Dangerous Instincts: Foucault, Criminality, and Animals

Instintos peligrosos. Foucault, criminalidad y animales

This article analyzes, from a Foucaldian anti-speciesist approach, historic articulations between animalizing criminality and criminalizing animals. To do this, we will follow this path: first, we will review Foucault’s genealogical reconstruction of the “dangerous individual” notion in the 19th century, where instinct appears as an archaic will driving the individual to crime; then, we will explore the emergence in tandem of the problem of animal instinct in raising practices, the maintenance and exploitation of animal races in the 18 to 19th centuries. Finally, we will see how in criminal anthropology, crime is understood as a physiological abnormality traversing the whole animal kingdom. Thus, we will show that power over animal life and punishment power have been linked throughout history on the problem of instinct that puts the species at risk as a biopolitical phenomenon.