Socioeconomic Stratification as a Biopolitical Process: Social and Racial Divisions and Their Representations in Juan Cárdenas' Los estratos

Abstract

The socioeconomic stratification of Colombia is a housing classification system that establishes a subsidy mechanism in which an extra cost is charged to finance payments for public services for the lower strata. The present article tries to demonstrate that this public policy is a biopolitical process oriented—in Foucaultian terms—to make people live, whose implementation accentuates social and racial segregations. The article shows such segregations are represented in the novel Los estratos, written by Juan Cárdenas, and it explains why they constitute the central matter for a contextual exegesis of this literary work.