Marcelo Raffin

Marcelo Raffin is a professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and a principal researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), 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 Foucauldian Studies Program (PEF), the Critical Studies Group on Politics, Law, and Society (PoDeS) at the UBA, and the UBACyT project 20020190100141BA Mod. I “Scope and Potential of the Tension Between Biopolitics, Thanatopolitics, and Necropolitics” (2026–2028). His areas of work and research include contemporary philosophy, political and social theory, critical reflection on coloniality, human rights, memory, and the thought of Michel Foucault.

The project

Title: The Construction of “the Human” in Western Modernity Through the Tension Between Biopolitics, Thanatopolitics, and Necropolitics: The Case of the Indigenous Peoples of Patagonia at the World’s Fairs in Paris in the Late 19th Century

"This research project aims to broaden our understanding of certain processes involved in the formation and construction of the concept of “the human” in Western modernity by analyzing the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that this concept has entailed, in light of the tensions arising from the relationship between biopolitics, thanatopolitics, and necropolitics, drawing on the specific case study of the indigenous peoples of Patagonia who were brought to the World’s Fairs in Paris at the end of the 19th century. These exhibitions of indigenous peoples and peoples from colonial territories have recently been critically conceptualized under the term “human zoo.” “Human zoos” were conceived as an ethnographic spectacle grounded in scientific racism and social Darwinism. However, the processes of defining “the human” involved in “human zoos” are not solely rooted in the past. Their power is renewed in every act of inclusion and exclusion that continues to redefine national projects today, particularly in Latin America. This is why this research also presents itself—drawing on the Foucauldian language to which it claims to belong—as a contribution to a “critical ontology of the present.”."

Hosting Institution(s): Laboratoire de changement social et politique (LCSP) -  Université Paris Cité

Selective Bibliography

• Contributions of Michel Foucault’s Thought for the Analysis of Latin American Dictatorships, en Revista de Filosofía Aurora, v. 39, 2026, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Paraná, Curitiba. (accepté pour publication)
• 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.
• 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.