Of Black Bodies and Celestial Bodies: Queer Afrofuturism and New Spatialities in Diego Paulino's Negrum3

Abstract

This essay explores how Brazilian film director Diego Paulino performs activism through his short film Negrum3. I will argue that Negrum3 develops a new epistemology of the black and queer body using analogy and the appropriation of the language of astrophysics and science fiction in response to the current tense political climate and the homophobic policies of the Brazilian right. The different bodies that claim the cinematographic universe of this short film demonstrate a command of Afrofuturistic aesthetics and speculate about queer utopia and black futures. Consequently, the potentialities of the queer and black future that Paulino is presenting in his film are going to be framed within the aesthetic movement of Brazilian Afrofuturism. Moreover, two main theoretical ideas are going to anchor the analysis of the short film. First, I will discuss the film in relation to José Muñoz’s idea of queer utopia: “The future is queerness’s domain. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present.” (2009). Secondly, I will argue that Paulino is working with a new epistemological approach focused on the black queer body and by doing so, his work is aligned with Lucy Sargisson’s theoretical concept of “transgressive utopianism” (2000).