Abstract
From the consideration about biopolitics by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, this article analyzes the construction of black population as population-sacer in an emergency context from the so called ideological racial democracy in Brazil in the first half of 20th century. It problematizes the racial democracy as a biopolitical dispositive from which body-species of the population was constituted considering the eugenic principles that suggest the inclusion-exclusion of the black population in creation of national identity narratives as well as it problematizes the miscegenation like a structural national eugenic along this period. It highlights that during 1930’s effective emergency of biopolitics in Brazil, calling attention to statistics knowledge in the formation process of body-species of population, from whitening politics and racism neutralization present in the racial democracy as constitution element in the Brazilian national identity. Racial democracy is established as a fundamental element of the national identity narrative from which not only denies racism, but mobilizes whitening strategies of the population where the ethnic-racial subjectification processes are circumvented by the dynamics of mestizaje. One of the consequences of this dynamic of miscegenation was causing the population to become brown, as it was evident in the census from 1940.
Key-words:
racial democracy; population-sacer; biopolitics; eugenics; history