Performativity of Precarious Bodies of the Venezuelan migrants. Defense against a Threat Produced by Insecurity in Colombia

Abstract

This article reflects on the state of insecurity displayed by the neoliberal State in Colombia, based on an experience of contemporary social conflict framed in the day of protests that broke out in Bogotá, in November 2019, and its relationship with the migratory crisis of Venezuela. The corpus of this analysis is made up of publications (videos, comments, photos and news) that circulated on the Facebook public group Arriendos Bogotá during November 21 and 22, the content of which refers to the protests or excesses presented, and which indicates Venezuelan migrants as responsible. In this way, the purpose of this article is to problematize these communicative acts to approach them as performative acts of political and economic power that produce and reproduce a regime of precariousness of life. The analysis will be made in line with the approaches of Isabell Lorey and Judith Butler to understand how the body and face of precarious people are constructed in a performative way through visual registers, being this a reproduction of a threat and destabilization of an other that is configured as threatened, from the perspective of order and national security, in order to show these people as enemies that must be eliminated because that excess is not governable.