Political violence and the State. Seeing « radicalisation » as a « dispositif »

At first glance, it seems that « radicalisation » is a new object –an object that appeared as a problem in the aftermath of the Madrid et London bombings, in 2004 and 2005, indicating a change in the way of problematizing political violence. The paper takes it to be a “dispositif”, in Foucault’s sense of the word: an “heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural layouts, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions”; more specifically, “the system of relations that can be established between these elements”. Building on the Belgian case, it examines the specificities of this new strategic formation and analyses the shifts it involves. Special attention is paid to the shifts from forms of government through crime to forms of government through suspicion, and to the erasure of the rule of law.