Screening Dams and the Racial Rationality of the Brazilian State in Clóvis Moura's Thought

Abstract

This article revisits Clóvis Moura’s works through the categories of barragens de peneiramento (screening dams) and quilombagem (a form of black insurgent maroon praxis and collective resistance against racial capitalism), aiming to understand the racial rationality underpinning the Brazilian State. It argues that these concepts are crucial to explain both historical and contemporary mechanisms of containment imposed on the Black population, as well as the collective forms of resistance that emerge in Brazilian and Latin American so- cieties. Screening dams are interpreted as mechanisms of structural social and racial exclusion that, since the beginning of the post-abolition period, have systematically operated to restrict the mobility of the Black majority, regard- less of merit, effort, or qualification. In contrast, quilombagem is analyzed as a living and insurgent force, which goes beyond the historical space of maroon communities and manifests itself in political, cultural, and community-based practices of resistance against racial domination. By articulating these catego- ries, the reflection highlights the contemporary relevance of Moura’s thought in confronting structural racism and social exclusion, while situating it with- in broader debates on necropolitics, structural racism, and Black resistance across Latin America and the Caribbean.