Neither Humans nor Rights: Some Notes on the Double Negation of Black Life in Brazil

This article examines the challenges of conceptualizing Black existence within the realm of what has been defined as civil society. Rather than entering the Afro-pessimism versus Afro-optimism debate, its aim is to provide ethnographic material to further an understanding of the (im)possibilities fo...

Full description

Autores:
Amparo Alves, Jaime Do
Tipo de recurso:
Article of investigation
Fecha de publicación:
2014
Institución:
Universidad ICESI
Repositorio:
Repositorio ICESI
Idioma:
eng
OAI Identifier:
oai:repository.icesi.edu.co:10906/78393
Acceso en línea:
http://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_record.do?page=1&qid=12&log_event=yes&viewType=fullRecord&SID=4AOgLmRNI6DIL1OOWLH&product=UA&doc=1&search_mode=GeneralSearch
http://hdl.handle.net/10906/78393
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021934714524777
Palabra clave:
Ciencias sociales
Social Sciences
Imposibilidades ontológicas
Ontological impossibilities
Negritudes
Blackness
Derechos humanos
Human rights
Democracia
Democracy
Muerte social
Social death
Brasil
Rights
openAccess
License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Description
Summary:This article examines the challenges of conceptualizing Black existence within the realm of what has been defined as civil society. Rather than entering the Afro-pessimism versus Afro-optimism debate, its aim is to provide ethnographic material to further an understanding of the (im)possibilities for redressing Black injury from racialized categories such as law, justice, and humanity. How might we understand mourning and grieving when the racial alterity of the Black subject positions "it" outside the domains of citizenship and humanity? This double negation-neither human nor citizen-is the basis from which the article provides a critique of the racial terror perpetrated by police-linked death squads in Sao Paulo, Brazil.