WHERE THEY WANT SILENCE AND DEATH, WE PLANT VOICES AND STRUGGLES

DEVICES OF RACIALITY AND NECROPOLITICS

Abstract

This article presents a critical reflection on racialized dispositifs and necropolitics, investigating how racism structures modes of being and living, determining which bodies may exist fully and which are marked for erasure. The discussion is grounded in the articulation between Foucauldian biopower and Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, highlighting how racial violence extends beyond physical extermination to the social imaginary and the silencing of Black experiences. The research is based on experiences shaped by the Brazilian context and supported by bibliographic references that analyze the dynamics of power and their effects on the construction of racialized subjectivities. By examining the mechanisms that sustain violence against Black bodies, this study not only denounces racist structures but also emphasizes narrativity as a space of insurgency and the continuity of Black life. Beyond merely surviving the dichotomy between white goodness and Black evil, this text asserts the centrality of narrativity in Black resistance, understanding storytelling as a political act that disrupts mechanisms of death and affirms the power of living. If whiteness has historically produced dispositifs to capture and constrain Black existence, this article proposes narrativity as a rupture, a movement, and a form of continuity, ensuring that stories are told not only through suffering but also through the fullness of being.