ABSTRACT
In case a touch of papal infallibility is needed, we could start with Pope Francis and his advocating resistance to ‘uniform systems of economic power at the service of unseen empires’ (Francis, 2014). These empires are then endowed with some, if elusive, visibility through the lens of Foucault’s ‘governmentality’ (2007: 104, 108–9), a perception extended to the absorption of the dictates of ‘development’. Law thence is found to be imperative in the operational efficacy of this governmentality. As such, it could be called the law implicate. Yet the same qualities of law that enable this coherence are (also) qualities intrinsic to law itself. This could be called in Foucault’s terms the law of ‘the outside’ (1987: 34), a law ever capable of transformative effect.
