New Arrival Dispositif of Raciality

The Construction of the Other as Non-Being

This book by the leading political thinker and philosopher Sueli Carneiro examines how race operates in Brazilian society and why myths of racial democracy have so much staying power in the country despite the many ideological and cultural shifts. To understand this, Carneiro develops Foucault’s concepts of biopower and dispositif and links them with Charles W. Mills’s writings on the racial contract, creating the “dispositif of raciality.” Carneiro argues that this concept operates through, on the one hand, “epistemicide,” the process whereby Black people are invalidated as knowing subjects, and, on the other, a complicity among white people in relation to the social subordination and elimination of Black people.

As with all dispositifs, however, the dispositif of raciality possesses its own resistance, and Carneiro also addresses Black resistance, understood through the voices and test