WHAT CAN A BLACK MAN FEEL? PRODUCTION OF SUBJECTIVITIES, VIOLENCE AND WAYS OF RESISTING/EXISTING

Abstract

Introduction: This work presents theoretical perspectives that problematize the homogenizing representations of black men as insensitive, aggressive and ignorant. The question that gives the article its name invites us to observe how the processes of producing subjectivity of black men are constituted by violence. Taking the War on Drugs policy as a reference for institutional violence, this incursion is due to the presence of the authors in the field of research and academic studies on drug policy and mental health. Objective: The objective of this article is to propose an action-reflection on the issue of mental health among black men, denouncing the practices of genocide and structural racism as producers of psychological suffering in this group. Results: To address this plot, literature reviews were carried out in order to propose an epistemological turn in the field of mental health, specifically observing the situation of black men. In this essay, we seek to account for two ways of analysis. The first articulates violence as a form of subjectivation of black men with drug policy, especially the War on Drugs. The second seeks to connect the concept of images of control to that of necropolitics, problematizing how the raciality device is constantly updated through homogenizing representations and the support of practices of violence and extermination. Conclusion: Understanding the inseparability between institutional and structural violence produced against black masculinities and the effects on the lives of this heterogeneous group, we propose some reflections on ways of existing and resisting.