A WALK THROUGH THE DEBRIS: Witness scenes of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Brazilian denial context

• Autor(a) principal: Vaz, Frances
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Salgueiro Marques, Ângela Cristina
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Comunicação & Inovação
• Texto Completo: http://seer.uscs.edu.br/index.php/revista_comunicacao_inovacao/article/view/8520
• topic: Covid-19, Epistemic Crisis of Democracy, Denial, Testimony, Trauma.; Covid-19, Crise epistêmica da democracia, Negacionismo, Testemunho, Trauma.

This article aims to analyze witness scenes of the Covid-19 in Brazil shared by the Instagram profile @covidphotobrazil on March 2021. The current scenario of Brazilian pandemic denial is discussed in the light of contemporary debates on processes of democratic erosion in which, among other aspects, the systematic use of lies in politics. The denial of the pandemic crisis is seen as one of the ways in which the Brazilian government has invested in its agenda of lies and disinformation. This process results in the erasure of the lives and histories of those who got sick and died, culminating in oblivion and causing difficulty in producing a memory of the current moment. The scenes are analyzed in the light of these discussions in dialogue with Walter Benjamin's critique of historicism and Judith Butler's notions of precariousness of certain lives. We argue that these images and testimonies can constitute registers of the history of the survivals and as a policy of memory against forgetfulness.