Ghosts Against Necropolitics
Spectral Effects in Police Brutality Videos
Keywords:
Spectral realism, Necropolitics, Political violence, Visual studies, Philosophy of ImagesAbstract
This article examines how videos of police brutality in Brazil – specifically the Favela Naval scandal (1997) and the murder of Genivaldo Santos (2022) – produce spectral rather than merely evidentiary effects. Drawing on Derrida, Avery Gordon, Hilan Bensusan and Denise Ferreira da Silva, it argues that the power of these images lies not in visibility or transparency but in their capacity to evoke the ghosts of slavery and dictatorship, destabilizing hegemonic narratives of justice, empathy, and race in Brazil’s necropolitical order.
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