Princípio da destruição e racismo na obra políticas da inimizade de Achille Mbembe

Abstract

The starting point for this research is the scenario of contemporary liberal societies in which a politics of enmity prevails, where various bodies are constructed as enemies: first and foremost, Black people and Jews—which is not surprising given the horrors of colonialism and concentration camps, as well as what is being updated today as a legacy of colonialism and anti-Semitism. As a result, we have diverse surplus, displaced, and foreign populations who have been placed in this position of undesirability. Hatred is directed toward the unlike, which follows a pulsional path that sometimes starts from the self toward the Other and sometimes back. This is what Mbembe called the "enemy drive", which translates into the pulsional energy of death and destruction directed at the Other considered an enemy, and inevitably at oneself. In this context, the objective of this research is to examine racism based on the concept of the "principle of destruction" in the thought of Achille Mbembe. The hypothesis is that the duality between life and destruction he discusses is based on the instinctual duality previously postulated by Freud between the life and death drives. Analyzing racism from the perspective of the death drive leads us to examine the dialectical relationship between the self and the Other, considered the enemy. To develop this two-way path, we will bring into the debate two authors with whom Mbembe dialogues: Freud and Fanon. In Freud's work, we will address his argument that the experience of war shows us that, despite being civilized, man demonstrates the extent to which his most primitive and psychic state still inhabits him. Therefore, by targeting the enemy with a destructive force aimed at his annihilation, man is thereby also attempting to annihilate within his own self an identifying trait with the primitive man that still inhabits him. In Fanon's work, we will bring his discussion of Black subjectivity imprisoned by white ideals, based on a Hegelian dialectic of recognition. In this context, racism would be a channeling of the deadly instinctual force within oneself toward the Other. What should be redirected toward oneself is projected outward, as an unconscious defense mechanism aimed at maintaining the integrity of the Self. By leveraging psychoanalysis in studies on racism, it is possible to utilize the concept of the death drive to consider racial issues. And as a partial result of this interface between the philosophy of Mbembe and Fanon and Freudian theory, the following finding has been identified so far in the research: in racism, the enemy is within.