Extermination as correction: the necropolitics and the romance Assim na terra como embaixo da terra, by Ana Paula Maia

In this article, we want to discuss the novel Assim na terra como embaixo da terra (2017), by Ana Paula Maia. The work invites us to think about the penal system in an apparent extreme situation, in which prisoners are murdered by the administrator of a Penal Colony. It turns out that this scenario is not foreign to the current Brazilian State, in view of the mass incarceration and the resurgence of policies for exterminating certain social and ethnic-racial groups under the pretext of violence control. These extermination practices can be understood from the necropolitics, a type of dynamic in which the State manages death to guarantee public order. These ideas are confronted by the novel, making us question whether the penal system is not one of the institutions that legitimize necropolitics in order to silence economic and social problems.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-SA

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