Mortuary Rites in Candomble and the (Re)Construction of Black People’s Ancestrality in the Necropolitical Context

Abstract

The article proposes a reflection on the mortuary rites in candomblé and the attempt to reconstruct an ancestry within a context of epistemic and necropolitical violence. The interruption of these liturgical processes denies these populations the possibility of building an ancientness in which social, political and philosophical values are transmitted. By relating these processes to epistemicide and necropolitics, the text approaches violence as a mechanism of erasure in which death moves from a status of longevity and ancestry to the status of a technology of biopower in which the State applies a policy of extermination on the black population controlling the material possibilities of these groups as well as denying them the possibility of social ascension. From a racial perspective, this essay brings reflections on necropolitics and the destitution of the black population from its ancestry disrupted by the colonial process.