vbid/9781498592345

Description

This text provides a phenomenological account of the experience of anti-black racism as described by Malcolm X. Central to this analysis is the phenomenology that emerges over the course of Malcolm�s life, which emerges through the various personal transformations that the autobiography introduces and explores. As this process unfolds, a variety of different aspects of lived-experience can be witnessed that becomes situated within the process of naming that Malcolm employs to situate the specifics of his experience. For example, the phenomenology of Malcolm�s early childhood experience, is defined by two very different competing definitions for blackness. Though Malcolm Little and his family exist or find themselves �thrown� within a social structure that employs a narrative of anti-black racism, his parents are able to provide a powerful alternative meaning for blackness that is informed by the perspective taken from the Marcus Garvey Movement of the early 1900s.When that narrative is effectively silenced given Malcolm�s separation from his family, the positive meanings for black-being-in-the-world disappear and leave Malcolm with few alternatives to this new reality. As the Autobiography moves forward, Malcolm�s experience becomes defined by the phenomenology that these overlapping narratives construct. During certain moments of this phenomenology, the negative aspects of anti-black racism seem to impose very specific challenges to Malcolm�s lived-experience that become difficult to overcome and in others, powerful alternative meanings for black-being-in-the-world are taken-up and successfully employed to address the consequences of this type of racism. Though the fact of anti-black racism is never actually defeated, Malcolm�s relationship to this process is drastically transformed over the course of his reflection.Typham this is the title: A Phenomenological Hermeneutic of Antiblack Racism in The Autobiography of Malcolm X