Introduction

The introduction to this book defines cosmologies of war as different theories of the world that sees social dynamics through the optics of warfare, showing how the field of policing in Brazil can be understood through the histories of colonial and cultural war. These notions highlight the material and symbolic dimensions of the Brazilian state's war on drugs. I suggest that the Deleuzian concept of war machine and state dynamics is useful in untangling the overlapping tension, symbiosis, and blurring between different agents of power in Rio de Janeiro across binaries such as state and non-state, allowing us to grapple with an empirical reality where the police are both enforcing law and order and operating outside of it and where the state engages in symbiotic relationships to a multiplicity of agents and forces that challenge its sovereignty.