State repression as a psychosocial control device in colombian universities, 1981-1991

Abstract

This article analyzes social repression as a mechanism of state control devices to coun-teract the malaise and youthful rebellion in the National University of Colombia (UNAL), Antioquia (UdeA) and Industrial de Santander (UIS), from 1981 to 1991. The hypothesis is based on the theory of devices delineated by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben in the transition from disciplinary societies to control societies. The analysis used variables such as public violence, private violence and social protest. This article handles a qualitative research methodology, for this, semi-struc-tured interviews were conducted following a narrative model to thirty-five people, who between 1981-1991 were political activists or sympathizers of the left in previously mentioned universities; this information was correlated with the statistics of murders and disappearances of the National Center of Historical Memory and Silenced Lives. The findings show an urban repression directed mostly at sympathetic students of the left, on the other hand, this repression is significant in specific spatialities, which revalidates that violence rather than a national effect should be un-derstood as a local cause. This article contributes to the psychosocial studies of violence, since it considers that it is not only an irrational symptom, on the contrary, it is likely to be part of a conscious network of personal and collective repression orchestrated as a behavioral mechanism by the establishment.