| Summary: | This article presents N. Poulantzas' theory of the individualisation of the social body. Firstly, the theory of individualisation describes how the social body is constituted as a political body in modern capitalist societies. Secondly, the theory of individualisation also offers a materialist insight into the problem of the making of modern subjectivities. By linking the two main axes of his theory of individualisation (the social body and the individual), N. Poulantzas challenges the major schools of thought of his time, in an attempt to prove why a Marxist theory of the modern representative state remains relevant and not obsolete, despite the various criticisms. The individualisation of the social body operates through various devices (disciplinary normalisation, ideological inculcation, techniques of fear, open political and social repression), and its analysis allows us to understand how this individualisation is closely linked to the operations of unification that the state carries out in the name of social and national cohesion, and how we can think about the relationship between the individual and capitalist state power, At the same time, strategies can be devised to enable a democratic transition to socialism, and to liberate the subjectivities associated with the state-form from the substratum of exploitation and subjugation that a class-divided society reproduces.
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