Facts from a redemptive future: denial and future anterior politics during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil was the target of great international concern due to the policies adopted by the far-right government of President Jair Bolsonaro. His disregard for Non-Pharmaceutical Initiatives (NPI) for combatting COVID and his defense of pharmaceuticals considered scientifically ineffective were often characterized as denialist and anti-science. This diagnosis may not clearly describe the multiple dimensions enmeshed in denialism. This article focuses on the temporality implied in governmental denialist discourses and practices. Based on an ethnographic analysis of public documents, speeches, and posts on social networks made by Bolsonaro and his ministers between 2020 and 2022, this article describes how denialist actions of the Brazilian government were structured in the future anterior. The article underscores how future anterior ethics and denial politics open a temporal and ethical space for governance to become unbound from responsibility for deaths and the suffering of victims, which are quickly forgotten or denied. The article argues for a nuanced examination of temporality and denial as a way to grasp the material and political effects of institutionalized state denial, especially as they entail modes of life and death governance.