| Sumario: | This chapter examines the Vanity Fair special edition dedicated to Product Red as exemplar of colonial rationality sedimented in the project of globalization. The unabashed purpose of the Product Red campaign is revealed as demand creation aimed at the sophisticated consumers of the Global North. Africa in this regard appeases profligate consumption while offering up to the modern sophisticate the unlimited sexual pleasures of the jungle in its naked freedom, bereft of the staid hetronormativity of Victorian-like sensibilities. The narrative of the campaign for Product Red, by such deployment, is the embodiment of the “Age of Aquarius” with Africa's redemption as its signifying event, ushering in an era of universal “peace, unity, and love.” The continent's progeny, now steeped in abjection, will assume its natural place in the space of civilization. Global capital is sustained in the Product Red campaign by the offering up of Africa as solution through the promise of its redemption. For the sophisticated, self-liberation can be realized through consumption at the same time that global crisis of production is resolved by Africa's “natural” entrepreneurship. All becomes well with the world as desire for the black body is freed from the trope of transgression. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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