PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Riccardi, Giuseppe Gatti
TI  - Normalisation of the body in good governments. From disciplinary practices in the authoritarian state to the construction of docility in the protective state in the narrative by Silvia Hopenhayn
DP  - 2022 Dec 20
TA  - Romanica Olomucensia
PG  - 209--228
VI  - 34
IP  - 2
AID - 10.5507/ro.2022.019
IS  - 18034136
AB  - The analysis proposed in the following pages focuses on the novel Ginebra, published in 2018 by the Argentine writer Silvia Hopenhayn. The purpose lies in placing the work within the framework of the studies of the modalities of literary representation of the events of the recent history of the Southern Cone nations, in the thematic axis of the captive bodies. In particular, the approach to the text tries to verify the degree of application of Michel Foucault's reflections about the disciplinary methods of surveillance, control, and education of the body put in place by the institutions of power of modernity. The analysis seeks to transfer Foucault's observations related to the disciplinary practices of framing to certain modalities of subjection of the bodies that Hopenhayn raises in her novel. It will be shown how Ginebra is a text in which different motifs related to the body-power relationship are installed; they can be summarised in: a) the experience of the corporal subjection of the protagonist of the novel in her Argentine years, when the government's purpose is to defend society, giving rise to a process of nationalisation of war; b) the disciplinary practices of rigid state control - in the host country - aimed at guaranteeing "from above" the perfect social order, linked to the idea of well-being. The reading of Ginebra is suggested as a literary representation of: a) the progressive collapse of the subjective identity of the political migrant as an effect of the impossibility of communicating; b) the existence of a form of biopolitical harassment also by the protective State, dedicated to building obedient individuals.