La subversión como epidemia La legitimación discursiva de la violencia política

Subversion as an epidemic The discursive legitimization of political violence

Abstract

This article explores the way in which the exercise of political violence is discursively legitimised. Starting from the idea that alterity is part of the way in which identities are constructed, adversaries and enemies are studied as potentialities of the other. A discursive analysis of some of the main theorists and practitioners of the French Doctrine, as a way of interpreting war in ideological rather than territorial terms, allows us to understand the way in which certain violent practices against the political enemy are explained and justified. The understanding of subversion as a lethal disease, susceptible to spreading through the social body and destroying the healthy cells, poses the geopolitical bipolarity of the Cold War with enormous simplicity. The testimonies consulted present a problem, a solution, and a single agent with the capacity to carry it out –the armed forces–; they also state the need to sacrifice part of the ill body in order to save society as a whole.