The gas chamber and the Genivaldo case: power and endurance in the Brazilian cartoon

Abstract

The article analyzes the cartoon, "Câmara de gás", published by Nando Motta, on the portal, www.brasil247.com. The text addresses the murder of Genivaldo de Jesus dos Santos on May 25, 2022. Paraded by the PRF Sergipe, for driving a motorcycle without helmet, the boy was locked in a makeshift vehicle as a gas chamber. Such an action caused outrage by cultivating similitudes with the Nazi gas chambers. Based on discourse analysis, in the wake of theorists such as Pêcheux (1997), Foucault (2000; 2004; 2009), Courtine (2020) observed how symbolic elements materialize power effects typical of a control society. Our analysis showed that the death of a poor black man recalls the more than 300 years of slavery in Brazil, as well as the Nazi eugenics project. However, the cartoon, in this process of discursivization, functions as a mode of resistance in contemporary social practices.