This analysis introduces two solid critical arguments—one ontological, the other historical—that illuminate the unique features of the theory of encryption of power, what sets it apart from other theoretical endeavors. The results are deeply intertwined, highlighting the theory’s unified structure.

The historical proof: It focuses on a quantum leap in the meaning of sovereignty from the unprecedented fusion of people and sovereignty in modern constitutions, especially those influenced (imposed?) by the USA model. This fusion is shown to have created a novel, highly impenetrable and insidious form of power, where the people are simultaneously sovereign and exception. Thus, the people can be killed, displaced or excluded by invoking their own name. It analyzes how this paradox materializes in the creation of a “hidden people”, based on an aberrant construction of another imagined set of people (people as a totality or people as a synecdoche) that is, the people carved out of those included (whites, owners, etc.) and how, from this fraudulent fracture, sovereignty achieves the most massive neutralization of political agency ever seen. 

Let us anticipate the key to encryption: Without the “hidden people” the fantasy (fetish) of the people as a totality does not work, in fact it could not exist, but it exists exclusively from the negation of the hidden people, this is the great paradox of constitutional coloniality. The hidden people are the “excess,” of the political body, the excluded element needed to preserve the transcendent, yet unattainable, model of liberal order.

The ontological proof: It is based on a critical review of the Aristotelian concepts of potentia and actuality, specifically the distinction between Energeia and Entelecheia. It is argued that the dominant Western interpretation of power has privileged Entelecheia, that is, actualization as the realization of a predetermined end (telos). In contrast, I propose to rescue Energeia, as an immanent and continuous process, as the foundation of a politics of contingency and difference. This proof seeks to demonstrate that the precondition of the world is that no being can be qualified to exist, and that the only necessity of politics is absolute contingency. 

In other words, it demonstrates that democracy, as the possibility of another world, is necessary in all possible worlds (Sanín-Restrepo 2021b). Democracy is the contingent collective possibility of transforming the given world. Any impossibility of doing so, which calls itself democracy, is a mere violent simulacrum of the world.

Premise: In a genuine (non-liberal) democracy, “there can be no qualification to communicate difference. Democracy, as the only materiality of politics, casts forth the most beautiful paradox of philosophy: politics is the question of all questions because it is the question of who can formulate questions, of who counts (Sanín-Restrepo 2018).

Both tests converge on the theory of the encryption of power, which reveals how modern sovereignty operates through simulation and exclusion, creating an illusion of democratic participation while perpetuating a system of domination. Now, the ontological proof is responsible for decrypting and therefore destroying this simulation completely. 

The Sovereignty Trap: The Hidden People and the Encryption of Power

Let’s start with a question. In the history of Western sovereignty (understood as the absolute, autonomous, original power that creates normality and exception from the exception) what happens to concepts such as “resistance”, “obedience”, “worship”, “legality” when the sovereign is no longer God, or a monarch, or a nation, that is to say, an exteriority, but when the supposed sovereign is the people themselves? That is, what happens when sovereign, exception, obedience, etc., becomes absolute interiority? What happens, ultimately, when the people can be killed, displaced, starved in the name of the people themselves?

Well, this is the first historical foundation of the theory of the encryption of power. To verify the emergence of a completely new and extremely impenetrable and deceitful form of power as domination (potestas) through, 1. The fraudulent fusion of people and sovereignty in contemporary constitutions, and 2. The fracture of the concept of the people to achieve this monstrosity.

Let us remember Schmitt’s paradigmatic definition of sovereignty, reinforced by Agamben; “Sovereign is the one who decides on the exception from the exception.” (Agamben 1998). 

Let us then explain a central thesis of the theory of encryption power that defines a profound shift in what we understand as power, agency, domination and liberation. 

The interplay between coloniality and liberalism creates the most ruthless machine of domination in history: primarily (though not exclusively), through the U.S.-style constitutions and their almost universal expansion and acceptance (proxys), the people become at the same time the exception (the excluded, who can be legitimately killed) and the (simulated) sovereign. Sovereign and exception merge into an impenetrable apparatus. This is the fundamental logical upshot: what the order is and what the order excludes – in order to be – becomes the same, normality and exception are con-fused in a single substance (Sanín-Restrepo 2016). 

Thus, “We the People” is the most terrifying fusion of power and the purest form of violence under an impermeable armor of legitimacy. (Sanín-Restrepo and Machado-Araujo 2025).

The people become the transcendent and mystical model of their own exclusion. The people set themselves up as a fetish of legitimacy of the wars to subjugate and expropriate them. Injustice is naturalized as justice. Crime as law. The exterior becomes the interior, as the exception becomes the simulated sovereign (See, Matos 2025^[ii]).

As I have argued:

The ambush of the people that renders them ‘constituent power’ follows a simple logic. Make the people the sovereign, devolve sovereignty to a norm, deactivate the people within the norm, capture its energy in legality, deny their access to language, expel their bodies to the triturating machine of the market. (Sanín-Restrepo 2016).^[iii]

Sovereignty is not a straightforward concept of supreme authority, but a complex and often deceptive mechanism of power. It is inextricably linked to “potestas,” the exercise of power through domination, which involves the deliberate stratification of conditions to limit who can actually exercise it.

This domination is achieved through the construction of rigid systems of identity, the imposition of transcendent modelsthat define life and, therefore, the monopolization of power, effectively denying difference and limiting and distributing the exercise of power. 

This power, in its contemporary aspect, is based on the creation of the “hidden people”, those excluded from full legal protection, abandoned to the violence of the market, relegated to a liminal space where they are subject to arbitrary power, serving as the exception that reinforces the norm (immigrants crossing the Mediterranean who reinforce the image of European citizens).

The Fracture of the People

For “potestas” (or power as domination), to reach its maximum impenetrability, a crucial operation is required: the fracture of the concept of the people. This strategic division is established between a “people as a totality” and a “hidden people”. The former represents the façade of inclusion and participation, while the latter encompasses those excluded and marginalized, whose existence is essential to maintaining the illusion of wholeness. This fracture is the cornerstone of the encryption of power, as it allows sovereignty to operate through simulation and exclusion, thus perpetuating a seemingly legitimate system of domination. 

As Jacques Rancière (2001) has clearly shown us, modern politics, at its core, revolves around the “part of no part,” a paradoxical structure where the apparent totality of the political body is defined by its inherent incompleteness. This totality, a “false totality” championed by liberalism, maintains its illusion of wholeness by perpetually excluding an “exterior zone”—the “hidden people”—who define it through their absence.

There is therefore a fundamental division at the core of politics. While “the people” (not God, not the monarch, not the nation-state) is considered the core of modern politics and law, its structure is fundamentally fractured. The key to encryption is the conversion of the concept of the people into a synecdoche. “Consequently, a false totality (the people of human rights and constitutions, those supposedly racially or economically included) symbolize and falsely represent an infinite impossibility (the excluded, the hidden people).” (Sanín-Restrepo and Machado-Araujo 2020b).

The people as a totality is a pars pro toto synecdoche. An arbitrarily constituted part (white people within a nation-state, for example) represents and defines an impossible infinity (the marginalized, the forced migrant, women of color, lgbtqiapn+). The concept of “the people” works by symbolically combining what a political body discards and what it lacks to be an authentic totality. This unrepresentable “excess” logically remains outside the scope of the absorbent capacity of any accounting regime.

The “people as a synecdoche,” where a privileged, minority group, represents the totality of the people, effectively obscures and denies the existence and agency of the “hidden people,” which, in its paradoxical position, embodies its underside and thus the inherent contradictions of power and sovereignty. However, and this is the coup de grâce of encryption, the hidden people have to be falsely included in order to give consistency to the fantasy of the whole. “The crucial point is that the people as a whole can only exist and exercise power, if and only if, they keep that other area of the people ‘hidden'” (Sanín-Restrepo 2016, 44).

Without the hidden people, the fantasy (fetish) of the people as a totality does not work, in fact it could not exist, but it exists exclusively from the negation of the hidden people, this is the great paradox of constitutional coloniality. 

Modern constitutional sovereignty strategically merges the “hidden people” as exception and simulated sovereign, creating a “simulacrum” of popular sovereignty.

In the words of Angus McDonald, “what can we conclude? The hidden people, upon whose presence the edifice is constructed, are the vanishing point – the point towards which the whole construction tends but itself not visible, infinitely receding.” (McDonald 2020).

The most notable consequence of this fusion is the impenetrability of sovereignty, as it makes it the perfect autopoietic machine. As you can see, a profoundly unethical and powerful structure is created. It uses the global recognition of a vulnerable population (the idea or abstraction of the hidden people) as its source of power and the reason for its potential destruction. Any attempt to fight it off simply makes it more powerful and immune. The power of the people is neutralized and disenfranchised in its own name.

We are now able to better understand what we mean by transcendent models and how their role is to dictate the conditions of “being” and therefore of power. For the theory of the encryption of power, transcendent models refer to the abstract, ideological, and violently imposed frameworks (the economy, the state, the constitution, money) that legitimize and perpetuate power. They are the place of encryption. 

Sabelo Ndlovu-Ghetseni has described it as follows: 

The DNA of imperial/colonial/liberal hegemonic internationalism is coloniality. The leitmotif of coloniality is encryption of power. Coloniality of internationalism is a sine qua non of transcendental model of power. It is conceived and driven by leading figures (philosophers and statesmen) and countries (empires and nation-states) at particular moments in human history aimed at impositions of particular orders favourable to the powerful. (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2024, 12)

As I stated before, 

Since Plato, politics is predefined through extenuating conditions of belonging to the body politic. Insofar, “to be” corresponds to an already existing qualification of life, an inner split within forms of identity where some are welcomed into politics and some are excluded according to qualifications that are detached from beingness but to which beingness must conform in order to be.3 We have thus the definition of potestas: potestas is the negation of power through the stratification of the conditions to exercise power. The element that above all defines potestas is the arrangement of systems of identity through the permanent construction of transcendent models (presupposition) to define life. (Sanín-Restrepo 2018)

As we have concluded,

The ontological condition of the political (of what counts, of how things communicate) lies in the absence of conditions or qualifications beyond difference to belong to the body politic. If the latter is true, politics can only exist in democracy (Rancière 2001)—a non-place where meaning is potentiality, being is unqualified, and everything is yet to be decided (Sanín-Restrepo y Machado-Araujo 2025).

The Ontological Foundation of Being and Politics

This part is devoted to synthesizing an enormous work done over the years to prove that there is a firm political ontology that demonstrates that the precondition of the world is that no being can be qualified to exist and therefore the only necessity of politics is absolute contingency. Let us see. 

In Decolonizing Democracy (2016) I undertake a profound revision of Aristotle’s concepts of potentiality (dunamis) and actuality, particularly the distinction between Energeia and Entelecheia, to challenge an unflinching Western interpretation of power that has become more dogged (especially from the constitutional simulacrum described above), but also Giorgio Agamben’s interpretation of power and political action. This review aims to demonstrate the fundamental contingency of politics, thus establishing the logical primacy of radical (non-liberal) democracy within any political framework. This is the philosophical backbone of the theory of encryption of power.

This is not an outdated discussion, since the Aristotelian construction of what is and can be (power!) is still fundamental, as a primer, to understand power today. 

Between the relationship potentia and actuality clings not only the formal definition of power, but also the absolute possibility of existence, of what is possible and impossible, logical, contingent, necessary, and time. (Sanín-Restrepo 2016).

In essence, potentia represents potentiality, what can be, the capacity to be, while actuality means existence, the actual, the manifestation of that potential. The question is whether having the potentiality of becoming “x” makes “x” superior to the potentia of, and whether potentia can lead not only to “x”, but to “y” (or from “y” to “z” and to all the potential combinations of the alphabet). 

Aristotle distinguishes between Energeia (ενέργεια) and Entelecheia (ἐντελέχεια) to define actuality (Aristotle 1). Energeia means activity or “being-in-work,” emphasizing the immanent action and continuous maintenance of a substance. Entelecheia, however, and here is the enormous difference, introduces the concept of “telos” (end or perfection), implying a final cause that dictates the purpose of a thing (for a complete definition see Sanín-Restrepo 2016). This distinction is vital to differentiate power as domination (potestas) from immanent and dynamic power.

I argue that by understanding Energeia as power without a transcendent finality, we can unlock the potential for contingency and the “becoming-other”, refuting, not only the conventional colonial vision, but Agamben’s (and Negri, even though we do not discuss it here) vision that leads to political impotence, as they understand the present only as Entelecheia,  that is, a final form that arises through a telos. 

First, Aristotle is the great conjuror of contingency, as we will see below, his great illusion, the one that maintains power as potestas throughout Western history, is that he gives the actuality primacy over potentia. Second, within actuality, in constructing the idea of the political, Aristotle gives primacy to Entelecheia through final causes, so that things can only become actual if they fulfill a purpose that is external to them (Aristotle 2). 

What is the primary objective of the Aristotelian construction of the dyads potentia-actuality and Energeia-Entelecheia? To transform non-being into a consequence of being (the people as a consequence of the constitution), so that any being that comes into being is the result of a prefigured actuality (transcendent model). The contingency of the future is then trapped in the necessity of the present. For Aristotle, potentia is subjugated to actuality, but not to any kind of actuality, but to one that embodies a finality. Through this operation, Aristotle introduces necessity as the neutralizing force of contingency (Sanín-Restrepo 2016). Consequently, when speaking of the contingency of the potential, it is not that potentia is contingent; what is contingent is the becoming of what is potential: what is in potentia may or may not come to be. Contingency is reduced to a very precise procedure within the dyad. 

Now, how does this manifest itself in politics? For Aristotle 2, that is, from the Nicomachean Ethics, politics is essentially an Entelecheia, a “doing well”, where “virtue” is the finality of every political body. Now, the Socratic question we have to ask Aristotle is, “What do you really mean by the word virtue?” The answer is logical, virtue can only be defined by those who are already in fact within the body politic! therefore, virtue acts as a transcendent model to define who can and who cannot belong to this private club called the body politic (Sanín-Restrepo 2016). 

For example, the ideas of nation, citizenship, or “people” as a univocal concept, have functioned as entelecheias, limiting political participation to those who meet certain pre-established criteria.

However, a polity based on “energeia” would be radically different. Instead of imposing transcendent models, it would recognize the fundamental contingency of being and becoming. Politics as “Energeia” is a constant process of experimentation and learning, where the goal is not to reach a final state, but to keep open the possibility of a radically different future. Therefore, if a political regime sets a purpose as a condition of belonging, are we talking about democracy? 

Now, Agamben interprets the actualization of potentiality as the loss of contingency (the qualification of life in a “certain this”, naked life, bios, biopolitics), which leads to political stagnation. He advocates a withdrawal into impotence, knowing (and he is absolutely right, so far) that potentiality is trapped within actuality (therefore, the conditions of belonging to a body politic are defined by the finality that is equivalent to the death of politics).

However, I maintain that Agamben’s mistake lies in confusing actuality with Entelecheia, neglecting the liberating potential of Energeia. To counter this, the analysis proposes to “update the difference” through Energeia. Aristotle’s theory of causes, particularly the final cause, reinforces the dominance of actuality. Entelecheia, with its emphasis on the telos, imposes an external and transcendent objective, limiting immanent action (when a thing becomes actual, it can only be so because it developed the finality or perfection imposed by its theory of causes). Energeia, on the other hand, focuses on the “being-in-work” of a substance, where the process itself is the end that admits of no external qualification or condition. 

Energeia is immanent, with the principle of generation contained within itself. For example, a caterpillar that becomes a butterfly is a process of Energeia, without external qualification, an apprentice painter who becomes a virtuoso is Entelecheia, but the point is, and here we go back to the Socratic maieutic, what do we mean by virtuous? Who defines it? Nevertheless, a child that becomes a woman, a man, or “they” is also a process of Energeia, not of Entelecheia. And would it not be proper to democracy that its very composition be Energeia? that is, where no being can be conditioned outside of its being, nor limited or excluded outside of what it can be? The question is logical. If there are conditions to belong, the one who sets those conditions is the authentic holder of power (sovereign, constituent power) and therefore every being depends on the model in order to exist. An open contradiction with democracy. 

Agamben is gripped by his understanding of the actual only as Entelecheia, which he rightly equates with domination. Entelecheia implies that only those who reach a predetermined perfection (virtue, to follow Aristotle’s own example) are part of the political. This leads to divisions between the rational and the irrational, the virtuous and the vile, and between life (bios) and bare life (zoe).

However, and this is our formidable twist, if politics is defined by Energeia, it encompasses all unqualified beings. Energeia emphasizes the continuous and immanent production of differences, where power is a synergistic and communicative infinite process.

Energeia allows transitions of power and supposes contingency and immanence. Politics, defined by Energeia, is not a qualified exercise but a common condition of being, where life itself is the only criterion.

Energeia is its own immanent perfection, without qualification or obedience to any transcendent model. The immanent perfection of Energeia is an open and endless infinity, where every difference contributes to the constitution of being. This perspective offers a way to break free from the constraints of Entelecheia that has marked potestas as inevitable in Western thought and practice, while overcoming Agamben’s pessimistic view of political power, opening up an inclusive and dynamic political reality.

Perhaps the most important consequence is the following. The interpretation of the entire Western history of power as domination would be radically and automatically reversed as follows: Any form of power that imposes an Entelecheia is necessarily synonymous with domination and is therefore simulating democracy, inclusion, and difference, while any resistance that assumes the Energeia, that is, where no being can be qualified before existing, is exercising the truth of the political. This means that the modern construction of Western power embodied in the state, capitalism, constitutions, etc., is nothing more than a simulacrum of power. 

Bibliography:

Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Aristotle. (Aristóteles 1) Metaphysics. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ 

Aristotle. (Aristóteles 2) Nicomachean Ethics http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/

Matos, Andityas. 2025. “An-arquia contra a soberania.” Revista Justiça Do Direito, 38(2), 193 – 224. https://doi.org/10.5335/rjd.v38i2.15984

McDonald, Angus. 2020. “Crypt, Mausoleum, Cenotaph; Sepulchre: Metaphors of encryption.” Revista da Faculdade Mineira de Direito. V.23 N.45. 49 

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo, J. 2024. Beyond the Coloniality of Internationalism: Reworlding the World from the Global South. Dakar: Codesria. 

Rancière, Jacques. 2001. Ten Theses on Politics. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Sanín-Restrepo, Ricardo. 2016. Decolonizing Democracy: Power in a Solid State. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.

Sanín-Restrepo, Ricardo (Ed.). 2018. Decrypting Power. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.

Sanín-Restrepo, Ricardo. 2021a. Being and Contingency: Decrypting Heidegger’s Terminology. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. 

Sanín-Restrepo, Ricardo. 2021b. “Many Worlds Interpretation, Critical Theory and the (Immanent) Paradox of Power.” In https://criticallegalthinking.com/2021/11/22/many-worlds-interpretation-critical-theory-and-the-immanent-paradox-of-power/

Sanín-Restrepo, Ricardo and Marinella Machado-Araujo. 2020. “The Theory of Encryption of Power: Itinerary of an Idea.” Revista da Faculdade Mineira de Direito.V.23 N.45. Belo Horizonte, Brazil. 

Sanín-Restrepo, Ricardo and Marinella Machado-Araujo. 2025. “A Prolific Paradox of Justice and Two Theses on the Encryption of the Hidden People” In Decrypting Justice: Form Epistemic Violence to Immanent Democracy. Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo, Marinella Machado-Araujo and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni (Ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. 

Schmitt, Carl. 2006. The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. Translated and annotated by G. L. Ulmen. New York: Telos Press Publishing.

^[i] Originally written in Spanish for https://intervencionycoyuntura.org/. with some additions to the English version.

^[ii] Andityas Matos writes about the theory of encryption (English translation from the original in Portuguese) “It is, therefore, a process that disempowers an-archy by encrypting it as sovereignty and then practically annulling it by dividing sovereignty into two dimensions, one constituted, which is effectively expressed through the institutions of centralized and transcendent politics, and another constituent assembly, completely emptied and domesticated. Finally, one could speak of a third moment of encryption, when the constituent power, according to liberal constitutionalist doctrine, is divided into original constituent power and derived constituent power, the latter being the only one that “exists”, since the former would have been exhausted with the founding act of the Constitution of a given State. However, the people, even if they are encrypted in the form of a “sovereign people”, carry within themselves an index of irreducibility with respect to the constituent power, which can never be regulated and emptied by the determining measures of the State and capital. If it is accepted that it is up to the constituent power to create order, it would be contradictory to affirm that this same order can regulate it, presenting itself as a structure immune to the flow and inexhaustibility of the creative power of subjectivities and mutant forms of life. That is why the process of constitution of a democracy is in itself a paradox, which indicates that it can only be lived, not theorized or controlled by the constituted (encrypted) power. (Matos 2025).

^[iii] I am not going to touch here on the preponderant role that experts (constitutional courts, economists, etc.) have in encrypting power. Please see Sanín-Restrepo 2016, 2018, 2021a.