THE SUBJECT OF WRONGS: Crime, Populism, and Venezuela's Punitive Turn

This article draws on research in Venezuela to make a broader argument about the link between populism and injury. Specifically, it considers the role that crime victimhood plays in the rise of punitive populism or the so-called punitive turn. Under President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan government publicly denounced tough-on-crime policies as instruments of socioeconomic oppression. Following Chavez's death, there was an abrupt change of course due, in part, to the opposition's mobilization of crime victims. The Venezuelan case illustrates a double bind that confronts scholars who are critical of the punitive turn. On the one hand, the figure of the crime victim mediates the body politic in a way that reproduces structures of racial and economic domination. On the other hand, the failure to substantively address the material injuries of crime victims propels grassroots support for punitive populism. Instead of focusing on the subject of rights, this article proposes starting with the subject of wrongs as a bottom-up approach to political subjectivity that can help us understand the dynamic behind punitive populism and show us a way out of the double bind. u