Between oblivion and resistance:

the necropolitical management of the pandemic in urban peripheries

Abstract

This article brings to light a text originally written during the most intense years of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020–2022). In 2025, as a scientific attempt to resist oblivion and as a gesture of rescuing a memory that still affects me deeply, I have decided to publish this work. The decision to preserve the original writing style, in the present tense, allows for maintaining the density of the lived moment while simultaneously enabling a critical reflection from the present, updating the meanings of the pandemic (2020–2022) and its social consequences. This article proposes a critical, autoethnographic analysis of the discussions carried out within a study group entitled “Social Conflicts in Brazilian Peripheries”, developed in collaboration between the research groups Observatório Fluminense (UFRRJ)¹ and Distúrbio – Dispositivos, Tramas Urbanas, Ordens e Resistências (UERJ)². The reflection arises from the pandemic context that began in 2020, considering how such a situation permeated academic debates and subjectively affected the participants. Based on observations of the intellectual and activist interventions presented throughout the working group, the aim was to understand the effects of public policies — or their absence — on marginalized bodies during the pandemic (2020–2022). The study establishes connections between emergency health policies and the symbolic disappearance of bodies — particularly racialized and peripheral ones — exploring the historical continuity of these mechanisms of invisibilization from the military dictatorship³ to the Covid-19 pandemic (2020–2022).