Entre Foucault e Zizek: Backlash estatal e o recrudescimento penal na pós-modernidade

Abstract

The research aimed to analyze the phenomenon of state backlash within the Brazilian penal system, investigating its theoretical foundations, concrete manifestations, and implications for the legitimacy of Criminal Law and the protection of fundamental rights. Drawing on the theoretical contributions of Michel Foucault and Slavoj Zizek, the study examines how punitive power, rather than merely repressing illicit conduct, operates as a political instrument of social control, discipline, and management of insecurity. Adopting a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive methodology based on bibliographic review and documentary analysis, the research demonstrates that contemporary penal harshening does not stem from an actual increase in crime but rather constitutes an ideological and symbolic reaction of the State in the face of the legitimacy crisis characteristic of postmodernity. In the Brazilian context, the backlash manifests itself through legislative hyperinflation, mass incarceration, and the racial and class selectivity of the criminal justice system, legitimized by the media discourse on public security and by symbolic Criminal Law. It was found that such practices, instead of protecting legal goods or reducing violence, reproduce structural inequalities and reinforce the State’s authoritarian logic. The study concludes that overcoming this paradigm requires a structural transformation of public and legal policies, emphasizing emancipatory measures and the centrality of fundamental rights, replacing a punitive rationality with a democratic and humanist one