Although some analyses of genocide in Brazil consider the intersectionality of race, gender and class, few address the ways in which heteropatriarchy and sexism also impact women’s experiences with anti-black violence and terror. In order to better understand anti-black genocide in Brazil, we must take into account black women's multiple gendered and sexualized experiences with this violence. As a result, this thesis explores black women’s experiences with domestic violence as a form of anti-Black genocide. This contention, through an analysis of my fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador in the summer of 2013 as well as my engagement with Black Brazilian feminist theory, argues that domestic violence against Black women occurs at both a macro and micro level. Essentially, State violence against Black women is domestic violence writ large. Micro-sites of domestic violence against black women, typified by inter-personal violence, are not isolated manifestations. Instead, they are extensions of macro-state processes of domestic violence. In other words, we must read inter-personal violence against black women as part of the continuum of the state’s racialized, gendered, sexualized violence against the broader black community. / text

Thesis advisor: Stephen J. Pfohl / Existing studies of governmental responses to human rights allegations emphasize the rhetorical forms that official claims take at the expense of demonstrating how contextual factors influence discourse. Analytically, this dissertation accounts for these factors by theorizing and analyzing how knowledge and culture operate in American political discourse of torture. Drawing on a qualitative content and discourse analysis of 40 congressional hearings, held between 2003 and 2008, this dissertation documents a transition in American politics from a discourse of denial, which downplayed allegations of abuse and torture, to a discourse of acknowledgment, which criticized the Bush administration's interrogation policies on the grounds that the policies permitted torture and undermined U.S. interests. By situating this transition within its institutional and political context, this study examines the influence of documentary evidence of torture, interpretive frames in which American officials situated that evidence, and political power as expressed in control over congressional committees on political discourse. Between 2003 and 2008, a significant volume of documentary evidence of violence against detainees in U.S. custody entered public discourse. Typically, shifts in congressional discourse followed the release of official, documentary evidence produced by government sources, such as military police or FBI agents, that provided first-hand or localized portrayals of abuse and torture at U.S. detention facilities. Such documents, including the photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison and FBI emails documenting torture at Guantánamo, secured a "reality" of violence that members of Congress found difficult to rationalize as legitimate state violence. This difficulty stems, in part, from the fact that localized portrayals of interpersonal violence frequently capture the excesses of that violence--the irrationality, sadism, and innovations in cruelty of torturers and the vulnerabilities of sufferers of torture. Significantly, though, the political meaning of documentary evidence derives from the interpretive frames in which it is situated. Between 2003 and 2008, "human rights" and the "rule of law" became increasingly available as interpretive frames for the political debate over detention and interrogation. This development resulted from several changes in the political environment, including the Bush administration's mobilization of human rights to legitimize the Iraq war and the Supreme Court's rulings on cases involving detainees. The Democrat's mid-term victory in 2006, which won Democrats control over both the House of Representatives and Senate, also profoundly influenced political discourse. Democrats used congressional committees to pursue broad, reflective hearings on the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies. By inviting legal scholars and representatives of human rights organizations to speak about the policies, the Committees further elevated human rights and the rule of law in the debate about torture. Given these developments, a critical discourse of torture gradually emerged and solidified. This discourse labeled American interrogation practices--known to their supporters as "enhanced interrogation"--as torture and linked their use to significant and negative global consequences for the U.S. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Can order and freedom only be established through the application of violent force? Hegel has argued that „using violence“ may be the beginning of the formation of all states in history but is in no way their essential principle. It is true that order and freedom require the protection against violence and acts of force but their normative difference is not levelled off in the term „violent order“ (Gewaltordnung). There is a paradox that „lefties“ in the tradition of Nietzsche and Foucault increasingly fail to notice – the „little difference“ between power politics and order. In their reductionism of politics to power politics, „neo-cons“ and their most ardent critics have much more in common than they are aware of.

Homicide deaths are a common reality in Brazil. Every year, approximately 50,000 people die from this violent crime. Between January 2009 and February 2010, 7,936 people were killed just on the state of Rio de Janeiro. Of this amount, 1,185 were committed by the police, not including the number of disappeared people in this state, came up to 6,379. This report seeks to address the political and analytical challenges of understanding and redressing the negative impacts of state policies and everyday practices, especially violence, on Black Brazilians, particularly disadvantaged Black women, through a revision of relevant scholarship. I first draw attention to three distinct approaches of violence of the state of Rio de Janeiro, and on Black people’s resistance practice. Second, I connect Rio de Janeiro’s practices of state violence with contemporary and historical experiences of racial terror in the African Diaspora through policing Black youth and Black communities, imprisonment, and violence against Black women. And finally, I theorize on the relevance of my work to Black feminism, African Diaspora, and activist theories addressing the politics of fieldwork and the impact of the research on that experience. The knowledge apprehended through this report contributes to my own and further research on state violence against Black people in Brazil and throughout the African Diaspora. / text

The adoption of the neo-liberal model in the mid-1980s has forced the governing elites to reconfigure the Mexican State. However, the consolidation of a neoliberal State continues to be incomplete and it has been problematic to fully integrated the Mexican economy in the global market due to the increasing organized crime, the dismantling of previous post-revolutionary control mechanisms, and the growing mobilisation of organised indigenous opposition ranging from the peaceful obstruction of hydroelectric mega-projects in their territories to armed struggle. In view of the State crisis, this thesis argues that there has been a shift in the system of control mechanisms of the State that is leaning towards a more recurrent use of open violence to implement its neo-liberal State project. From a theoretical perspective, the research proposes an innovative approach to understanding the formation of the post-revolutionary State, which transcends the State violence dichotomy established between the ´corporatist´ and the ´critical´ approaches in the contemporary literature. The research highlights the wide spectrum of control mechanisms from hegemonic domination to violence used by the governing elites to compensate the unfinished State formation process in order to maintain socio-political stability without profound structural changes. It explores the enhanced tendency of State violence to replace incorporation in Statesociety relations since the efforts to restructure the economy from the 1980s onwards. The thesis analyses how this tendency has grown particularly in response to indigenous movements in the South of Mexico. The argument is substantiated empirically with two case studies undertaken in the sub-region of Costa Chica-Montaña of Guerrero with data from 79 semi-structured interviews with a wide range of social and political actors, and participant observation in ten indigenous communities. The case studies explore the different State control mechanisms used to advance the State formation model in the post revolutionary period; the impact of the crisis of those mechanisms in the sub-region; the violent resistance of local bosses to the loss of power, and the multiples indigenous responses to the implementation of neoliberal policies in their territories. This research also includes a comparative study to explain some factors that strengthen indigenous articulations, as well as their limits in an era of neoliberal globalisation. One of the most important research findings is that neoliberalism has further weakened the 'civilianisation' power of the State to deal peacefully with civil society sectors, particularly with indigenous peoples, while it has strengthened its 'centralised-coercive' power to carry out the imposed State model. Another finding is that the indigenous initiatives that have reinvented themselves through a new version of their practices and broader alliances have consolidated their alternative models. In contrast, the indigenous responses that have reproduced their traditions have failed.

Esta pesquisa faz uma apresentação dos modos de reconhecimento presentes na psicanálise lacaniana. A noção de reconhecimento tem papel fundamental na prática analítica porque ela envolve pensar os modos de subjetivação e as alienações implicadas no processo de individuação do sujeito, o que permite que o trabalho clínico acesse a dimensão política de sua práxis. O reconhecimento aparece, primeiramente, enquanto reconhecimento de si na identificação a uma imagem que possibilita a gênese do Eu. Em seguida, surgirá como reconhecimento intersubjetivo, no qual a psicanálise seria um processo que permitiria o meu reconhecimento pelo Outro. Este paradigma será reformulado quando encontra um limite naquilo que há de irreflexivo no sujeito, o Real. Passamos, então, para o reconhecimento não-identitário que permitiria o acesso ao Real sem que isto implique em uma experiência traumática. Investigaremos, então, como este reconhecimento permite um contato com um objeto que não pode ser simbolizado, o que produz uma experiência de despersonalização que liberta o sujeito da hegemonia dos objetos narcísicos. Analisaremos, também, a aplicação deste desenvolvimento teórico na prática clínica, utilizando como material casos de violência de Estado, atendimentos realizados com ribeirinhos e moradores de Altamira afetados pela construção da usina de Belo Monte e com participantes de um grupo de testemunho do projeto Clínicas do Testemunho com pessoas perseguidas pela ditadura militar brasileira. Este estudo é precedido por uma contextualização dos eventos envolvendo a construção de Belo Monte, a destruição da forma de vida dos ribeirinhos e um exame da semelhança da violência de Estado atual com a desempenhada durante a colonização, esta que foi baseada na classificação social pela ideia de raça / This research presents the modes of recognition found in lacanian psychoanalysis. The notion of recognition has a fundamental role in analytic practice once it involves modes of thinking subjectivations and alienations as concerned in the subject\'s individuation, allowing the clinical praxis to access its political dimension. he recognition appears in the first place as self-recognition through identification with an image that enables the genesis of the I. Then, it\'ll appear as intersubjective recognition, in which the psychoanalysis would figure as a process that allows one\'s recognition by the Other. This paradigm will be reformulated when it finds a limitation in the subject\'s non-reflexiveness, the Real. Therefore, the non-identitary recognition could allow the access to the Real without implying into a traumatic experience. The investigation will point to how this recognition permit contact with an object that can\'t be symbolized, which generates a depersonalization experience that frees the subject of the narcissistic objects\' hegemony. We will also examine the application of this theoretical argument into the clinical practice based on psychological attention given to victims of state violence in two different populations: Altamira\'s riverside communities inhabitants affected by the construction of Belo Monte\'s power plant and participants of a Clínicas do Testemunho project testimony group for people harassed by the Brazilian military dictatorship. This study is preceded by the contextualization of Belo Monte\'s construction surrounding events, the destruction of riverside communities way of living and an examination of the similarities between the actual violence state and the one performed in the colonization process, the second referring to a social classification based on the notion of race

In order to analyze the potential of a relationship between terrorist groups and state violence, this paper analyzes two case studies from Latin America - that of Sendero Luminoso, in Peru, and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the FARC), in Colombia – and two cases from the Middle East and North Africa – that of al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya in Egypt and Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army in Iraq. After a review of the cases and general literature on regime violence and terrorism around the world, this paper proposes a likely correlation between an increase in state violence and an escalation in the use of terrorism. The paper proposes that this correlation occurs because state violence inspires feelings of revenge among opposition groups and citizens, increases the popularity of guerrillas, decreases the popularity and legitimacy of the state, and promotes the perception that violence is both an acceptable political tool and the only option for opposition groups seeking a political voice. The findings of this study indicate that policy makers should reconsider their use of violent, repressive responses to political opposition, and should refrain from “fighting fire with fire” in order to take steps towards the eradication of terrorism around the world.

This thesis argues that the state apparatus has failed to provide Africans with a culturally compatible form of governance. The state is a product of colonial origin, and thus, has failed to resonate with Indigenous African spirituality, moral consciousness or political tradition. By grounding my argument in the Eritrean context, I make the case that the Eritrean state – not unlike other African states – is failing in three fundamental ways. First, it is oppressive towards Indigenous institutions of governance, particularly the village baito practiced in the rural highlands of Eritrea. Second, the state promotes a national identity that has been arbitrarily formed and colonially imposed in place of Indigenous ones, such as those formed around regional or linguistic groupings. Lastly, because the Eritrean state is a rather new phenomenon that suffers from a crisis of legitimacy, it inevitably falls back on processes of violence, coercion and control to assert its authority.

This thesis argues that the state apparatus has failed to provide Africans with a culturally compatible form of governance. The state is a product of colonial origin, and thus, has failed to resonate with Indigenous African spirituality, moral consciousness or political tradition. By grounding my argument in the Eritrean context, I make the case that the Eritrean state – not unlike other African states – is failing in three fundamental ways. First, it is oppressive towards Indigenous institutions of governance, particularly the village baito practiced in the rural highlands of Eritrea. Second, the state promotes a national identity that has been arbitrarily formed and colonially imposed in place of Indigenous ones, such as those formed around regional or linguistic groupings. Lastly, because the Eritrean state is a rather new phenomenon that suffers from a crisis of legitimacy, it inevitably falls back on processes of violence, coercion and control to assert its authority.

The Argentine landscape is marked by countless sites of remembrance of the 1976-1983 dictatorship drawn by human rights groups in Argentina, producing a seemingly infinite command to remember the violence of this period and the 30,000 who were disappeared. Though this landscape can seem chaotic, this impression discounts the context of loss on which it is constructed as well as the deeply affective and contested political issues that motivate its construction. This study thus maps the ways demands for human rights mobilized through public remembrance of the dictatorship articulate a continual learning to live with loss. Investigating the specificities of loss in Argentina, I explore how human rights claims are made in the name of the disappeared who, neither dead nor alive, are at once everywhere and nowhere. I draw largely from my conversations with members of human rights groups to illuminate how the demand for derechos humanos is articulated in particular ways to address present-day social injustices and to affirm the living’s relationship with the disappeared. The study aims to contribute to an understanding of public remembrance as a continual process of teaching and learning about the past that is intended to motivate the formation of a public committed to constructing a better present and future.