The utopian dark matter: a study of the configuration of the afrofuturistic utopia in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther and N.K Jemisin’s “Emergency Skin”

Abstract

Speculative literature is a genre that grows rapidly in contemporary times. Its popularity is due to the incorporation of new and diverse perspectives, as well as its promotion of the rise of voices never considered before in the literary tradition. This phenomenon generated a series of intricate manifestations of the literary art, such as the black utopia and the narratives of black futures featured by the Afrofuturist movement. This article aims to analyze the ideal speculative literary perspectives produced and/or created by and for black people. For this, we propose an analytical study of the configurations of the Afrofuturistic utopia in the film Black Panther (2018) by Ryan Coogler and the short story “Emergency Skin” (2021) by N. K Jemisin. To reach this goal, we used the theoretical contributions of Zygmunt Bauman (2000), Marilena Chauí (2008), Gregory Claeys (2013), David Harvey (2008), Renato Noguera (2012), André Prévost (2015), Raymond Williams (1978), Ytasha L. Womack (2013) and Alex Zamalin (2019).