Communicating police “pacification” and violence

Abstract

This  paper  inquires  into  a  yet  unquestioned  aspect  in  the  debate  on police  “pacification”  of  favelas  in  Rio  de  Janeiro,  namely  ideologies  of “communication”.  It  argues  that  rationalizations  on  “communication”  walk hand  in  hand  with  imaginations  on  violence,  policed  subjects,  and  their political viability. My hypothesis is that lay rationalizations on the workings of language participate in the construction of regimes of truth on the policing of peripheries, in the demarcation of publics and in the production of sociolinguistic hierarchies, in which groups are positioned as essentially destined to protection and viability and others as naturally bound to marginality and crime.