Contemporary regimes of disappearance and the unequal treatment of human remains

ABSTRACT This paper examines the death and unequal treatment of human remains in contemporary Brazilian society. It provides an innovative approach to documenting practices such as state inaction and structural violence from an archaeology perspective and explores concepts such as contemporary regimes of disappearance, state apparatus, violence and the ‘right to memory’ in a neoliberal context. Rather than merely using dichotomies such as repression and visibility, or oppression versus rights, the aim is to use archaeological evidence to problematize the dominant understandings of politics and question the ways in which class, race and gender are used in neoliberal policies by transforming human beings who were not ‘profitable in life’ into ‘profitable in death’.