Emancipation and protagonism through a semiotic look: racism, anti-racism and the denial of rights to black youth in Brazil

Abstract

This article analyzes phenomena related to Emancipation, Social Protagonism, and the Racism and Anti-Racism agendas in contemporary Brazilian society, seen from a semiotic perspective and with a special focus on the study of Youth. In agreement with Almeida (2021), we believe that racism is not only expressed through individual actions, but is the result of a complex network of economic, political, and social influences and mechanisms. We approach works by contemporary thinkers who have gained increasing prominence and prestige in public debate and we observe the harsh phenomenon of violence against black youth in Brazil. Our approach experiments with the operationality of concepts from contemporary Semiotics Theory, with regard to the analysis of the manifestations of racism proposed by the authors which we work with. The findings point to a possibility of applying concepts coming from Sociossemiotics of Landowski's (2014) theory of interaction regimes to work on the issues observed.