The maintenance of violence as a mechanism of control of the wretched of the earth: an analysis of the concepts of necropolitics and epistemicide

Abstract

The use of violence as a mechanism for domination and control of oppressed people is recurrent in studies about colonization and slavery. Those who seek to investigate the reality of black people recognize that this control tool is maintained and reinforced by a colonial logic of violence that becomes the basis for the formation of models of sovereignty after slavery and colonization. Authors such as Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe and Sueli Carneiro show us that this logic is maintained under different circumstances in order to dominate, submit and keep the black population in the service of maintaining white privilege. With that in mind, the objective of this article is to mobilize the notions of decolonization presented by Fanon in The Wretch of the Earth, of necropolitics developed by Mbembe and of epistemicide mobilized by Carneiro, in order to understand this logic of violence that is sophisticated in order to incorporate and naturalize their presence in the body politic. To this end, the notions of race, subject and object, self and the other will also be addressed throughout the argument.