THE CIVIL AND MILITARY POLICE AND INFAMOUS MEN

THE NATURALIZATION OF THE DEATH OF BLACK MEN

Abstract

Would the infamous man be the one who lost his honor or the holder of a bad reputation? Or the one that causes us repugnance and contempt? We can also think of the infamous man as the one who disrespects social norms for being a practitioner of reprehensible acts from an ethical and moral point of view. This essay seeks to discuss how the concept of infamous man mobilized by Foucault (2006) is useful to understand the naturalization of the death of black people by military organizations as well as to create a reflection about which lives are considered livable. The infamous men become the protagonist and responsible for their deaths in the discourse of several individuals, so these simple existences, and in a way, gray and obscure, would tend to remain forgotten, if it weren't for their relationship with power. The genocide against black bodies and slum dwellers continues as a naturalized phenomenon and without causing astonishment in the Brazilian population. Public institutions, as if by tacit agreement, remain silent, without creating any kind of mechanism capable of stopping the extermination of these same bodies.