Sovereignty, state of exception and killable beings in the theater of operations of the Operativo Independencia (Tucumán, Argentina, 1975-1977)

Abstract

On this paper we analyze the conditions of possibility of the exercise of state violence that both conscripts and residents of the theater of operations underwent during the Operativo Independencia (Tucuman, 1975-1977). We argue that those experiences were marked by the existence of a state of emergency, which allowed the suspension of constitutional guarantees in southern Tucuman and empowered the production of killable beings submitted to the sovereign power of life and death and to the forms of subjugation and abuse established by the military authorities. In this line of analysis, we will raise that the reconstruction of this experience involves two overlapping frames: the bureaucratic logic of compulsory military service (based on the contempt for the lives of the soldiers “under flag”) and the political repression displayed in southern Tucuman, during the Operativo Independencia, characterized for its illegal and clandestine nature.