Dreaming is Resisting: Black Youth, Media Circulation and Pedagogies of Death and Resistance in Maré

Abstract

This article analyzes the work of the Redes da Maré collective in constructing counter-hegemonic narratives about young black people from the outskirts of the city. Based on the analysis of the video “É preciso estar vivo para viver” (It is necessary to be alive to live), the study investigates how media circulation practices put pressure on necropolitics — a concept by Mbembe (2018) that defines who can live and who must die — and activate pedagogies of resistance, which affirm the right to life, to dreams, and to one’s own narrative. Based on authors such as Sodré (2002), Grohmann (2020), and Silva (2024), the article understands communication as a space for symbolic dispute and production of the common. The video analyzed is explored as a communication strategy that articulates visual language, sound, and affections, mobilizing black identities and projecting possible futures. By giving visibility to the dreams of young residents of Maré, the collective breaks with the stigmas imposed by the hegemonic media, creating a decentralized public sphere mediated by subalternized voices. The research shows that resisting, in the favelas, also means narrating, imagining and circulating meanings that confront the pedagogy of death, revealing the power of communication in creating possible worlds and in affirming black life.