THE COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE OF PAIN: THANATOPOLITICS AND THE PRODUCTION OF RACIALIZED PSYCHIC SUFFERING

Abstract

This article investigates the psychic suffering of racialized populations as an intentional product of thanatopolitical structures that unequally regulate life and death, producing subjectivities marked by exclusion, symbolic violence, and slow extermination. From an interdisciplinary approach that articulates critical psychoanalysis, social psychology, and contemporary social studies, with emphasis on memory and the politics of suffering, we analyze how ontological violence operates mechanisms of slow death that naturalize the exclusion of subalternized populations. The work demonstrates that psychic suffering does not constitute individual pathology, but rather a sociogenic effect of colonial structures that produce docile subjectivities and disposable bodies. The methodology is inspired by Eduardo Restrepo's critical reflection on problematizing the forms of knowledge production, valuing the historicity and singularity of social events. We conclude with the urgent need for collective health intervention strategies that promote racial equity and recognize survival tactics as forms of resilience and agency. Data reveal that Black populations face higher prevalence of mental disorders due to structural racism, highlighting the urgency of radical epistemic transformations in the mental health field through political clinics that adequately contextualize racial trauma.