“There is a warmth in my chest and I think it’s lung cancer”

Today’s episode is a shout out to, as The Washington Post’s Paul Schemm would state in his article entitled  'Africa's real Wakanda and the struggle to stay uncolonized', “the source material” for Marvel’s the Black Panther. Mainly, this is a meditation on the opaque horizon of political and psychic symbolism that cloaks the Horn of Africa, its bi-located diaspora(s) and the greater Black diaspora. I contend that this murky horizon was birthed from the Prester John myth that was popularized in Europe during its Middle Ages up to its Renaissance period. This monarch, Prester John, who the Portuguese claimed was located in Abyssinia-Ethiopia (I presume they saw the figure of Emperor Susenyos I as Prester John), was besieged from all sides by pagans and Muslims (a geopolitical relation that Ethiopia has maintained to present day). A sovereign and Christian nation at the brink of dismemberment – one in dire need of Western support to defend itself from the much-persecuted Oromo and the Somali sultanates to the east and south of it. A nation that has loomed heavy in the cultural and political imaginary of the Black diaspora since the Battle of Adwa. But has it earned its clout? Or is it all just a ruse of Black anti-Black representation? The type Killmonger accused T’Challa and his contempories of in wake of their inaction to support the liberation struggles of a disenchanted Black diaspora and its own continental kin?

Things you can do with dummies.