Religious apparatus and confinement: On Argentine prison governmentality

Abstract

This paper inquires about the religious apparatus as a governmentality tactic of the penitentiary service in Argentina. With that end, it examines the historical link between the religious and prison apparatuses in the design of a modern penal system; it describes the introduction of a new religious apparatus in the national prisons, Pentecostal evangelism; it analyzes the discursive framework that makes possible the emergency of that apparatus as a governmentality tactic in Argentine prisons; finally, it investigates the configuration of new power relations (formal and informal reciprocities) that the religious apparatus generates in the routine of confinment.