Discussion: Toward a Decolonial Dangerous Memory of Individual and Collective Self-Empowerment

Abstract

This chapter contains a discussion of the results of the data analysis in the previous chapter. In the first part, I will interpret the data from the perspective of Johann Baptist Metz’s concept of dangerous memory. This concept served as the main sensitizing concept in the data analysis; that is, it helped identify meaningful aspects in the interviews collected for this study. As shown below, the concept represents a plausible starting point for understanding the meaning of the memory of Marielle Franco in the present, but there are also limits to the concept. For this reason, I will also explore new ways of interpreting the memory of Franco that go beyond Metz. My reading of the memory of Franco in this chapter will form the basis for a decolonial understanding of dangerous memory in Chap. 5.

This chapter contains a discussion of the results of the data analysis in the previous chapter. In the first part, I will interpret the data from the perspective of Johann Baptist Metz’s concept of dangerous memory. This concept served as the main sensitizing concept in the data analysis; that is, it helped identify meaningful aspects in the interviews collected for this study. As shown below, the concept represents a plausible starting point for understanding the meaning of the memory of Marielle Franco in the present, but there are also limits to the concept. For this reason, I will also explore new ways of interpreting the memory of Franco that go beyond Metz. My reading of the memory of Franco in this chapter will form the basis for a decolonial understanding of dangerous memory in Chap. 5.

4.1 The Memory of Franco as a Dangerous Memory of Suffering

In this section, I will suggest a preliminary interpretation of the memory of Marielle Franco as a dangerous memory of suffering as understood by Metz. In doing so, I will take the conceptual frame that shaped the presentation of the data in Chap. 3 and open it up for discussion. In a second step, I will problematize this first interpretation because it leaves aside significant aspects of the data, which leads to a one-sided focus on victimization. Herein, I will make a plea for that we need a more differentiated understanding of the positions and contexts of those who remember victims of past suffering and their solidarity with them than the one proposed by Metz.

4.1.1 On the Critical Potential of the Memory of Franco

As discussed in detail in Chap. 2, Metz understands dangerous memory as a remembrance of past individual and collective suffering that is kept alive in the present. Remembering past suffering thus has a critical or dangerous potential because it reminds us of unfulfilled hopes and expectations of the past that are still waiting to be realized and questions the people in the present who are not interested in them. For Metz, the paradigmatic dangerous memory is the memoria passionis, mortis et resurrectionis Jesu Christi, which keeps alive the memory that God calls all people into subjecthood. This memory becomes a dangerous memory wherever and whenever the manifold processes of becoming a subject are prevented or interrupted.

The memory of Franco embedded in the data collected for this research is first and foremost a memory of individual suffering, interrupted dreams, and unrealized possibilities. Keeping in mind the manifold challenges Franco had to deal with as a Black woman from the favela, her trajectory from Maré to the city council reads like a story of successful social advancement and increasing self-determination.¹ Her murder interrupted not only the life of a person who was very dear to her surroundings but also the trajectory of an individual who overcame many obstacles and who was expected to go far in politics.² At the same time, the memory of Franco is also a memory of collective suffering that goes beyond the context of her private life and the circle of her family and friends. As seen earlier, Franco’s political career was strongly supported by different feminist movements whose agendas she represented in the City Council of Rio de Janeiro.³ Her rise as a politician also reflected the dream of favela movements to have political representation for their causes.⁴ Her assassination hit those movements hard and meant a brutal interruption and setback in what they had achieved.

The way people kept awake the memory of Franco after her murder turned it into a dangerous memory as understood by Metz, even though the memory of Franco was not often explicitly interpreted from a Christian perspective in the data.⁵ As seen in Chap. 1, the national and international public attention created by street protests, the high media coverage of the murder case, the different grass-root initiatives that remember her name, and so on have helped prevent the act of injustice from being forgotten and contributed to creating and sustaining political pressure on the Brazilian government to solve the case as quickly as possible. As seen in Chap. 3, remembering Franco has also led to a new awareness of social struggles and structural injustices such as racism, machismo, and homophobia that has resulted in some concrete readjustments in politics.

4.1.2 Problematization

In the previous chapter, I showed that the memory of Franco can be understood as a dangerous memory of suffering in Metz’s sense. But this interpretation also has its limits.

The first problem is that significant parts of the data have not been considered. In particular, this concerns the strategies of individual and collective empowerment.⁶ In addition, it also applies to the developments after Franco’s assassination, which have only been partially taken into account. The identities of the people who remembered Franco, the specifics of their solidarity, and the way they began to carry on her legacy have not been reflected in the interpretation.⁷

As a consequence of this selective approach to the data, the memory of Franco comes into view primarily as a memory of individual and collective victimization. However, this does not correspond to the developments in Franco’s trajectory and her self-understanding or the self-understanding of the women close to her. This is particularly evident in the Sects. 3.2.2.3 and 3.3.3.1, which consider how Franco criticized self-victimization and mobilized resistance. Integrating the omitted data into the interpretation and paying attention to Franco’s self-understanding and how those close to her understand themselves are critical because otherwise there is a risk of repeating a widespread problematic tendency in Western writing that depicts women from the global South in a homogenized way as victims of oppression. According to Mohanty’s famous analysis, such a representation is not harmless but an act of discursive colonization⁸ that denies these women their agency and status as the subjects of their stories.⁹

A second problem in interpreting the memory of Franco solely through the lens of Metz’s concept of dangerous memory concerns the specific situation of my interview partners, which has not come into view so far. As argued in Sect. 2.3.4.2, Metz’s understanding of dangerous memory focuses primarily on subjects who are not in danger or affected by the suffering they remember. This perspective applies well to people who solidarize with Franco from an outsider position. But it obviously differs from the situation of my interview partners who were strongly affected, covictimized, or endangered by Franco’s assassination.¹⁰ For my interview partners, solidarity with Franco is not just a form of advocacy in which one stands in for another person who cannot speak and stand up for their interests (any longer).¹¹ Rather, their solidarity with Franco should be understood as what Joerg Rieger calls deep solidarity, meaning a form of solidarity between people who recognize that they are affected by the same problems.¹² Consequently, to my interview partners, remembering Franco is not only about her life but also about their lives, which are all closely entangled.

In response to this problem, the following interpretation of the memory of Franco begins with the specific situation of my interview partners after Franco’s assassination in Rio de Janeiro.¹³ As will be seen, choosing this starting point opens up a path that goes beyond Metz’s understanding of dangerous memory but without going against his intentions. By starting with the situation of my interview partners, I actually attempt to follow Metz’s appeal to listen to victims, that is, to those who are directly affected by an act of injustice and suffer from it, which came up in the context of the challenges of practicing theology after Auschwitz.¹⁴ The demand to listen to victims is morally paramount and responds to the concerns of oral historians seeking to recover the voices of those who are unheard.¹⁵ Yet as noted in Sect. 2.5, Metz does not draw any theoretical conclusions from his demand and refrains from further differentiation, which creates a problematic tension in his understanding of dangerous memory. Metz places remembering victims at the center of attention. But based on my analysis, Metz primarily considers the subjects’ memory, which is in solidarity with victims and their suffering, and not the victims’ own memory of their suffering. As a result, victims risk becoming objects of other people’s memory and solidarity. This may be the sad reality in the case of dead victims who actually cannot speak for themselves anymore. In the case of surviving victims, however, the situation is different. At least theoretically, they could speak for themselves, even if this might be complicated, for example, by the experience of trauma and its consequences.¹⁶ It is therefore vital that victims, especially surviving victims, are not hastily deprived of agency and rendered “needier”¹⁷ than they are.

4.2 The Memory of Franco as a Dangerous Memory of Black Feminist Self-Empowerment

In the previous section, I interpreted the memory of Franco as dangerous memory of suffering and unfulfilled hopes in Metz’s sense. But it turned out that his approach could not fully account for the results of the data analysis. The strategies of individual and collective empowerment, the specific situation of my interview partners, particular developments after Franco’s assassination, and Franco’s self-understanding have not yet been given sufficient attention. In this chapter, I will deal with these aspects in more depth.

The goal of this argument is not only to offer a more adequate interpretation of the data. It also aims to decolonize the concept of dangerous memory, which becomes necessary when it is used in a non-European context. As the following discussion of the memory of Franco will show, dangerous memory is not (only) about past suffering, injustice, and unfulfilled hopes that are kept awake in the present to create political pressure and hold those in power accountable for injustices. Instead, memory also becomes dangerous when it stimulates and inspires marginalized people to self-empowerment and mobilizes them to stand up for themselves in any situation of injustice that hinders their potential and dreams.

In the following chapter, I begin with the context of my interview partners, which reflects the Sitz im Leben of the data. Afterward I will elaborate on the underlying notion of the subject and the issue of individual and collective (self-)empowerment.

4.2.1 Setting the Context: Memory in a Moment of Danger

The data analyzed in this study shed light on urban life in Rio from the perspective of those living and working on the margins, who experience its violent sides in their daily life. Franco’s assassination cannot be seen in isolation from this context in which she lived and worked. Against this background, I argue that the memory of Marielle Franco needs to be understood as a memory that emerged in a moment of increased danger and a feeling of immediate existential threat after Franco’s assassination, which heightened people’s sense of vulnerability and made the fragility of the state manifest.

4.2.1.1 Human-Rights Activists’ Feelings of Danger

Franco’s assassination made my interviewees aware of how dangerous their commitment to human rights and social justice is. Some interviewees recounted how their perception of their context had changed after Franco’s assassination, which revealed to them the increasing power of the illegal paramilitary militias. As a consequence, human-rights defenders (including my interview partners) could no longer expect that they could denunciate violations of rights in a safe manner and on democratic grounds, as they had been used to doing. Perceiving this difference made the interviewees realize that their commitment to human rights and social justice had become riskier and that they needed to make more efforts to ensure their safety.¹⁸

These remarks reflect Walter Benjamin’s concept of memory in a moment of danger that was introduced earlier.¹⁹ According to Benjamin, a memory of the past imposes itself on the subject in a moment of danger. This memory helps the existentially threatened subject to perceive the context more realistically. Such a sharpened perception provides an essential means for the threatened subject to secure its survival in the present. In the aftermath of Franco’s murder, as seen above, my interview partners became aware of the difference between the present situation and the previous one. The perceived difference made them more aware of their vulnerability and the danger they faced due to the increased power of the militias.

To understand the danger and the potential for violence resulting from the strengthened position of the militias, it is important to emphasize that they have complex relationships and partnerships with criminal factions involved in drug trafficking (as competitors in territorial control or as business partners), as well as with police units (as patrons or suppliers of resources such as weapons). Their connections reach all the way to the public authorities and into parliament.²⁰ They are thus intertwined with the crime scene and state structures in multiple ways. Yet the activities of the militias are not generally perceived as criminal, illegal, or a threat to democracy. Sometimes they are also considered a part of the solution to the problem of urban crime since they fight the territorial expansions of criminal factions (if only out of self-interest).²¹ Given the close links between the militias and members of state who protect their interests, it is not surprising that those who dare to speak out publicly against the militias and denunciate their crimes live dangerously, as has been the case with Marcelo Freixo, for example.²²

4.2.1.2 (Black) Women’s Feelings of Danger

Franco’s assassination made my interviewees more fully aware of the vulnerability of (Black) women in political spaces. Some interviewees recounted the fear Franco’s assassination had instigated among them and other Black women. In their evaluation, Franco’s assassination was not only meant to stop her but also other Black women.²³

In this context, it is interesting to note that Renata Souza, one of Franco’s ex-advisors who was elected as a state deputy in 2018, argued that Franco’s assassination was a reaction to her work in the city council and could not be seen as isolated from the high rates of femicide in Brazil, which is why she called Franco’s assassination a “political femicide.”²⁴ The plausibility of this assessment becomes evident when considering Franco’s political objectives. As a city councilor of Rio de Janeiro, Franco worked to empower Black women in their daily life and strengthen their presence in parliament.²⁵ In doing so, Franco pursued central concerns of the Brazilian Black feminist movement, as it has developed in the last decades.²⁶

According to Cristiano Rodrigues and Viviane Gonçalves Freitas, the modern history of this movement can be roughly divided into three phases. Brazilian Black feminism formed as an independent movement in the 1970s and 1980s. In this context, Black feminists became increasingly critical of essentialist understandings of identity—such as “the Black person” or “the woman”—in the Black movement and the (White) feminist movement.²⁷ As a consequence, they began to organize autonomously and work on their own issues.²⁸ These included, among other things, addressing the precarious working conditions of Black women as babás (nannies) and domestic workers as well as domestic violence.²⁹

The 1990s and 2000s saw an increasing institutionalization and professionalization of Black feminism. Numerous NGOs and networks emerged to make Black women’s concerns heard within politics. At the same time, there was also an intensification of international exchange. Central issues included Black women’s health and reproductive rights in a context where mass sterilizations of Black women were occurring.³⁰ But by the mid-2000s, NGOs started to lose political power. This was partly due to their political successes, since many of their concerns had been incorporated into state agendas.³¹ They also saw financial losses as Brazil experienced an economic downturn and international financial support declined.³² At the same time, new forms of Black feminist activism emerged, initiating a new phase.

Since the 2010s, there has been an increasing grassroots orientation in Brazilian Black feminism.³³ In addition, the paradigm of intersectionality has been popularized. This has led to greater attention to concerns of the LGBTQ+ community, which are also addressed from an intersectional perspective.³⁴ Another development has been the emergence of a movement of Black feminists who have sought ways to address the underrepresentation of Black women in politics.³⁵ As reflected in Sect. 3.2.5 and as will be discussed further below, Franco’s work needs to be seen in that context.

In summary, Brazilian Black feminism has developed into a diverse, vibrant, and impactful movement since its formative years. Despite the persistence of racism and sexism in Brazilian society, these movements have seen some political and social successes. For them, Franco’s assassination was a collective shock.

4.2.1.3 Summary

The previous pages have revealed that the memory of Franco reconstructed in this study is grounded in a moment when human-rights activists and Black women seeking to strengthen their rights and make democracy more inclusive have felt existentially threatened. Human-rights defenders have felt weakened because of the strengthened position of militias whose presence undermines the rule of law. Franco’s assassination made human-rights activists aware that they can no longer rely on negotiating interests and conflicts according to democratic principles, as her murder manifested the fragility of the constitutional democratic state. Black women and women in general working for the political inclusion of (Black) women in democracy have felt much more vulnerable because one of their equals was brutally ripped away; Franco’s assassination made them aware that there is no guarantee for safety and progress in their cause.

These remarks on the feeling of danger, threat, and vulnerability in a context of widespread violence have consequences for what it means to be, become, and remain a subject. Since this was also a major concern in Metz’s reflections on dangerous memory, the following chapter will explore this topic in greater depth.

4.2.2 On Becoming a Subject: Franco as a “Being in Construction”

In this chapter, I will outline theoretical foundations for what it means to be and become a subject. This topic must be taken into account to do justice to the people interviewed in this work and their situations. In a first step, I will recapitulate Metz’s understanding of the subject and recall some of its problematic aspects. In a second step, I will introduce Judith Butler’s approach, which is helpful for the further interpretation of the data that will follow in Sect. 4.2.2.4.

4.2.2.1 Revising Metz’s Understanding of the Subject

Metz’s theological approach stands in the tradition of modern subject-based theologies, such as that of his teacher Karl Rahner. But at the same time, his thinking also represents a critical repositioning. As shown in Sect. 2.3.2, Metz highlights that in theology the subject cannot simply be taken for granted in the face of numerous historical and social experiences of suffering and the ideological entanglement of the subject with the bourgeoisie. As a consequence of this analysis, he does not abolish the subject, as it contains the possibility of the individual assumption of responsibility and the practice of freedom, but he critically distinguishes between subjects and those who were interrupted in the process of becoming subjects.

From a theological perspective, Metz argues that God calls on all people to become subjects. However, because of war, injustice, and various forms of violence and suffering, not all people can follow and live up to this call. Consequently, Metz asks those who have become subjects to stand in solidarity with those who have been or were interrupted in this pursuit and to preserve the memory of them before God and in the contemporary world.³⁶ In doing so, subjects are to call on God and the present to do justice to those who were or have been interrupted in their processes of becoming subjects.

I have already outlined my criticism of this position, but I want to return to it.³⁷ In my view, as argued earlier, Metz is not critical enough of the genesis of “the (bourgeois) subject” and pays too little attention to how it constitutes itself through othering. As a consequence, he also lacks self-criticism toward his own understanding of the subject. According to Metz, subjects who stand in solidarity with and remember those who were or have been interrupted in becoming subjects do it in the service of others. Yet one could critically ask if remembering and solidarizing is not more strongly in the service of the subjects who constitute themselves as moral subjects caring for “the other,” that is, the person or people (or “victims”) interrupted in becoming a subject. As a result, the latter assumingly need to rely on the solidarity, help, and commitment of established subjects.³⁸

As demonstrated above, this criticism raised against Metz is not purely hypothetical but is reflected in a tendency toward victimization when his concept is used as a lens to understand the memory of Franco.³⁹ For this reason, I will now present an alternative that does better justice to the example discussed in this work.

4.2.2.2 Judith Butler: Fragile Subjects in Continuous Construction

This chapter introduces the main characteristics of Judith Butler’s theory of the subject.⁴⁰ Butler places her work in the broad field of feminist theory and specifically represents its linguistic turn.⁴¹ At the same time, Butler is considered a founding figure of queer theory, which analyzes and deconstructs the relations between power, (sexual) identities, and norms.⁴²

Butler’s approach builds on discourse theory, which understands discourses as privileged sites of the social construction of reality. The power of discourses is reflected in how they shape our perception of the world and exclude alternative meanings from the outset. In Paula-Irene Villa’s words, “[d]iscourses delimit the realm of the thinkable and the livable, in that other options do not appear thinkable or livable.”⁴³ However, as will be seen below, discourses should not be thought of deterministically because they are always enacted through social actions.⁴⁴ Social actions, such as speech, can also fail or subvert the meanings of discourses.⁴⁵ This approach has far-reaching consequences for the understanding of the subject and identity.

Butler criticizes notions of the subject that understand it as a prediscursive and ontological factum.⁴⁶ From her point of view, there is no subject without subjection, referring to “the process of becoming subordinated through power as well as the process of becoming a subject.”⁴⁷ Put differently, individuals must submit to discourses through their social actions to become “someone,” that is, a subject with a socially recognizable and accepted identity. On the individual psychological level, subjection occurs through an appellation of an individual as “something” or “someone.”⁴⁸ This appellation can be accepted or rejected by the individual.⁴⁹ Subjection is also manifested in how an individual physically incorporates a discourse.⁵⁰ Furthermore, subjection proceeds through the exclusion or rejection of alternative possibilities. Hence, on the individual level, a subject’s identity is also produced through what it is not. On the political level, only certain subjects are considered legitimate.⁵¹

The assumption that a subject is constituted through subjection goes along with a loss of sovereignty. But this does not mean that discourses completely determine subjects. According to Butler, post-sovereign subjects’ ability to act is revealed in their use of language when they creatively or subversively respond to an appellation.⁵² This becomes especially manifest when an individual is called by what Butler terms “an injurious name.”⁵³ A Brazilian example for an “injurious name” is sapatão, a pejorative word used for lesbian women that literally means big shoe and refers to the idea of a masculine woman. Lesbian women can either reject or accept being called a sapatão. Accepting an “injurious name” might be difficult, yet it is also the condition for subverting its defeating meaning. According to Butler, this leads to a paradoxical situation: “only by occupying—being occupied by—that injurious term can I resist and oppose it, recasting the power that constitutes me as the power I oppose.”⁵⁴

This possibility of appropriation and potential subversion also has political consequences. Through the creative or subversive appropriation of identities that have been excluded in processes of subjectivation, these can be mobilized as sources of possible resistance.⁵⁵ This can be seen, for example, in the way individuals and lesbian movements have positively appropriated the term sapatão and gained strength from the position of difference.⁵⁶ Hence, in political contexts, identity is an important category for action. But its understanding should not be reduced to an essence. Rather, it must be understood in its fragility (as ongoing acts of identification) and as a “discursive site of constant renegotiation.”⁵⁷ In this context, the term queer, as used by Butler, refers to a “strategy of keeping open”⁵⁸ and constantly questioning identities—and not to a new identity on a metalevel.

4.2.2.3 Butler’s Relevance concerning Discourses of Victimization

The relevance of Butler’s reflections can be seen, among other things, in relation to a topic addressed by the Black American author bell hooks. Just as the title of one of her essays says, it is about Black women “Refusing to Be a Victim.”⁵⁹ Engaging with the topic of hooks’s essay will prepare the interpretation of the memory of Franco in the following chapters.

In hooks’s essay from the mid-1990s, she critically examines the adoption of victimhood rhetoric in (White) feminist and Black movements.⁶⁰ In her evaluation, this strategy worked for White women in the 1980s, and they recorded many successes.⁶¹ For Black movements, by contrast, it did not work out the same way. When they adopted a victim identity, it did not increase their visibility among White people because, in their consciousness, the image of Black people as victims is socially accepted.⁶² At the same time, however, Black people’s self-understanding as victims undermined their ability to act. This is reflected in the following quote by hooks:

When individual black people project a victim identity because it brings their concerns into greater visibility, they are acting in complicity with an assaultive structure of racist domination in which they invest in the absence of agency. To name oneself a victim is to deny agency.⁶³

Reading hooks through the lens of Butler’s theory helps further understand the danger of adopting a rhetoric of victimhood in Black movements. By adopting a victim identity, Black people constitute themselves according to an image shaped by racist patterns that only considers Blacks who understand themselves as victims to be legitimate. That is, by adopting a victim identity, they internalize White racism. One can further argue with Butler against hooks that adopting a victim identity does not completely eliminate the possibility of agency; it remains present in and vis-à-vis the discourse. But once the discourse of victimization is internalized, resistance must be directed not only “against the outside” but also “against the inside” (against images and ideas in a person’s inner life). Thus, adopting a victim identity on a political level is dangerous as it doubles the challenges.

As hook admits, her critique of adopting a victim identity is influenced by her own experience. This is reflected in the following anecdote:

Coming to womanhood in the segregated South, I had never heard black women talk about themselves as victims. Facing hardship, the ravages of economic lack and deprivation, the cruel injustice of racial apartheid, I lived in a world where women gained strength by sharing knowledge and resources, not by bonding on the basis of being victims. Despite the incredible pain of living in racial apartheid, southern black people did not speak about ourselves as victims even when we were downtrodden. We identified ourselves more by the experience of resistance and triumph than by the nature of our victimization. It was given that life was hard, that there was suffering. It was by facing that suffering with grace and dignity that one experienced transformation. During civil rights struggle, when we joined hands to sing “we shall overcome,” we were empowered by a vision of fulfillment of victory.⁶⁴

This anecdote could also well be from Franco's life. The following interpretation of Franco’s trajectory reflects in many ways how she and those in her surroundings refused to be victims.

4.2.2.4 Franco as a “Being in Construction”

In this chapter, I interpret Franco’s trajectory through the lens of Judith Butler’s theory of subjectivation through subjection.

The data analysis of the interviews collected for this research has revealed that (hegemonic) social discourses shaped Franco’s life in various ways. As a Black woman from the favela, Franco represented a body that is commonly considered “perverse.”⁶⁵ The evaluation “perverse” implies a deviation produced through different intersecting social discourses that place the White, heterosexual, financially independent male subject as normative. The way in which the culture, society, politics, and also people in Franco’s surroundings embraced such discourses led (and still leads) to various forms of violence against Franco and other women with similar characteristics like her. In the face of such enormous challenges, these women are at a high risk of giving up personal projects, ideas, and hopes about their futures. Aware of this risk, Franco tried to encourage women from such backgrounds to continue in school, since schooling is the most basic condition for social advancement.⁶⁶ In these encounters, Franco was not a person who stood up for others from a secure and established position (according to Metz’s understanding of “the subject”). Rather, she was also a subject in becoming and continued to construct herself together and alongside these women.⁶⁷

The analysis of Franco’s biography based on memories of people in her close surroundings reflects how she built an increasingly complex identity through various learning processes. As seen earlier, Franco and other young people from the favela gained access to the university through the university preparatory course organized by CEASM. At the same time, they also gained a critical awareness of their situation as favelados.⁶⁸ The appropriation of the “injurious name” favelado, often used pejoratively, allowed them to resignify the term and build new forms of resistance to counter the marginalization of the favela. Such resistance manifested itself, among other ways, in how Franco began to question the violent presence of the state in the favelas. Resistance here does not yet mean taking action but denaturalizing previously assumed facts and a more persistent critical questioning of how reality presents itself. Through her interactions with other women and their experiences of motherhood and gender violence, Franco also increasingly constructed herself as a feminist and stood up for her life, her body, and her rights.⁶⁹

The processual character of subjectivation through subjection is impressively manifested in the way Franco came to identify as a lesbian woman. As a young woman, Franco fell in love with Monica Benicio, which put them in a risky situation because their families threatened to throw them out if they stayed in a relationship. Also, they feared becoming victims of corrective rapes supposed to make “deviant” women “normal.”⁷⁰ Due to these and other related challenges, the two women were unable to maintain the relationship. Franco then started a relationship with Eduardo Alves, who took on the role of a father to her daughter. In this period, according to the evaluation of an interview partner, Franco and Alves lived a family life as it was supposed to be according to more traditional values. Yet ultimately, Franco and Alves also separated, and Franco reunited with Benicio. In this process, which extended over several years, Franco first identified herself as a bisexual woman. During her mandate as a city councilor, Franco gained a more critical awareness of the political context in Rio de Janeiro. The LGBTQ+ community, and especially lesbian women, were struggling in the face of politically conservative, evangelical agendas. In this context, Franco started to publicly identify as a lesbian. By adopting a lesbian identity, she could resist the dominant political discourse on lesbians.⁷¹ Consequently, she was also able to resignify the political defeat after the rejection of the bill to introduce the “day of lesbian visibility.” In this context, she did not emphasize the loss but the act of resistance by lesbian women whose presence (including her own) troubled and would continue to trouble a homophobic parliamentary body.⁷²

The processual nature of subject and identity formation is also evident in Franco’s consolidation as a Black woman, which ultimately became increasingly reflected in her appearance. For example, Franco underwent a process of naturalizing her hair, an aspect of physical appearance that is often the target of racist discourses.⁷³ Through the conscious appropriation of Blackness and its physical incorporation (or incarnation), the “Black woman in Franco”⁷⁴ was built and became a motor of resistance to racism. Her identity’s bodily materialization and visibility helped her assert her presence as legitimate by underlining her credibility.⁷⁵ As will be shown later, Franco’s incarnated Blackness also became a wake-up call and empowering stimulus for other Black women.

In summary, the interpretation of the data analysis shows how Franco went through a complex process of subjectification through subjection and identity construction. Such a process, according to Judith Butler, is never complete. Identity remains fragile and relies on performative repetition. In this sense, the statements in this work that Franco was a Black lesbian woman from the favela should not be understood in essentialist ways. These statements also have a discursive character.⁷⁶

4.2.3 On Individual and Collective Self-Empowerment: Franco as a Stimulus and Encouragement to Other Black Women

This chapter situates Franco’s trajectory within the collective construction of Brazilian Black feminism. It aims to show that Franco was an offspring of this movement and that she contributed to strengthening it. To make this point, I will first introduce the concept of self-empowerment in Black feminist theory.

4.2.3.1 (Self-)Empowerment in Brazilian Black Feminist Theory

Many feminist theories treat the topic of power in three different but interrelated perspectives. There is “power over” in the sense of domination or oppression, “power to” as the ability to accomplish something, and “power with” as the ability to act as a collective and achieve common goals.⁷⁷ Historically, the concept of empowerment—here broadly defined as the processes, principles, or strategies through which individuals and groups are strengthened to act in a self-determined way and claim their rights—was introduced into (English) feminist theory in the 1990s. It can be understood as a reaction to discussions in the 1980s concerned with victimization and women’s self-understanding as victims, as exemplified previously in Sect. 4.2.2.3.⁷⁸

Against this more general background, I will now concentrate on the Brazilian Black feminist Joice Berth’s reflections on individual and collective (self-)empowerment. Just like other Black feminist theorists,⁷⁹ Berth does not claim to speak on behalf of “the woman,” as was historically often the case with feminist theories developed by White middle-class women.⁸⁰ Instead, Berth’s and other Black feminists’ thinking and search for emancipation and self-empowerment are based on the concept of intersectionality, which concerns the intersections of various mechanisms of oppression based on different social markers such as gender, race, sexual orientation, class, or religion.⁸¹

In her book Empoderamento from 2019, Berth strongly emphasizes the need for the individual and collective self-empowerment of Black women (in the sense of power with).⁸² In doing so, she not only criticizes approaches focused on individual empowerment that allows mastery and control of the self. A common example for this would be individual empowerment through economic advancement that might improve individual circumstances but, as Berth highlights, does not abolish other mechanisms of oppression, such as those based on race or gender. At the same time, Berth also distances herself from approaches that claim that specific conditions must be created to enable people’s self-empowerment. To Berth, these approaches risk cementing relationships of paternalistic dependency or a logic of assistance.⁸³ For this reason, Berth underscores the importance of the individual and collective self-empowerment of Black women through mutual exchange and support and by growing in self-knowledge, self-affirmation, and self-worth. This does not exclude the existence of “external stimuli,” such as education, culture, or therapy. Yet they are only “fuel” and not the conditions for the process of self-empowerment.⁸⁴

An important pioneer in this understanding of empowerment was the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.⁸⁵ For him, helping others gain critical consciousness (conscientização) about their own life contexts was a way to empower and liberate oppressed people.⁸⁶ Beyond this, Berth also highlights the importance of empowerment in political processes,⁸⁷ aesthetics,⁸⁸ and affectivity.⁸⁹ All these aspects can also be found in the data analysis of the memory of Franco and will be interpreted below.

In sum, Black women’s self-empowerment, as understood by Berth and other Black feminist thinkers, aims at a fundamental critique of existing power relations and a practical transformation of social injustice and inequality, starting from the lives of Black women.⁹⁰ As I will discuss in the next chapter, there are different links between Black feminist theory and practice and decolonial theory.

4.2.3.2 Brazilian Black Feminism as a Form of Decolonialism

Brazilian Black intersectional feminism’s understanding of self-empowerment, as well as its radical claim for social transformation, share many concerns with decolonial theory and practice because the colonial legacy continues to shape the lives of Black women up to this day.⁹¹

Decolonial theory, in general terms, is similar to and builds on postcolonial theory’s analysis of European colonialism.⁹² Decolonial theory understands modernity as a global phenomenon that constitutively builds on European colonial expansion to the Americas. It thus considers modernity not an exclusively European phenomenon but a global one.⁹³ Decolonial theory’s core concept, the “coloniality of power” (Anibal Quijano), refers to the ongoing legacy of colonial power relations in current social structures and knowledge production.⁹⁴ The main pillars of the “coloniality of power” are capitalist exploitation, racialization, and a specific gender construction.⁹⁵ Against this background, decolonial theory aims instigate radical social transformation through practices that critically respond to colonial power relations and not only to think about such a transformation.⁹⁶

Decolonial practices are best described when demarcated from practices of resistance. According to Catherine Walsh, resistance most often denotes “oppositional-defensive and reactive-social action”⁹⁷ directed against colonial power relations. Decolonial practices, in contrast, represent a more “propositional and insurgent offensive for that challenges and constructs.”⁹⁸ They do not aim at overcoming coloniality, which will probably never disappear. It is about developing decolonial alternatives in the plural.⁹⁹ Decolonial practices can be further distinguished in two types. A decolonial resurgence means the renewal and rediscovery of alternative knowledge, imagining other ways of living together, and giving new meaning to life.¹⁰⁰ Building on that, a decolonial insurgence is “the act-action of creation, construction, and intervention that aims towards an otherwise.”¹⁰¹

For decolonial practices to emerge, it is essential to start from a position of “colonial difference.” The latter refers to an epistemic “outside” of Eurocentrism, which has been imposed as a “global matrix of power.”¹⁰² This “outside” is not to be taken as absolute or naturally given with a specific social location. Therefore, one should maybe better call it an “outsider-within” position. As such, it is about taking a counter-hegemonic position, marking differences, and revealing the borders of the colonial matrix.¹⁰³ In other words, decolonial practices emerge from locations of difference within, which might be metaphorically called “fissures” or “cracks.”¹⁰⁴ Departing from such “fissures,” one becomes able to engage in “border thinking,” denoting “an act of becoming, being, thinking, and doing within epistemic resources other than those typically recognizable and legitimate within Western modernity.”¹⁰⁵

Against this background, Brazilian Black feminism’s approaches to self-empowerment can also be understood as Black women’s attempts to react critically to the colonial history of racism, sexism, and economic exploitation from an outsider-within position.¹⁰⁶ Black women’s efforts toward self-empowerment usually start as practices of resistance in daily life. But they can also turn into projects of creating decolonial alternatives. This is also the case with the political project Franco represented and carried on, which will be treated next.

4.2.3.3 Franco as an Offspring and Stimulus of (Self-)Empowerment

Building on the Black feminist theory of (self-)empowerment, the results of the data analysis are rather typical. All four identified strategies of individual and collective (self-)empowerment—education, cuidado, construção coletiva, and incarnation and creating visibility—denote fields and approaches that are crucial to both the individual and collective empowerment of Black women.¹⁰⁷ The aim of the following chapter is to show that Franco’s trajectory is a fruit of a process of collective (self-)empowerment and that Franco herself also contributed to a further empowering.

• (1) On Education

The importance of education and the process of gaining critical consciousness within Black feminism is evident in the way that individuals from marginalized groups gain a critical awareness of their situation and are thus empowered to take transformative action.¹⁰⁸ In this work on Franco, the importance of education in her life is manifested in relation to the university preparatory course held by CEASM. Franco’s successful entry into university, as well as her identification as a favelada, are expressions of collective efforts to improve the living conditions of favela residents and to create different prospects for youth in particular. The educational practices of the preparatory course for the university admission exam exhibit typical traits of decolonial practices that seek to construct alternatives for individuals and communities.

In Franco’s later biography, she used education to empower others. As a city councilor, working on creating critical consciousness accompanied all her activities. On the one hand, this was intended to help people act in a qualified manner.¹⁰⁹ Here the emphasis was on individual empowerment, which was, however, always in the service of the collective empowerment of Black women and people in the favelas.¹¹⁰ On the other hand, education and the promotion of critical consciousness were intended to help people (from vulnerable social groups) who had little familiarity with politics and parliamentary space become aware of their rights and understand where and how they could claim them.¹¹¹ Here the focus was primarily on collective empowerment.

• (2) On Cuidado (Care)

The importance of cuidado for Black feminism resides in the fact that it allows for the establishment of positive relationships with “the other” and the mobilization of resources for resistance. For marginalized groups, “the other” includes not only other people but also perceptions of oneself. This can be seen in the following quote:

[F]or oppressed groups, the wear and tear on the relationship developed with themselves is tremendously affected by negative social pressure, both by the absence of their self-image as positive reinforcement and by the dissatisfaction fed by the belief that they assimilate to dominant groups’ strategies of “natural” inferiority and subalternity. In other words, they go through a continuous process of disqualification, systematically weakening their possibilities to develop love for themselves and recognition of their positive aspects and even their humanity. We can thus also think about the rejection of themselves as individuals, which is projected onto their social peers, making it impossible for them to form healthy relationships, whether of love or friendship.¹¹²

The importance of cuidado as a strategy of empowerment for Franco was not a central theme named specifically in the interviews. However, it is reflected, among other things, in the support provided by her friends, partnership,¹¹³ and family.¹¹⁴ Franco’s affectionate way of dealing with others also seems to have mirrored the way of interaction in her family.¹¹⁵ This leads to how Franco empowered others through cuidado.

The data analysis clearly revealed the central importance of cuidado for empowering others in Franco’s life. This was most evident in Franco’s work on the Human Rights Defense and Citizenship Commission. Through cuidado, Franco was able to effectively provide assistance to victims of human-rights violations.¹¹⁶ Attending to and caring for the victimized members of police families, Franco was also able to break with the polemical juxtaposition of human-rights defenders and the police.¹¹⁷ This led to the empowerment of individuals who had been victims of human-rights violations.¹¹⁸ At the same time, cuidado established new relationships and critical awareness about the context of human-rights violations. Both represented resources for collective empowerment that went beyond the specific interests of singular groups.¹¹⁹ This reflects how cuidado can also serve to broaden individual efforts to transform an oppressive system by bringing into view not only one’s own perspectives but also those of others (outside of one’s own immediate interest group).¹²⁰

To sum up, Franco’s caring attitude not only had an empowering effect on others but also on herself. In this context, Black feminist theory emphasizes that positive interactions between persons of marginalized groups always have an effect back on one’s own perception. According to Joice Berth, “[b]eing kind to those who serve as our social mirror is an empowering act of our emotional self because it is acting kindly toward ourselves.”¹²¹

• (3) On Incarnation and Creating Visibility

Aesthetics is an important field for the individual and collective empowerment of Black women because it is about the perception and evaluation of what is beautiful. In Brazil, as illustrated earlier, there is a cultural ideology of “Whitening.”¹²² According to this ideology, Whiteness (Europeanness) is the norm against which bodies and identities are measured. This leads to a stigma attached to people that are non-White. As a result, these people not only experience racial discrimination but also suffer from low self-esteem and self-hate. By contrast, reappropriating and valorizing one’s appearance and increasing self-esteem and self-love are acts of self-empowerment.¹²³

These remarks can be further supported with Butler’s reflections on discourse and subject formation. As seen earlier, discourses shape social perception and define legitimate subjects.¹²⁴ Brazilian “Whitening” can be understood as a discourse that shapes the perception of people based on racist criteria and creates a group of legitimate subjects and others who are not recognized as such. As Butler points out, individuals and groups are not incapable of acting in the face of powerful discourses. But they must subject themselves to the discourse in order to be able to subvert it.

Traditionally, the materialization of the racist discourse of “Whitening” has taken the form of non-White persons attempting to become “Whiter” through various practices such as straightening their hair. These attempts were always doomed to failure because the norm of “Whiteness” was unattainable. In contrast, the appropriation of “Blackness” has allowed people to question the racist discourse and to positively reshape their own identity and self-image.

As explained above, the process of Franco’s identification as a Black woman took place within Black feminist movements and also strongly within her private environment. In this process, Franco and the women around her began to practice Afro-Brazilian religions and naturalize their hair, among other things. Franco’s hair demonstrates how her identity as a Black woman materialized. During Franco’s electoral campaign, her appropriated Black identity was also reflected in her Afroaesthetic.¹²⁵

The way Franco’s identification as a Black woman was also manifested “outwardly” helped other women feel encouraged and empowered to appropriate spaces from which they had traditionally been excluded. This was true both before her death¹²⁶ and, even more strongly, after her death.¹²⁷ However, the visibility of “the Black woman” in Franco should not be reduced to her person alone. In and with her body, she also represented Black women in the city council and made their voice heard. This will be discussed in the next chapter.

• (4) On Constructing Collectively in Word and Practice

As Joice Berth highlights, political participation is highly important for the collective self-empowerment of Black women.¹²⁸ This is also manifested in Franco’s trajectory, where political participation was given a very broad definition (encompassing formal politics and civil society) and took on the specific form of collective construction in word and practice among those who are at the city’s margins.

Franco had a strong awareness that she owed her own development as a Black woman from the favela to a long and comprehensive collective development of organizing of Black women that preceded her.¹²⁹ Her awareness of being embedded in something larger and of the support she received from different movements ultimately led her to the decision to run for city councilor.¹³⁰ On the way to the city council, this awareness became practical in the way her campaign was organized. The campaign was not only about her. Rather, Franco was the face of a campaign that was meant to empower Black women, favelados, and other marginalized people collectively. This was apparent in her campaign slogan, “I am because we are,” which embraced different aspects of collective construction.¹³¹

After Franco’s election, collective construction remained a core strategy and practice of her term in office. It was reflected, for example, in the ways she worked with social movements and collectives, drafting legislative proposals together with them. This was not only a matter of ascertaining people’s “real needs.”¹³² Rather, collective construction was also a strategy to assure that people could contribute to the political process in a transformative way by proposing their own solutions.¹³³ In this context, Franco’s term in office contributed significantly to turning those who are traditionally excluded from politics and are only seen as (needy) “objects” into political subjects.

During her term in office, many of Franco’s efforts of collective construction were also specifically directed toward strengthening the presence of Black women in politics, a group that is significantly underrepresented in Brazilian politics.¹³⁴ This was reflected in the composition of her own team. It was also evident in the events and activities that Franco’s office carried out that made Black women’s presence in parliamentary space more common.¹³⁵ Against the background of the colonial legacy, the practices of collective organizing by Franco’s office can be understood as practices of decolonial insurgence.¹³⁶ They exceed acts of pure resistance to a structural problem and challenge it in more propositional ways.

In summary, Franco’s work can be understood as an effort to create an authentic and effective form of political representation. As such, it is close to Ocupa Política¹³⁷ and other movements of political renewal that have emerged since 2013. Ocupa Política (Occupy politics) assumes that political change only comes when Black, LGBTQ+, and indigenous people are integrated into the political process.¹³⁸ Together with other political renewal movements, Ocupa Política also seeks to address the population’s loss of trust in politics and democratic institutions and to bring politics and people closer together again.¹³⁹ Against this background, Franco’s collectively run office sought a political practice of representation through which the bodies that were supposed to be represented politically also effectively entered the political space.¹⁴⁰ As reflected in the data analysis, Franco was accorded high credibility and political authority since her political agenda, the office’s practices, and the bodies matched.¹⁴¹ This shows that Franco was indeed concerned with identity politics during her term in office. Yet because of its deeply integrated intersectional perspective, her office was neither sectarian nor closed but sought dialogue and cooperation with anyone who was willing and open to it.¹⁴²

4.2.3.4 Resurrection: Individual and Collective Empowerment Through Franco beyond Her Death

The international response to Franco’s assassination came as a surprise to everyone around her and probably to her killers as well. Franco had great potential and might have had a stellar political career ahead of her at the national level,¹⁴³ but she died at a time when her work and influence were still predominantly limited to the urban context of Rio de Janeiro. After her assassination, her “sphere of influence” expanded in dramatic ways. Franco’s assassination received a lot of media coverage, which made her name and image known and more present to national and international audiences.¹⁴⁴

Her public visibility after her death led many people to engage more deeply with her person and story. This had two consequences. First, people who learned about Franco’s murder were mobilized and started to participate in the large street protests, which again became the subject of media coverage. In these protests, Franco was remembered in several ways. As already seen in Chap. 1, one of the most popular forms of remembering Franco was to affirm: “Marielle presente! Marielle vive!” Others chose to remember Franco in the places where she had worked or lived.¹⁴⁵ Second, many people—most of all Black women—also began to identify with Franco. Many had not known Franco before her assassination. After her assassination, they realized what an important role Franco had played for them as well, as she had strengthened the presence of Black women in parliamentary space. After her assassination, Black women started to appropriate the legacy of Franco as a Black woman. That is, they recognized Franco postmortem as the fruit of Black women’s collective self-empowerment as well as her efforts to further Black women’s self-empowerment.

For some people who witnessed these developments,¹⁴⁶ the practices of remembering Franco created the impression that she had been resurrected.¹⁴⁷ This impression can be explained with reference to the ways martyrs are remembered. As seen in the introduction, liberation theologians expanded the traditional meaning of martyrdom; they recognize not only those who die for Jesus Christ but also those who die like Jesus Christ as martyrs.¹⁴⁸ This is also what happened with Franco, who was considered a martyr who died like Jesus Christ because she fought for social justice.

Echoing Metz’s concept of dangerous memory, José Marins, Teolide Trevisan, and Carolee Chanona highlight five dimensions that make the memory of a martyr dangerous.¹⁴⁹ These dimensions embrace aspects related to both content and practice.

First, the memory of a martyr contains a moment of annunciation and offers the possibility of deepening faith in the mystery of the Cross of Christ. The Cross of Jesus Christ (and the martyr) is an expression of how sin is effective and has destructive power. At the same time, it is a radical affirmation of what is negated by sin: life, truth, justice, love, mercy, and forgiveness. From this perspective, the Cross in itself is meaningless, but not the life of the person who dies on the Cross.¹⁵⁰

In this context, the witness of the weak and gratuitous is a hopeful proclamation to the poor themselves that precisely by their resistance, they are like a “humanizing force in the struggle for justice in the face of the powerful and the heroic.” For the people of God, this cross of persecution has its splendor … it makes the faith of the poor grow and strengthens the hope that the spilled blood will edify the church and contribute to the historical liberation of the poor. It is easy to kill the body of Christians, but it is difficult to snatch the faith of a church of martyrs.¹⁵¹

Second, remembering a martyr leads to denunciation. A martyr’s death opens people’s eyes to the political and ecclesiastical circumstances in which they live. In this context, martyrdom invites people to reconsider already known facts.¹⁵² Third, a martyr’s death is a call to action. A martyr’s death expresses that the people are not passive and will not forever be in a position of alienation.¹⁵³ Fourth, martyrdoms and remembering them also lead people to come together (summoning). People start occupying the void caused by the murder, continue to build on what has been accomplished, and try to save other lives that are possibly at risk.¹⁵⁴ Last, but not least, remembering a martyr’s death is also about celebrating that person’s memory and affirming and witnessing the importance of the cause for which that person died. In summary, remembering a martyr is a community’s practical anticipation of resurrection:

The martyr himself can no longer defend himself. It is his ecclesial community that must speak for him and publicly interpret his life, making explicit how he lived the Gospel. In a sense, the ecclesial community must “resurrect” the martyrs. At Easter, God resurrected a crucified man. Since then, there has been hope for all the crucified in history. Since then, the community of Jesus has given life to the dead through the Gospel, manifesting the paschal sense of its witness.¹⁵⁵

In this context, it is interesting that there are specific martyr liturgies in which the names of the martyrs are called and the celebrating community responds by affirming that they are present: “presente!”¹⁵⁶ Such liturgies have also been secularized and are used today “on the street” (by social movements, collectives, during protests, etc.).¹⁵⁷

These dimensions provide a useful background for interpreting Franco’s resurrection. All five dimensions are also reflected in the data, although not always explicitly named as such. I will touch on how each one appears in the data.

• Annunciation: The collective organization by Franco’s office was interpreted as something new that contained a message of hope for those on the margins.¹⁵⁸ This message was reaffirmed after Franco’s assassination by all those who continued to construct collectively.¹⁵⁹

• Denunciation: Franco’s assassination incited a lot of fear among her supporters. At the same time, it led people to reconsider the context and reassess the danger posed by the militias, among other aspects.¹⁶⁰ The human-rights activists who worked together with Franco and were interviewed in this study did not stop their activism or their work of denunciation because of her murder, but some of them have taken additional security measures.¹⁶¹

• Action: Franco’s assassination came as a shock and woke people up to act and take things into their own hands. This was reflected in many people’s willingness to carry on Franco’s legacy.¹⁶²

• Summoning: The coming together of people after Franco’s murder was most visibly reflected in the enormous street protests, where people affirmed: “Marielle presente! Marielle vive!”

• Celebration: Celebrating the memory of Franco is part of the numerous tributes that were paid to her in Brazil and other countries.¹⁶³

In sum, these practices and developments performed a political resurrection. By asserting Franco’s presence in Brazilian society and politics beyond her death, people testified to the Christian belief that life is stronger than death and strengthened the hope that justice will be done and the political project Franco represented will continue.

The fact that there were many Black women among the protesters was because they recognized Franco as one of them. Some of their practices of remembering showed that they not only stood in solidarity with Franco but also identified with her. This identification was apparent in their appropriation of her words, such as the now famous “I will not be interrupted.”¹⁶⁴ Some of these Black women were also moved by their identification with Franco to continue her pursuit of collective construction: “If she did it, I can do it, and if there are many of us, it’s harder to stop it.”¹⁶⁵ As a result, Franco’s legacy—her words, her message, her story—have been rematerialized in multiple ways in the lives and bodies of these women.

Beyond this, the practices of resurrection were not only related to Franco. Rather, they must also be understood as practices of a collective rising and self-empowerment of Black women. When Black women started remembering and appropriating Franco’s figure and story, which is characterized by the strong visibility of “the Black woman,” their lives and concerns also became more visible and were affirmed and strengthened. This demonstrates that the individual and collective self-empowerment of Black women transcends the community of the living. Wherever Black women appropriate the memory of an “ancestor,” they can create new pathways for both the individual and the collective.¹⁶⁶