Abstract

LEMOES, Tiago. In the Limits of Humanity: Necropolitics, Human Rights and the Illegibility of the State in Brazil. Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais [online]. 2020, n.123, pp.27-46. ISSN 2182-7435.  https://doi.org/10.4000/rccs.10948.

In this paper, I analyze the mechanisms by which the agents of the state mobilize the rhetoric of human rights to hide the different forms of state violence. To explain and discuss these mechanisms, I describe an ethnographic experience involving legal institutions, universities and social movements around the investigation of the death of a homeless man, in the city of Porto Alegre, in the context of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. In the context of the necropolitics of power, I explain the discursive and institutional strategies that allow the State to hide its violent interventions in the face of a broad campaign to guarantee human rights for the homeless.

Keywords : Brazil; human rights; necropolitics; police violence; State intervention.

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