When the state of exception becomes permanent insights on public safety militarization in Brazil

Abstract

It is intended to reflect on the recent changes in the political and institutional scenario of Brazil. Brazilian society has historically built a solid structure of unequal distribution of power and wealth. To a large extent, this structure was only possible because of high standards of labor exploitation and high levels of inequality, reflected in a violent and racist judiciary and police. One of the hallmarks of the Brazilian state is the militarization of its police forces and the police force of its armed forces. This process has been raging in recent decades. The current military scenario assuming, by direct vote, the maximum power of the nation seems to be the apex of the militarization process and its effects still require careful analysis. The proposal of the communication, therefore, using Giorgio Agamben's (2004) notion of state of exception, shows that militarization corresponds to the normalization of militarism, with its consequences in terms of limitations of rights and legitimation of state violence, notably the police. The empirical basis for the analysis is the model of occupation of territories and ostensive intervention in Rio de Janeiro, established by the federal military intervention of the year 2018. The intervention, in this sense, not only served as a laboratory for repressive and violent measures of security, but also a test of legitimization of the militarized management of public security, with its component of permanent construction of an enemy to be shot down, within the logic of war and armed confrontation. Following Michel Foucault (1999), politics is becoming, in contemporary Brazil, the extension of war by highly militarized means.