O PARADIGMA DA IDENTIDADE NEGRA

A RENATURALIZAÇÃO DO CAPITALISMO NO BRANDING DA MARCA RESERVA

Abstract

Anchored in critical and interdisciplinary Applied Linguistics (Moita-Lopes, 2009), this article analyzes how marketing campaigns by the clothing brand Reserva mobilize discourses of inclusion to reinforce capitalist logics of control and exclusion, particularly those directed at Black identity. The aim of the study is to understand how branding strategies, under the guise of representativeness and diversity, reaffirm patterns of white normativity. Methodologically, the analysis focuses on one of the brand’s anti-prejudice campaigns from 2015—which generated widespread negative repercussions. Drawing on authors such as Hall (2006), Haider (2019), Foucault (1979), Han (2017), and Fanon (2008), the study investigates how Black identity is discursively constructed, subjected to power relations, and integrated into contemporary economic dynamics. The article demonstrates that hypervisibility, the celebration of difference, and identity politics, when appropriated by the market, operate as forms of segmentation, social control, and political emptying. It concludes that the inclusion promoted by such campaigns does not dismantle structures of oppression but rather renews them, turning subjects into products and identities into commodities. Thus, it proposes a critical reflection on the discursive practices of brands, aiming toward the construction of a linguistics engaged in social transformation.