The Arrangement of the Government of Life: The Practice of Biopolitics in Colombia

This article discusses the implementation of the principle of the governance of life in Colombia, as part of an analysis on the forms of social and political uses of knowledge, in particular of hygiene. The practice and discipline of hygiene is considered to have provided the State with useful resources for forging new links with the population, especially during the process of its consolidation, from the end of the 19th century until the middle of the twentieth century. These possibilities enabled the State to create, and at the same time, control citizens’ bodies, in various ways and among diverse social groups. Hygienic practice brought together international scientific knowledge with regional efforts toward homogenization, as well as national and local needs for differentiation. In order to study these links, the text focuses on the interaction between the hygiene discipline, its professionals, the international networks of knowledge exchange, and the principal hygiene mechanisms that were introduced to manage the population. Finally, the article reflects on some differences between the national situation and the most distinctive characteristics of the genealogy of biopower.