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Necropolitics, Perverse Biopolitics, and the Subversion of the Integrative Care for Prisoners

Abstract

Brazilian prisons are known for undignified survival conditions and for violence, which reduce individuals to a baren life. However, in Porto Velho, Rondônia, the Cultural Association for Prisoner and Egress Development (ACUDA) offers integrative care to prisoners; in this context, this article aims to analyze how biopolitical and necropolitical strategies coexisted with actions to subvert this logic in the relation between institutions and the State. The study was based on an ethnography, involving participant observations and in-depth interviews with ACUDA attendees, staff, and directors. The analysis, based on poststructuralist assumptions, discusses the articulation between necropolitical and perverse biopolitical strategies carried out by the State, which promote both death and life, even if precarious. At the same time, the interpenetration between these different instances paradoxically held lines of resistance as the prisoners insisted on living their possible lives.

Keywords:
Necropolitics; Biopolitics; Integrative care; Prisoners; Prison health

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