica, tanatopolítica y necropolítica en tres experiencias paradigmáticas latinoamericanas, en Dorsal. Revista de Estudios Foucaultianos, nº 18, junio de 2025, Red Iberoamericana Foucault/Universidad Complutense de Madrid/Cenaltes ediciones, Viña del Mar.
• Critique, History and Politics: Notes for a Foucauldian Reading of the So-called Conquest of the Desert in Argentina, en Cuadernos de Filosofía Latinoamericana, vol. 45 n° 131 (2024), Universidad Santo Tomás, Bogotá.
• Derivas de la biopolítica en la arena actual: las nociones de colonialidad y decolonialidad a partir de Michel Foucault, en Meridional. Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos, n° 19, octubre 2022-marzo 2023, Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile.
• Racismo, biopolítica y gubernamentalidad. Derivas de las categorías foucaultianas, en Praxis Filosófica, n° 55, julio-diciembre 2022, Universidad del Valle, Cali.