Disappearances and police killings in contemporary Brazil: the politics of life and death.
by Sabrina Willenave
Routledge, 2021
Some people disappear voluntarily, we call them missing persons. Others have disappeared. That is, they were killed and buried in unknown locations and circumstances. The word ‘disappear’ is an attempt to translate. gone, It was first used to refer to ‘political disappearance’ in Argentina during the dictatorship (1976-1983) and then spread to other countries, including Brazil. the book Disappearances and police killings in modern BrazilIt offers an insightful and surprising critique of the concept of ‘political disappearance’, which is essential for a truth commission delving deeper into the history of Brazil’s dictatorship, but is unhelpful and even counterproductive in analyzing contemporary violence.
This book is consistent with the goal of the Intervention Series to publish work that pushes the boundaries of the discipline of international relations, such as the division between internal and external, the difference between public and national security, and Eurocentric and ethnic biases. Villenave’s book addresses these three issues: the role of militarized police (internal/external, public/national security) acting as sovereigns and determining exceptions in postcolonial and racialized states.
In Brazil, the category of ‘political disappearance’ applies primarily to educated white left-wing elites supposedly involved in the guerrilla movement against the military regime (1964–1985). This term appears in the Missing Persons Act (Act 9.140 of 1995), which created the Special Committee for the Dead and Politically Disappeared. Other entities, including the victims’ families, newspapers, and the National Truth Commission, are also mentioning ‘political disappearance’ in their discourse.
In other words, indigenous people and rural workers who disappeared during the dictatorship but did not directly participate in the political struggle are not included in the politically missing or missing persons. gone. Because the term disappearance is attached to a specific group and is limited to the military regime era (1964-1985), missing people who do not fit that definition will not have the same visibility in the media or institutional settings. In comparison, during the dictatorship, the number of missing people reached 243 across the country over 21 years, and the number of missing people reached 600 in Rio de Janeiro alone between 2000 and 2012. Another problem is as pointed out by Willenave. , the traditional understanding of politics as ‘participation in organized action’ silences the fact that other kinds of disappearances based on racial structures are also political.
So the question remains. The concept of political disappearance varies depending on the criteria of time and space, so what is the framework that underpins enforced disappearances in contemporary Brazil? Through an analysis of the history of police violence and its origins in colonial and racialized state structures, Villenave argues: rationale Security and the War on Drugs (similar to the War on Terror) shape and depoliticize our understanding of the ‘missing corpses’ of the democratic era. It also legitimizes the killing and disappearance of bodies, mainly black people, in ‘spaces of misery’. ghetto (shantytown). This logic is not strange to racial capitalism (Robinson, 2000) and microeconomics (Montag, 2005), which aim to eliminate surplus black labor. In this sense, the framework of the war on drugs serves to silence the fact that Brazil is not a racial democracy. Instead, the state erases racial elements from its explanations of police killings and disappearances. Despite criticisms of the concept of racial democracy, especially by Lelia Gonzalez (2021) and Abdias do Nascimento (1980), it still remains a significant part of contemporary Brazilian political and social debates.
The book finds its place in discussions of governmentality and biopolitics (Foucault 2008, 2019), sovereignty, camp, and exception (Agamben 2005, 2009) in international relations. Nonetheless, Villenave argues that these theories are insufficient for understanding state violence in postcolonial and racist societies such as Brazil. Agamben’s state of exception and Schmitt’s previous theory establish that the sovereign is the one who decides on exceptions. Scholars apply the Agambenian thesis to a variety of situations, but each requires some qualifications. Contrary to the ubiquity of the state of exception at the heart of Agamben’s democratic states, Brazil’s police apparatus functions differentially according to skin color, confirming Judith Butler’s argument that there is an unequal distribution of vulnerability.
The author provides an innovative contribution, elaborating on the camp concept discussed by Agamben and Mbembe. Agamben asserts that the concentration camp is an exceptional space outside the law. Although he agrees with Agamben’s broad definition, Mbembe argues that race plays a role in the definition of that space. Some populations are more likely to be included in exclusionary spaces than others. Villenave agrees with Mbembe, but ghetto The relationship between inside and outside is more fluid than observed in the camp concept. ghetto Don’t limit your residents. However, it is the ‘sovereign police’ who determine who can move according to the standards embedded in colonial and racial structures. In this sense, the police are constantly redefining and redrawing the boundaries of urban and citizenship status. In other words, the state of exception is not a place, but a practice or movement that temporarily creates an exception.
The cases that Villenave brings to the forefront may be unfamiliar to students majoring in international relations who are not familiar with Brazilian society. As the author clearly states, the police can control moments of exception by using a strategy called ‘moments of exception.’ magnetic Resistance, It was created to protect police officers who killed people in acts of defense during the military regime. Even in democratic times, police continue to use the same tactics, but now within the context of the ‘war on drugs’. Under Brazilian law, there is no distinction between drug consumers and drug dealers, leaving room for police to define who is a trafficker. Therefore, police define exceptions by saying that some murders occurred because: magnetic resistance Against traffic dealers.
Mbembe is a key author in Villenave’s claims about the disappearance. Because the sovereign decides who will live and who will die how People will die. Murders and disappearances follow the same logic as the war on drugs, but murders are much more difficult to investigate and confirm than disappearances, so they are more visible in the media. Due to its unique nature, disappearance creates an information vacuum and leaves no trace of how it happened. Unlike auto de resistanceencia (and the existence of the body)Disappearance depends on legal uncertainty as the boundary between. girl name and biosOutside and inside, presence and absence become blurred.
Despite its relevance to contemporary debates on IR, the book does not address some aspects of corpses that are essential to understanding racial bias in Brazilian police practices. As philosopher Adriana Cavarero asks, what does the state of the corpse tell us about the specificity of modern violence? In her important book Horrorism: A Name for Modern Violence, Cavarero looks at a body that has been mutilated and mutilated to the point where it is unrecognizable as human. We can say that there are three forms of modern murder. magnetic resistance the creation of an identifiable corpse (present and identifiable), the disappearance of the corpse (therefore not present and therefore unidentifiable) and, following Cavarero, the mutilation of the body (present but not identifiable as a human being).
Disappearances and Murders in Brazil This book gains even more relevance as Brazil’s extreme right advocates a discourse of racial democracy and criticizes the country’s affirmative action measures. It also provides an essential discussion of the concept of political disappearance in a country that is still struggling to make sense of its past and demilitarize its police 60 years after the start of the last dictatorship (1964). On April 2, 2024, the chairman of the Amnesty Commission, which investigates crimes from 1964 to 1985, apologized to indigenous people killed during the dictatorship. Despite its local specificities, the study of Brazilian disappearances can also be applied to other ‘spaces of misery’ where the ‘war on drugs’ is a facade to eliminate disposable humans.
References
Agamben, G. (2005). exception state. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Agamben, G. (2009). What is a device? Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Butler, J. (2004). unstable life. The power of mourning and violence. London and New York: Verso.
Cavarero, A. (2011). Terrorism: A name for modern violence. New directions in critical theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Do Nascimento, A. (1980). ‘Quilombismo: An Afro-Brazil Political Alternative’. Journal of Black Studies11 (2), Afro-Brazil Experience and Proposals for Social Change, pp. 141-178.
Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics – French College Lectures, 1977-1978. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Foucault, M. (2019). Security, territory, population – lectured at French universities from 1977 to 1978.. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gonzalez, L. except. (2021). ‘Racism and sexism in Brazilian culture’ WSQ: Women’s Study Quarterly49(1), pp. 371–394.
Mbembe, A. (2019). necropolitics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Montag, W. (2005). ‘Necroeconomics: Adam Smith and death in universal life’ radical philosophy134, pp.1–11.
Robinson, C. (2000). Black Marxism: The Formation of a Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Additional Resources on E-International Relations
