Abstract
ABSTRACT This article discusses the narrative practices of a Brazilian social movement whose members are the mothers and relatives of young people victimized by police raids into Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. By analysing the narratives produced by activists, we explore how grief is converted into political fight. As we look into how mothers intertwine their individual pain with political activism, we examine (i) how emotions and suffering are organized in their narratives; and (ii) what discursive strategies are used in the process. Data was generated during public demonstrations, and the analysis suggests that it is by turning the pain of a losing a child into political insurgence that mothers narratively organize their emotions. As stories get told, events surrounding the murders are recontextualized and experiences are collectivized. Mothers’ stories become narratives of resistance, which oppose institutional racism, but also narratives of re-existence (SOUZA, 2009), which recast the deaths of their children as an effect of a necropolitical logic of state organization.
Highlights
This article discusses the narrative practices of a Brazilian social movement whose members are the mothers and relatives of young people victimized by police raids into Rio de Janeiro’s favelas
This paper focuses on a relevant, but often overlooked component of this complex machinery: the mothers and relatives of individuals victimized in cases of alleged resistance to authority
Considering that approximately 70% of the individuals killed by the military police in the state of Rio de Janeiro during the timespan covered by this study are black6, it seems reasonable to conclude that black lives are not seen as valid
Summary
While waging its reputed “war on drugs”, the Brazilian State has historically relied on firepower to assert its sovereignty over drug dealers. In Brazil, racism can be said to assert itself through its own denial (GOMES, 2012); in other words, it is the very fact that racism is made invisible (especially by white people) that undermines productive discussion and hinders the adoption of effective counter-measures Brazilian racism is both structural, insofar as it keeps black people away from most political and social structures, and institutional, i.e., translated into everyday discrepancies in the labor market, the educational circuit, the criminal justice system etc. Given the escalating number of murders prompted by opposition to police intervention in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the importance of movements such as the Rede cannot be overstated As they pressure judicial organs such as the Prosecution Office and the Head of Civil Police, they attempt to expedite ongoing investigations and decry the participation of state agents in crimes. In her study on the literacy practices developed by activists from the Hip Hop movement in São Paulo, Ana Lúcia Silva e Souza (2009) introduces the notion of “re-existence” to designate cultural practices which resist, but re-signify or reinvent social uses of language and, by extension, reconfigure the status quo
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