Toward a Genealogy of Social Defense

There was a time when crimes of a political nature were regarded positively and seen as worthy of recognition for their intrinsic value. To our understanding today, this nineteenth-century outlook is so distant that it can be difficult to imagine its ever having been in effect. This essay examines the Italian school of criminological positivism at the turn of the nineteenth century to account for this different view of political crime. This analysis, indebted to Foucauldian genealogy, seeks to reframe the principle of social defense as an infrastructure of the penal field that allows the author to illuminate some of its operations still in use. The essay works to show that we are heirs more to criminological positivism than to the liberal tradition—and that this legacy is in fact more evident today than during past historical conjunctures.