Reflections on the Foreign Body and the Politics of Death on the Yanomami Indigenous Land Yanomami

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the relationship between the concepts of necropolitics, proposed by Achille Mbembe, and unheimlich, developed by Sigmund Freud. Through this possibility of intersection, the situation faced by the Yanomami in northern Brazil can be analyzed, in which several indigenous people had their lands invaded and their rights violated, leading them to a serious health crisis. The presence of a necropolitical management logic, in which bodies that are not of interest to the State are left on the sidelines, puts populations that are not included in the hegemonic neoliberal discourse at risk. In the encounter between this discourse and the stranger, it can be inferred that an unheimlich experience is produced, an encounter with what is most uncomfortable and at the same time familiar to society. Recognizing oneself in the difference that exists in the other creates an escape through elimination, this body is made the enemy and, thus, the support is created to remove it from the scene. Furthermore, this investigation highlights the need to rethink existing ways of dealing with difference, because building a society to the detriment of certain groups that compose it is also destroying itself.