African Internationalist Understand of Africana Studies
Prompt: How does the film Quilombo represent an African Internationalist and/or Black Internationalist response to what Cedric Robinson terms “the creation/invention of the negro?” Understanding contemporary events, over the past two years, why might films like Quilombo, once very rare, hard-to-find cult classics, now being published on international streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime?
Sample outline
Introduction
Compare and contrast the academic discipline of Black Internationalism and the political ideology of African Internationalism. How are they similar? How do they differ? How can you see elements of Black Internationalism and African Internationalism in the film Quilombo?
Body Paragraphs
Using the writings of Cedric Robinson, Robin Kelley, and Omali Yeshitela. Provide a definition of the system of colonial-capitalism. Yeshitela and Robinson both describe a process through which African Identity was forcibly stripped from African people.
Robinson defines this process as the “invention/creation of the negro” or the Transmutation of Africa.
Explain the correlations between the concept of primitive accumulation. Use the images of colonialism and enslavement in Quilombo as evidence for this process.
Consider the violence depicted on the plantation, the theft of Zumbi dos Palmares as a child, and the multiple military assaults on the Palmares as evidence of this process.
In “African Identity is Key” and “The Africa Debate”, Omali Yeshitela argues that Africans need to create a closer bond based on revolutionary and anticolonial principles.
Understanding the links between this argument to the essay by Luwezi Kinshasa and The Groundings With Brothers by Walter Rodney, explain the anticolonial politics of the Quilombo dos Palmares.
Paying close attention to the contrasting gender relations, race relations and class relations, explain how Carlos Diegues offers a clear colonial distinction between Palmares and the colonial society of Portuguese Brazil.
How do the writings by Kelley, Audre Lorde, Aime Cesaire, and myself help us to understand the revolutionary use of African culture? In what ways is the revolutionary use of African culture in Quilombo a form of “freedom dreaming” or “poetic knowledge”