By Mehdi Mesmoudi (UABCS)
We are a just society. Blood distracts us, attracts us, corrodes us. Thirsting for righteousness and firmness, we call for compensation for the damage and centuries of violence. And when the evildoer is already prostrate in humiliation, an indelibly merciful being emerges from our chest, full of greatness and ready to offer forgiveness. What happens inside us so that our spirit crosses from one end to the other the most unspeakable region of horror and the human condition? What awakens in us the thanatic appetite to later become an impulse of piety, perhaps a wisp of consolation? We will probably never know, or perhaps psychoanalysis will reveal something of this social and cultural enigma. What is certain is that the human being, in itself, is a deeply mysterious creature, fascinated by darkness and shadows, more obsessed than animals by the destruction of their own species.
Alejandro Nava Tovar is a professor-researcher at the National Institute of Criminal Sciences, a doctor in Philosophy from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, a former scholarship recipient of the German Academic Exchange Department and a member of the National System of Researchers. In Punitive populism. Criticism of modern criminal discourse (2021), the author outlines a thorough explanation of the sociocultural and political phenomenon through the combination of several fields of study such as political philosophy, criminal law, criminology and sociology. The book includes a lucid prologue by Ángel Octavio Álvarez Solís, who is a professor at the Institute of Aesthetics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and states that: “Our era is in a moment of crisis because it is time for criticism” (2021, p .XI). In addition, the book is made up of six chapters and a varied and quite up-to-date bibliography on the topic in question.
In 1829, Victor Hugo had already warned us, in the midst of the spectacle of executions during the French Revolution, how Parisian society was gathering, feverish by the fall of the enemies of the revolution; criminals, thieves, low social class, ruined by a memorable time. The furious mob gathered on the balconies, suffocating the square, receiving the vehicle carrying the man sentenced to death with vituperation and mad laughter. The guillotine should have been an effective procedure that would speed up the act itself, but it intensified the previous ritual that increased the delirium and anguish of waiting for the accused. The guillotine must have been a nightmare in the minds of deviant individuals. But the nameless character – Hugo tells us – only remembers, in the midst of the shouting, his daughter:
My poor daughter! Six more hours and I’ll be dead. […] What these men are going to do with your father. None of them hate me; everyone pities me and everyone could save me. But they are going to kill me. Do you understand, Marie? Kill me in cold blood, in a ceremony, for the good of the thing (Hugo, 2004, p. 153).
Are we a different society than two centuries ago? What differences do we observe between Victor Hugo’s society and ours? Without a doubt, the degradation of human beings and the debasement of their condition have led us to think that one person’s life is worth more or less than another. Alejandro Nava Tovar warns us that the sense of justice wrapped in a nostalgia for purity and with a nebulous base of hate, resentment and revenge has been installed in the political discourse that, lately, has gained importance and has an exponential presence due to new technologies. and social networks, while dragging our societies to legitimize police brutality, legal absolutism and popular unreason. What we call “public opinion” – which had previously been civil food for the nineteenth-century revolutions against the Old Regime – today takes over the collective social imagination and overwhelms the political scene of a nation.
Punitive populism is a social, political and cultural spectrum that reveals the nature of individual, institutional and corporate behavior, since it allows us to extract an x-ray of the extent to which human dignity is today in an unprecedented abyss. The author warns us that this phenomenon challenges any penal system, tradition of law or morality, since it is based on democratic representation and its institutions, by postulating itself as a response to an extreme crisis, establishing itself as an ideology devoid of values, exalting a leader who expresses the sovereignty of a people. These constitutive ingredients allow punitive populism to go beyond penal discourse and explore social, political and cultural dimensions; That is to say, how the disproportionate demand for punishments and deprivation of liberty contributes to the promotion of visceral policies that feed the thirst for social justice and, at the same time, bring charismatics to the top of power to impose – on just as in the times of Maximilien Robespierre – a reign of terror and fear.
The question that always remains in our consciousness is whether the executioners who traffic in our peace of mind deserve an alternative consideration to punishment and prison because, deep down, we think that an exemplary punishment inevitably leads to the improvement of society. Therefore, we must ask ourselves again: how different are we from that society disturbingly described by Victor Hugo in 1829? In this spirit of questioning ourselves, the author of the book asks:
But how is it that punitive populism, which always has a negative or pejorative semantic load and a questionable normative validity, manages to penetrate all the social and political layers of modern societies? How does it inseminate itself in the social imagination and end up passing sentences? How does it end up promoting a confinement society? (Nava Tovar, 2021, p. 22)
The author reminds us that the media has allowed a spectacular staging of this phenomenon by establishing well-defined profiles of the actors who participate in this criminal plot: “the criminals seen as popular demons, the victims with or without a voice in the public sphere, corrupt and/or ineffective police agencies in the face of crime and anonymous avengers as representatives of true justice” (p. 40). Are we not, hidden behind a profile on a social network, an attempt to assume a mask of justice and compensate for the damage they have caused to our family?
More than a thorough review of each chapter of the book, this text is an invitation to reflect on our most deeply rooted values through which we make our daily judgments in relation to certain events in our lives. We will not be alien to the atrocious spectacle in El Salvador, where thousands and thousands of prisoners accused of organized crime are held. Possibly, for a moment, that cruel and darkly hopeful landscape calms us, but aren’t there other ways to confront a problem that threatens us? Definitely, “[n]Our time is in a moment of crisis because it is time for criticism.” And this book by Alejandro Nava Tovar is a strong shock that requires us not to surrender to this danger that besieges our life in society.
References
Hugo, V. (2004). The last day of a person sentenced to death (ed. and trans. by Martín García González), Madrid: Akal
Nava Tovar, A. (2021). Punitive populism. Criticism of modern criminal discourseMexico: National Institute of Criminal Sciences & ZELA, 186p.
Note
This text was initially published in Panorama. Magazine of the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur, No. 67, corresponding to the month of April 2023. Recovered from: https://www.uabcs.mx/documentos/revistaPanorama/Panorama%20digital%20revista%20No%209.pdf
Author
Mehdi Mesmoudi is a Professor-researcher in the Academic Department of Humanities of the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur (UABCS). Contact email: m.mesmoudi@uabcs.mx
Illustration credit
Image provided by the author.
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