Black capitalism only contributes to the continued exploitation of black artists and the justification of colonial exploitation and capitalism

[Anjali Vats, 1-23-2019, "Prince of Intellectual Property: On Creatorship, Ownership, and Black Capitalism in Purple Afterworlds (Prince in/as Blackness)," Taylor & Francis, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10646175.2018.1523760,]//owen

Anti-piracy measures and support for Black capitalism are not without complications, however. With respect to the former, Prince’s statement reflects and invokes a narrative of racialized infringement, one in which Asian actors often bear the brunt of the blame for “copying” and “stealing” works from the developed world (Liang, 2009). Though he largely targets his ire at corporations instead of demonizing particular racial groups, Prince nonetheless implicitly endorses filling the floating signifier “piracy” with racialized meaning. Prince invites, as well, a narrative of racial uplift through material accumulation, which centers the need for access to the property-related aspects of the American Dream and valorizes a race liberal understanding of racial justice (Melamed, 2011). The term Black capitalism was one that Richard Nixon used in the 1960s, as a means of undercutting Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society (Weems & Randolph, 2001). As James Boggs put it, “When we talk about the system, we are talking about capitalism … And when we talk about capitalism, we are talking about the system that has created the situation that blacks are in today!” (Boggs, 2011, p. 185). Situating Prince’s calls for Black creatorship, then, which are radical with respect to their recognition of Black creativity and Black personhood, requires also acknowledging their fundamental economic conservatism. As the racialized battle to protect U.S. intellectual property demonstrates, his anti-piracy stances justify neocolonial expansion internationally. Moreover, his embrace of Black capitalism endorses an economic order that is both intertwined with race liberalism and the necessary oppression of labor. Prince, then, offers important starting points for envisioning Black creatorship and Black personhood but not radical racial justice. Achieving the latter requires dramatic reimagining of economic relationality, including intellectual property itself.¶ Prince is dead, long live prince¶ Prince’s (intellectual) property battles did not end with his death. In a Halftime Show¶ that is widely regarded as the best of all time, he performed in the pouring rain at¶ Superbowl XLI in Miami, FL. Prince also performed, in a manner of speaking, at¶ Superbowl LII in Minneapolis, MN, with Justin Timberlake—this time in a video of a¶ live performance projected onto an enormous piece of billowing fabric. Days before¶ Timberlake was to perform, Black Twitter exploded with rumors that he would be featuring a Prince hologram and outrage at the notion that Timberlake would do such a¶ thing. After all, “Prince Hated Holograms Before They Were Even Invented,”¶ announced Fader (Gore, 2018). A practicing Jehovah’s Witness who was known to go¶ door-to-door with Sly and the Family Stone bassist Larry Graham to spread God’s¶ word, Prince once said that holograms were demonic. When all was said and done,¶ Timberlake did not use a hologram in his tribute performance, though he did use rare¶ footage of Prince performing, ironically enough, the song “I Would Die 4 U.”¶ There were never any actual plans for a Prince hologram (Lockett, 2018). And,¶ according to Tweets from Prince’s estate, his family authorized his performance at the¶ Superbowl. The controversy over Timberlake’s use of Prince’s image did not subside,¶ however. Citing his involvement in Nipplegate, appropriation of hip hop, and a¶ Timbaland song that insulted Prince, Black Twitter expressed its outrage over¶ Timberlake’s choice to perform with Prince, albeit through video footage and not hologram. Summing up the problem, Michael Harriot at The Root wrote in biting critique,¶ “It all belongs to them. We belong to them. Therefore[,] the theft of our culture, art,¶ words and very lives should never be referred to as appropriation or theft … It’s¶ American” (Harriot, 2018). Built into this critique is underlying reference to the very¶ property relations that have facilitated injustice and violence from settler colonialism on.¶ As Harriot pointed out, Timberlake’s use of Prince’s image, even permissively, raises¶ many questions about Black labor, even after death, as well as (intellectual) property.¶ Prince, who had no will and operated in a copyright structure with no posthumous¶ moral right to integrity of musical works, de facto gave control over his estate to his¶ family, who soon after the Superbowl gave Universal Studios complete authority to¶ manage Prince’s music. The Afterworld, in Prince’s parlance from “Let’s Go Crazy,”¶ might be read as Heaven itself, a place free from the pain, complications, and suffering¶ of life. But although Prince may be in the Afterworld, there is a world after Prince that¶ is very much of this Earth, in which he is part of the circulation of the “afterlives of¶ slavery” (Hartman, 1997). In her theorization of the afterlives of slavery, Hartman notes¶ the manner in which the effects of slavery structurally persist after its end—but also¶ how African Americans continue to resist them. Read alongside Hartman and Sharpe,¶ Prince’s performance at the Superbowl might be interpreted as one that exploited his¶ labor. Popular cultural critic Anthony Oliviera tweeted after Timberlake’s performance,¶ “the myth of the zombie emerged in pre-revolutionary Haitian culture, and sprang¶ from the anxiety among its enslaved peoples that even in death, it was possible to be¶ made to perform deathless labour on the master’s behalf.” Oliviera’s reading, like¶ Harriot’s, reminds us that intellectual property, too, is part of the complex landscape of¶ slavery’s afterlives.¶ However, despite the problems with Timberlake’s performance, failing to find¶ Prince’s agency in the Superbowl is a lost opportunity to think about the contours of¶ (intellectual) property and fugitivity. More apt than Oliviera’s zombie frame, which¶ treats Prince as agencyless tool of Whiteness and capitalism, is reading the musician as¶ spectral presence who “insists on the continuing existence in the present of traumatic¶ racial histories that American modernity would rather forget” (Hurley, 2015, p. 313).¶ The zombie is inapposite in this case because, as Jessica Hurley explains, it is “a walking¶ embodiment of past populations that will not stay dead but extrude threateningly into¶ the present, where systems of government disintegrate in the face of an unruly, unrulable population of the no-longer-human” (p. 313, emphasis added). The zombie is not¶ spiritual but material, a soul imprisoned in a body over which it lacks control (McGee,¶ 2012, p. 242). The zombie frame, then, while it makes important commentary on forced¶ labor, fails to describe the state in which Prince appears at the Superbowl. He does not¶ take the form of the walking dead, laboring without consent, but rather appears as an¶ ephemeral presence who continues to do the radically resistive work he did in life.¶ Timberlake offers his homage with and to the recorded images of a man who was larger¶ than life—particularly in Minnesota—and whose existence came to define the¶ Superbowl itself. ¶ Imagining Prince’s spectral presence at the Superbowl as part of Fred Moten’s larger¶ conceptualization of fugitivity leaves space to read him as an intrusive and liminal figure who, at the hands of his family, critiques slavery and appropriation as he did in life,¶ even from the Afterworld. Such a reading transforms Prince from object of¶ Timberlake’s exploitation to returned spirit acting against Whiteness, racism, and racial¶ capitalism. Prince’s presence at the Superbowl, particularly given his (intellectual) property politics in life, changes its “microclimate,” and advances his lifelong struggle to¶ change the “weather” of anti-Blackness in creatorship. Prince’s colleagues and proteges,¶ including Spike Lee and Janelle Monae, invoke his presence in ways that continue his¶ life’s work of refusing to be owned and refusing to be less than his White counterparts.¶ In this way, Prince epitomizes fugitivity, which Moten writes, is “a movement of escape,¶ of the stolen that can be said, since it inheres in every closed circle, every enclosure”¶ (Moten, 2008, p. 179). Film footage allows the musician to deftly escape the confines of¶ the Afterworld and create space for retelling his narratives of (intellectual) property and¶ ownership. Indeed, Prince creates a new category of existence in this world from the¶ Afterworld, an act that is consistent with his historical persona. As he reminds us in¶ song: “I am something that you’ll never comprehend.” As during his life, Prince defies¶ categorization at the Superbowl, forging his own path in life after death.¶ Prince’s intellectual property afterlives, including at the Superbowl, are evidence of¶ his posthumous rebellion against a legal system that inadequately protected him and¶ other Black artists. Prince’s negotiations with record labels, investments in racial justice, name change, and antipiracy battles all showcased his commitment to producing¶ cultural schema for understanding and protecting Black creatorship as inalienable¶ property right. Through a series of Afro-alienation acts and structural seizures of¶ power, Prince created a career that performed the very understandings of Black creatorship and Black capitalism that he believed would result in racial justice. Prince’s¶ second Superbowl appearance does not merely replicate the forced labor of slavery or¶ the theft of Blues, jazz, and rock ‘n roll. It is evidence that the post-Prince world is¶ not a world without Prince but one in which Prince terraforms his own Afterworld¶ and its racial microclimates, particularly around race, copyright, and creatorship.