Dimensões do poder e discursos biopolíticos: o saber e a verdade na culpabilidade penal e neurociência

Abstract

This Dissertation is part of the Social Relations and Dimensions of Power line of research and aims to recognize discourses as forms of manifestation of power, knowledge and truth and as possible mechanisms for exercising biopolitical control. The problem consists of analyzing criminal culpability, based on free will, and Neuroscience, supported by the deterministic processes of human conduct, is influenced by (bio)political discourses in a context of dimensions of power. With the adoption of the theoretical bibliographical scope and the hypothetical deductive method, the first chapter will demonstrate the link between social relations and dimensions of power, using the analysis of power based on the idea of ​​relationship and the dimensions of sovereignty, discipline and of biopower. Next, the link between power and knowledge associated with discourse and the production of truths will be exposed. The second chapter will establish the approximation of these elements with the discourses of criminal culpability and Neuroscience, highlighting the clash between free will and determinism in the justification of human actions. Furthermore, the main positions of criminalists on the possibility or not of coexistence of these two areas of knowledge. The third chapter will present the main criticisms of Criminology regarding the research carried out by Neuroscience, questioning the neutrality of science and its possible relationship with the creation of discourses influenced by relations of power, knowledge and truths. Finally, power, knowledge, discourse and truth will be examined from a biopolitical perspective using as a paradigm the discourses of criminal culpability and Neuroscience. The results obtained indicate that the scientific discourses of criminal culpability and Neuroscience are influenced by elements of power, knowledge and truth and wish to establish themselves as a mechanism for controlling and normalizing conduct through a scientific bias. There is, therefore, a panorama that reveals that it is not just a discussion about scientific neutrality or choice of discourses, but politics, not in the usual sense, but biopolitical.