Marcelo Otero (1960-2024)

In Memoriam: Marcelo Otero (1960-2024)
Professor, Department of sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), member of the Centre de recherche de Montréal sur les inégalités sociales, les discriminations et les pratiques alternatives de citoyenneté (CRÉMIS), and author of Foucault sociologue. Critique de la raison impure (PUQ, 2021)

Specialist in Foucault, whose destabilizing and fruitful thought “renews traditional ways of philosophizing, of thinking about the social, of making history, but above all of problematizing social issues” (2021), Marcelo Otero has been interested throughout his career in the rules of contemporary individuality, or in the articulation between singularities and socialities. His transversal sociological object was what he called “complex social problems”. Seeking to follow the trace of the relationship to normativity, he wondered about what poses a problem, to whom it poses a problem, in what social contexts and for what effects. Mental health and depression, the role of institutions in the construction of these phenomena, drug consumption and its consequences, and social suffering were his favorite subjects.

His passion for debate, his insatiable desire to deconstruct in order to renew and modernize sociological thought is at the center of his approach as a researcher and has favored the dissemination of his thought in many countries.

Hommage à Marcelo Otero – Extraits vidéo, Feb 9, 2024