On Capture Land

Among the narratives recounted in Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return, is a story of Rastafari longing for return. This discussion considers that story, told to Brand by a friend, alongside Chronixx’s song “Capture Land” and Nabil Elderkin’s short film, “Captureland.” In reading these works together, I use the concept of “capture land” to engage with the question of the authority of maps. I also examine how these works narrate land, coloniality and the politics of longing and belonging in diaspora and how they each locate Black life in and through different sites and scenes of (dis)orientation.