Pandemic And Human Rights: The Administration Of Life And Death In Brazil

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic challenges the State and society with human rights implications. The confrontation with the world health crisis meets several obstacles in Brazil. By revisiting the concepts of biopolitics in Michel Foucault and necropolitics in Achille Mbembe, the reorientation of the authoritarian and democratic compass of national history is problematized with the actions of the Presidency of the Republic in face of the life and death of citizens. The hypothesis, at the end of the study corroborated by way of conclusion, verifies the assumption of the new coronavirus as intensifying the democratic conversion toward authoritarianism by revealing in the Planalto Palace the disregard for the need to unite efforts and the dichotomization of life versus economy with the result of death, evidencing, therefore, the violation of human rights. The text is structured in two sections and aims, respectively: a) to analyze current Brazil in light of the authoritarian and democratic cycle of national history; and b) to reflect the performance of the Presidency of the Republic with the instrumentalization of life and death in the face of the alluded health crisis. The phenomenological-hermeneutic method, the qualitative approach, the exploratory technique and the bibliographic and documental procedures constitute the methodology.