"OnlyJesuscaststhedeviloutofpeople":thesurveillanceofthebody

Wandering through the streets of Rio is like digging through time or even improvising a verse. Unlike those who insist on facing it in a linear way, the city moves with a swing, dodges rigidity, and embraces circular times. In this way, it's not hard to sense that the past haunts the everyday life of Rio de Janeiro and that the future is a kind of bet lit up on a street corner.

From the bus window, from the top of the overpass, at the intersection of the streets, on the cemetery wall, on the four corners of this house, written in ink on the wall, pasted on paper on the lamppost or chanted inside the train cars, the verse jumps out: “only Jesus casts the demon out of people.” In this tangle, there are demons left over for every side: for the gypsy woman, the Tranca Rua, the pombagira, and a good many other names that are made to foot such a bill of evil.

Image description: The image is a photograph composed of three horizontal sections. In the upper part, we see a wall with black graffiti reading "SÓ JESUS EXPULSA DEMÔNIOS DAS PESSOAS" ("ONLY JESUS CASTS DEMONS OUT OF PEOPLE"). Three people are standing, dressed in white clothing, cleaning the graffiti with brushes. In the middle part, the same wall is being cleaned with a white paint roller. On the right, a person in a white dress watches the process. In the lower part, after the cleaning, the graffiti has been replaced by new text in different colors: "AONDE SE PINTA O RESPEITO SE APAGA A INTOLERÂNCIA" ("WHERE RESPECT IS PAINTED, INTOLERANCE IS ERASED").

In these parts, religion has never been merely a matter of faith. The bowl it feeds from runs deeper, and to understand how God and the devil are invoked, one must scrape the bottom of the pan. In this vein, it's worth buying into the line and saying that the expulsion of the infamous one speaks volumes about how the body, and everything it can give, has been fought over ever since the Europeans landed here.

Not coincidentally, this expression, inscribed and said all around, joins the also famous get out of that body which doesn't belong to you! But what could possibly be so bad, after all, about a body that wants to be free? An important philosopher, quite popular in the city, put it this way: "not all evil is evil, not all good is good. There is evil that comes for the good, and there is good that comes for evil." This aphorism, said left and right by Seu Sete, the King of the Lyre, helps us think about the battles between good and evil not as mere ordinary circumstances of life and its daily routines, but as devices that bear upon policies of bodily control.

Image description: The image is a black-and-white photograph of two people dancing. The figure on the left has their back turned, wearing pants and flat shoes, while the figure on the right, facing forward, wears a white turban and a long patterned skirt. They are set against a dark background, with the lighting focused on the two figures.

While in some frameworks that explain the world the notions of good and evil are opposed to each other, in other traditions that run through the Brazilian and Carioca experience these notions establish relationships, coexist, intersect, and highlight ambivalence as one of the hallmarks of the social fabric and of life lived here. In this way, it is common in different cultural practices and in the everyday life of the city for us to be embraced by the following verse: “around here, good coexists with evil” or “what is good for one may be bad for another.”

What the verses inscribed on walls, pasted on lampposts, chanted in trivia, or spat from the mouth of the philosopher exu tell us is that a battle persists here that is not merely semantic, but says a great deal about the possibilities of being, its relations, powers, and ways of narrating life. Not every text is verbal, but it is always born and reached through a body.

What can be read as a religious matter, when taken through common experience, speaks to countless ways of relating to the things of life. Expulsion, domination, and conversion is a narrative that runs through this city's history. At another point, dodging the logic that is opposed to diversity by taking the body as a place of enunciation, memory, and community is also a way that many groups have found to stand firm in this struggle. If, on one hand, some call for the expulsion, surveillance, and control of the body, on the other, there are those who take the body for themselves and fall into samba.

Image description: The image is a photograph of a carnival parade. In the foreground, several people are kneeling, wearing elaborate costumes with metallic details and tall boots. They are on a platform, with their arms raised and joyful expressions. In the background, there are decorated floats and smoke, suggesting a festive atmosphere. At the top of the image, a crowd watches the event.