Narrating religious intolerance, constructing secularism: Chronotopes of raced secularism and abnormal religious violence at a parliamentary commission in Brazil

This article examines how narrative chronotopes that organize state efforts to govern religion and religious violence contribute to the racialization of secularism in Brazil. Through an analysis of the chronotopes that structured conversations between legislators and invited government representatives at the Parliamentary Commission for Inquiry into Religious Intolerance convened by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro in 2021, the author shows how these narrative constructions conditioned the commission’s analysis of religious violence in the state. On one level, it produced a powerful critique of the racial organization of secularism in Brazil; on another, it construed the attacks the commission had been tasked with investigating as social aberrations that were beyond the purview of “normal” governance of religion. The end result was a consolidation of the very forms of raced secularism that the commission otherwise critiqued.