Banca de DEFESA: JOÃO VITOR DOS SANTOS CRUZ

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : JOÃO VITOR DOS SANTOS CRUZ
DATE: 27/05/2026
TIME: 10:00
LOCAL: Programa de Pós-graduação em Filosofia - Sala 2
TITLE:

HOMO CRIMINALIS AS HOMO OECONOMICUS: Neoliberalism and the Governance of Behavior

KEY WORDS:

Homo criminalis. Homo oeconomicus. Governmentality. Neoliberalism. Security 

PAGES: 96
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Filosofia
SUMMARY:

The research, entirely bibliographic, analyzes the conception of the criminal subject as an economic subject within neoliberalism, based on Michel Foucault’s reading. In the lectures of the course The Birth of Biopolitics (1979), Foucault conceives neoliberalism as a form of governmentality exercised through processes of subjectivacion in the form of market competition. The problem lies in understanding how the individualizing mechanisms of disciplines – which constitute the offender as a criminal whose dangerousness must be contained – are displaced by a form of government of conduct that establishes processes of subjectivation for all individuals as economic subjects. The criminal, or homo criminalis, would have been conceived by neoliberals in the form of the economic subject, homo oeconomicus, wich would imply a series of displacements in the legal and penal system. With the disciplines, the criminal became the object of a body of knowledge whose normalizing effects had the individual’s body as their main point of exercise. From a complex relationship between the fields of psychiatry, law and anthropology, notions such as “perversion”, “degeneration” and “dangerousness” emerge. However, under neoliberal rationality, the infraction is thought of as mere conduct that entails risk in order to obtain profit. Conceiving the offender within the grid of intelligibility of homo oeconomicus is one of the ways found by neoliberals to establish neoliberalism as a technology of government. In view of this, Foucault reflects on the transformations that neoliberal rationality imposes on its penal and criminal systems, how the criminal subject appears submitted to the grid of intelligibility of homo oeconomicus and what its governmental effects are. The environmental intervention of neoliberalism constitutes a field of freedom under the competitive logic in which individuals undertake their actions, which suggests the necessity of security mechanisms as a counterweight to this neoliberal game of freedom. It is concluded that the notion of dangerousness remains valid within neoliberal security mechanisms.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - ***.499.008-** - MALCOM GUIMARÃES RODRIGUES - UEFS
Externo à Instituição - ERNANI PINHEIRO CHAVES - UFPA
Externa à Instituição - GIOVANA CARMO TEMPLE