Wakanda Forever: reinvindicações de afrofuturos em torno do Pantera Negra Chadwick Boseman

Abstract

The dissertation analyzes articulations between Afrofuturist performances, blackness and pop culture around the “black panther” Chadwick Boseman, whose death in 2020 is seen here as a media vector that makes us see, in digital environments, a network of aphrodiaspora claims configured and reconfigured by Wakanda Forever gesture. The media vector is located from the tweet that confirmed the death of American actor Chadwick Boseman, posted on August 29, 2020, in his own official Twitter account. From this tweet, seen here as a media trigger, communication expressions were mapped and analyzed on this platform and on Instagram, totaling 21 posts, including videos, images and testimonials, through the tags #wakandaforever #chadwickboseman and #panteranegra, which show various bodies black people articulated around the greeting to the character/actor. The problem of this dissertation focuses on how the film Black Panther (2018), from the strength of its protagonist, is reverberated in several other black bodies protagonists (whether in the mainstream or in everyday life) with the death of actor Chadwick Boseman, in 2020. As this media release reveals, reiterates and gives new meaning to a network of claims crossed by Afrofuturist narratives and experiences of blackness articulated with speculative components. This allows us to understand certain cultural mutations, transits, transformations and ethics of possibilities incorporated, within the scope of global pop culture, by the Wakanda Forever gesture, understood in this work from the perspective of performance. The idea of pop, in this research, is understood from the perspective of the affective nebula (JANOTTI JR E SOARES, 2015) and the discussions about Afrofutirisms, diaporas and blackness are supported by references from black authors and authors, such as Stuart Hall (2013), Paul Gilroy (1993), Marimba Ani (1994), Aza Njeri (2015), Sueli CARNEIRO (2005), Achille Mbembe (2018), Fábio Kabral (2020), Kênia Freitas (2018), Michael Boyce Gillespie (2016), Molefi K. Asante (2009) and Kabengele Munanga (2012). The theoretical- methodological approach encompasses the notion of networked audiovisual (GUTMANN, 2021), the concept of performance as restored behavior (SCHECHNER, 2013) and as incorporation, archive and repertoire (TAYLOR, 2013) and the map of cultural mutations (MARTÍN -BARBERO, 2009).