Xango: how to anarchize a well-ordered society

Abstract

This work proposes an analysis of the structure of modern-colonial knowledge, which was materialized in John Rawls's theory of justice, considering the theory updates the paradigm of consciousness as a condition for the possibility of the order of discourse, rescaling the abyssal line between being and not being, transforming it into a mass grave for the subalternation and elimination of non-white existences. In this scenario, Rawls's theory of justice reverberates as a racialized theory, contributing to the exclusion of bodies oriented by other worldviews — non-Western ones — from access to an alleged rational system of justice. It is a farcical impartiality, operationalized through the abstraction of sociopolitical and racial relations. It is noticeable that the application of this symbolic system in the Brazilian context, strongly marked by the cultural hybridity that constitutes our genealogy, results in the updating of subaltern traditions — hence the urgency to consider possibilities of deliberation by pluriversal justices. Subsidies provided by critical and decolonial social philosophy are used to boost the visibility of ancestral black traditions and, specifically, the knowledge and powers of the Orixás Exu and Xangô. Thus, transcultural conceptions of justice are promoted, capable of overcoming the perverse abyssal line underlying dehumanizing narratives of justice.