The night body of democracy and remnants of slavery

Abstract

This article aims to show the connection between slavery and the modern notion of freedom, inherited from political and economic liberalism. With this correlation it will be possible to show, based on the reflections of the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe, that colonies or the colonial experience are not foreign to modern democratic regimes, but constitute, in fact, their foundation. From this, it is possible to show that liberal democracies cannot disentangle themselves from that which constitutes their nocturnal body, colonialism and slavery. In this sense, the way in which the notion of freedom has been instrumentalised by movements of the extreme right is intimately associated with the role that slavery had in the shaping of liberal democracies. Even more, the return of that which was repressed, slavery, has been mobilised to erode democratic regimes. In order to elucidate these reflections, this article looks at some political events that have recently occurred in Brazil.