Surveiller, faire croire et punir: The Body of Evidence in Luis Rafael Sánchez’s La pasión según Antígona Pérez

Resumen

A Foucauldian reading of Luis Rafael Sánchez’s play La pasión según Antígona Pérez reveals the importance of the body as a site of punishment as well as of propagandistic strategies in the manipulation of public opinion in the imaginary state of Molina. Surveillance and punishment, alluded to in my title, are thus aided by a complex media apparatus intent on making people believe—“faire croire”—in the official story fabricated by the dictator, Creón Molina, in this Puerto Rican version of the Sophoclean drama. In this context, Antigone’s burial of two combatants killed in a rebellious act acquires a profoundly political and subversive meaning. Her defiant act deprives the penal system of its signifier by removing a crucial part of the tyrant’s repressive strategy.