The past couple days have seen some really interesting perspectives and I wanted to further map out some of my thinking within the coining of the phenomenon “Wakandafication” (which has assumed its own life!) I’m grateful to everyone who has engaged with this thoughtfully. https://twitter.com/divanificent/status/1277198245589069824

I was and still am interested in the specific representational mythos of Africa that is mobilised to legitimise empires and Black capitalist aspirations. It is about Africa as a quantifiable product, which is *also* reliant on collapsing entanglements within the Black diaspora.

I’m interested in how Hollywood, celebrity, capital & different forms of historical reimagination are entangled in this project that is invested in restoring an Africa that never was. Monarchies that are unimplicated in violence and an uninterrupted sense of historical continuity

This totalising imagery of Africa is mobilised both within the continent and the diaspora. Focusing on the continent specifically, Wakandafication has been used to supply a fantasy of nation, precoloniality & lack of historical rupture that is then exported globally as a product.

“Wakandafication” is not about reducing the entangled and complex histories so many Black people in diaspora have with Africa. It is specifically about the process through which Africa *as a product* is reimagined to serve the interests of representation, nation and capital.

It’s also not a personal slight against any Black/African artists who’ve contributed to these projects, many of which I’ve enjoyed and are cinematically breathtaking. It’s a larger cultural criticism of an investment in a specific representational economy under racial capitalism.

This has been said so many times but I’m going to say it again anyway. A critique doesn’t remove the ability to enjoy, take pleasure in or celebrate art. No one is saying that art that has engaged these representational economies cannot be consumed and enjoyed.

Finally, the term “Wakandafication”, which has received rigourous engagement & derision in equal measure, is not solely based on a 1:30 trailer. I was seeking to name a very old & historically entrenched phenomenon, as many Black feminist scholars do. It’s naming a specific thing

As ever, I appreciate so many of the perspectives that have expanded on my original thinking, engaged and critiqued in good faith and added new dimensions. The opportunity to think with so many Black people collectively is a privilege.