Biopolitics in Brazil: Colônia’s State racism

Abstract

This theoretical article consists on an evaluation of de Daniela Arbex’s journalistic investigation about the Colônia Hospital’s operation in Barbacena, Minas Gerais, as from the thinker Michel Foucault’s biopolitics analyses. This institution’s internment process represents, from the foucaultians researches about the deal with madness on modern Europe, a solid example of the biopolitics’ operation in Brazil, more specifically with regard to its groundwork “make live and let die”. We compare the therapeutic care project own medical knowledge with the procedures used in this internment environment on Brazil twentieth century.  Thus, we approached the split to State racism when the Colônia takes on the function not anymore of “let die”, but of “make die”, among biopower techniques. Lastly, we considered the role of the anti-asylum fighting organizes in Brazil, on the 1990’s decade as alternative to internment, however ends up promoting, on its turn, other normalizations.