State, pandemic and reproduction of intersectional inequalities in Brazil: a reflection based on the coloniality/decoloniality tension

Abstract

Since 2015 Brazil has been adopting more intensely the neoliberal rhetoric of economic adjustment and, consequently, the country has been extending its multiple types of social inequality aggravated by the arrival of the pandemic. Therefore, this article aims to examine how decolonial thinking can contribute to reading the Brazilian state sphere in tackling the pandemic in face of the reproduced intersection of class, racial, and gender inequalities. Based on a critical bibliographic review, the coloniality/decoloniality tension has been adopted as an analytical key to analyzing this social reality. Tensioning allows us to identify that, if on the one hand, there is a neoliberal rationality that colonizes the State and society, on the other, the Epistemologies of the South resist and exist – (r)exist – along with, more specifically, decolonial thought, which do make the (r)existence experiences and practices of social struggles visible. A greater presence of the Brazilian state sphere is then required as a way of tackling the intersection of inequalities, even during a strongly neoliberal government. Thus, it is necessary to advance in building an agenda for reflection and discussion about the processes reproducing intersectional inequalities.