The death of the city councillor Marielle Franco through the lenses of necropolitics : how the assassination of an elected Brazilian woman is moving with the structures of power and revealing a state that is complicit in with the death of a human rights defender

Abstract

The death of the city councillor and human rights activist Marielle Franco in 2018 is a complex political crime that exposed all the scars of a country that has not adequately dealt with its past. The concept of Necropolitics, developed by the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe, in which the state decides who should live and who should die, and which it uses a ‘war machine’ for this purpose, applies to the Marielle case in several ways. Understanding Marielle’s trajectory and death through the lenses of Necropolitics is understanding how Brazil's power structures still have their roots in racism, violence, and sexism. Understanding Marielle's death under different aspects of Necropolitics — her physical death and the attempt to erase her memory through what I called digital Necropolitics, characterized of a wave of fake news, and the Necropolitics of the discourse — is understanding that the Brazilian political space is still restricted and threatening to those who intend to defend human rights. Analysing the death of a black, bisexual woman from the favela of Rio do Janeiro and democratically elected is urgent because it calls for a much more difficult situation that we all need to stand for.