Militarism temporal expansion: capturing the future in the domestic military engagement in Brazil

Abstract

The performance of the armed forces within the State’s borders is a central phenomenon in the debate on the relationship of the military with the State and society in Brazil. In this paper, we argue that the domestic deployment of the Brazilian Armed Forces is permeated by the production of images of the future, which are established in two temporalities. The first, long-term, is related to a notion of development defined and guided by the military. In this way, it establishes the future to which one must arrive, limiting other possibilities and alternative visions, in a logic of prediction. The second, short-term, is expressed in practices of anticipation that permeate domestic operations,
such as Law and Order Assurance Operation (GLO) and Civic-Social Actions (ACISOs). This, in turn, represents ways of operationalizing the production of the internal order, visioned in the long-term image. We argue that one of the dimensions of militarism in Brazil is also its temporal expansion.