CONSTITUTIONALISM AND BIOPOLITICS
A CRITIQUE BASED ON THE BOLIVIAN CONSTITUTIONALIST EXPERIENCE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52428/30074320.v2i4.1331Keywords:
Plurinational constitutionalism, Biopolitics, Governmentality, Legal recognition, Decolonization, Legal pluralismAbstract
This article offers a critical analysis of the new Bolivian constitutionalism from a philosophical-legal perspective, based on the hypothesis that, despite its transformative discourse, the constitutional order established in 2009 does not break with the logic of modern power but rather reorganizes its mechanisms through renewed forms of governmental rationality. Using a critical-interpretive approach, the study combines theoretical and documentary analysis to explore the relationship between law, biopolitics, and coloniality, drawing on the conceptual frameworks of Foucault, Agamben, Esposito, Quijano, and Rivera Cusicanqui.The argument posits that the inclusion of Indigenous Native Peasant Peoples operates as an ambivalent form of recognition that both empowers and subjugates. Law functions as a technology for managing life, producing juridical and political subjectivities according to criteria of state validation. The proclaimed legal pluralism is subordinated to a centralized normative structure that imposes conditions of compatibility and oversight, thus reproducing colonial hierarchies under the grammar of collective rights.Using the concept of immunity, the analysis explains how the plurinational state preserves its internal cohesion through the controlled inclusion of difference, neutralizing its disruptive potential. The conclusion drawn is that the new constitutionalism does not transcend the biopolitical paradigm, but rather reconfigures it through a discourse of functional decolonization. In response, the article proposes the need to envision a form of law that does not manage life but enables its epistemic, political, and communal liberation beyond the framework of the state.
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