Viajando e punindo
Mnemosine December 24, 2025 Sandro Rodrigues
Drawing on Foucault's analysis of power in Discipline and Punish, and its extensions by Deleuze and Mbembe, the article critiques the medicalization and prohibition of psychedelics. It examines how knowledge and practices around drugs were historically constructed between normalization by scientific discourse and criminalization of users. The text argues that contemporary technologies of confinement and panoptic surveillance from disciplinary societies coexist with algorithmic modulation and flow management from control societies, alongside necropolitical genocide that reenacts ancient sovereign power. The history of Western scientific interest in psychedelics illustrates how truth regimes and power technologies silence dissident voices and naturalize inequalities. The article reaffirms the importance of Foucauldian analysis and calls for more critical analyses to regulate psychedelics without reproducing medicalizing and exclusionary logics.