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CIAO DATE: 10/06
Les paradoxes de la surveillance
Bernard Lacroix
No. 53 - Spring 2004 - Cross Perspectives On Political Surveillance
Abstract
In this article, the French political sociologist Bernard Lacroix raises the question of the relation between liberalism and the state. Indeed, insisting on the fact that the formation of the modern state is inseparable from diverse forms of political surveillance, he asks whether the concept of the “liberal state” is not a contradiction in terms. Is not the function of liberalism to hide and conceal the technologies of control through which the domination of the state is produced and reproduced? Is not modern-day political science, insisting on the impact of the liberal paradigm on state-practices, blinded by the very believes that the state is seeking to propagate about itself. The political sociologist must on the contrary uncover the modes of legitimisation through which the modern state manages to impose its domination.