The COVID-19 pandemic has been (re)creating new global geographies of death, which specifically impact the Global South and expose its continuum of vulnerabilities – unequally distributed in terms of race, gender, class, and so on. In the Americas, we can identify the emergence of a new regional governance of death, associated with a set of practical recommendations by the Organization of American States (OAS) constraining states’ policy responses to COVID-19 and installing a new global governance lexicon. Recommendations concerning the disposal of dead bodies, full respect for both collective and family grief, and indications of alternative ways to conduct funerals and memorial services, for instance, seem to evoke new multilateral responses, paving the way for a new governance model: one that centres death within regional policymaking. This points to a change in the treatment of death from a purely private to a politically infused issue. Theoretically, this article aims to bridge the gap between Death Studies and Global Governance literatures. Supported by Michel Foucault’s genealogical method, the goal is to critically reconceptualise the meanings and framings of death landscapes in the Americas, pointing us to the correlation of forces that enabled the normative emergence of death in the OAS in this particular historical moment.
Resumo O artigo parte das paisagens de morte das duas maiores democracias das Américas - Brasil e Estados Unidos - na crise de covid-19, oferecendo uma engrenagem conceitual denominada binômio vulnerabilidade-morte para ponderar em que medida a política da tragédia é um ponto de inflexão no tratamento das vulnerabilidades e da morte na política institucional, enfatizando o trabalho da Comissão Interamericana de Direitos Humanos (CIDH). Analisando as respostas normativas da CIDH, percebeu-se não a articulação, mas a bifurcação da vulnerabilidade e da morte. Embora revele um não entrelaçamento normativo, a bifurcação não significa uma escolha entre caminhos binários. Ainda que as duas democracias das Américas tenham suscitado desafios institucionais, a CIDH revelou um aprofundamento do sentido da vulnerabilidade e empreendeu normativamente em torno da morte: questões historicamente ausentes da estrutura básica internacional e capazes de lançar um desafio produtivo para a teoria da justiça internacional.
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