Black Minded

The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X

Michael E. Sawyer

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780745340746
• eBook ISBN: 9781786806024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Known as 'the angriest black man in America', Malcolm X was one of the most famous activists to ever live. Going beyond biography, Black Minded examines Malcolm X's philosophical system, restoring his thinking to the pantheon of Black Radical Thought.

Michael Sawyer argues that the foundational concepts of Malcolm X's political philosophy - economic and social justice, strident opposition to white supremacy and Black internationalism - are often obscured by an emphasis on biography. The text demonstrates the way in which Malcolm X's philosophy lies at the intersection of the thought of W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon and is an integral part of the revolutionary politics formed to alleviate the plight of people of African descent globally.

Exploring themes of ontology, the body, geographic space and revolution, Black Minded provides a much-needed appraisal of Malcolm X's political philosophy.

1

Ontology

The question of ontology in the thinking of Malcolm X is complicated in several ways, not least of which being the fact that the ontological condition of the “so-called Negro” is encumbered from a perspective of resolving the inclusion of this figure in the category of “human.” With that in mind, what presages this question is the necessity of asserting that the thinking of the figure so named and established as the Negro has the capacity (a) to be considered as human and (b) possesses rationality sufficient to allow for individual sovereignty that facilitates full participation in a societal order. What I am proposing here is an echo of an idea presented in the Introduction that proposes that the thinking of Malcolm X on ontology exists in an intellectual genealogy that is bounded (roughly) by the thinking of W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon as it relates to establishing the identity of the “Negro” and provides the tactics for dismantling that condition.

In approaching the philosophical thought of Malcolm X there is an obvious path that begins with his involvement with the Nation of Islam during his period of incarceration. What we have gleaned from the biographical presentation of this period is that the Nation of Islam provided a systematized educational program and religion for Malcolm Little after a period of his life that can generously be characterized as “wayward.” I believe this to be true, but this effort would be remiss if it did not take up the counter-culture in which the young Malcolm found himself – that is, arguably, a particular way of being for people who are separated from the benefits of full citizenship that underscores an argument for distinct “phases” of his intellectual development. Malcolm X, as a thinker, traversed three distinct periods that are all based upon a critical engagement with the dominant/normative political philosophical order. The first was a period of existence that I will call “static counter-cultural existence/being” which was marked by his persistent involvement in a sub-economy that, at its most extreme, relied upon criminality. The “static” nature mentioned here is meant to expose just that: this is a potentially moribund state of existence. This stage of existence was not predicated on altering that conditionality. The second begins with his enlightenment and education by the Nation of Islam while incarcerated for his activities in phase one and ends roughly with his silencing by Elijah Muhammad. The final phase is probably accurately described as his working through categories of thought that we now understand as post-colonial. This is bounded by his journey to Mecca and locations in Africa and his assassination. Malcolm X is struggling, in each of these stages of his intellectual development, to formulate a philosophy and theory of subaltern political existence within the dominant and oppressive political context. There are several elements of his thought that are consistent across these distinct periods. He develops theoretical positions for (1) living within the dominant political system, (2) methods for disrupting that system, and (3) imagining a future both within the coercive system (that is, the system of stasis in phase one) and a future in a “new” revolutionary political reality in phases two and three.

The argument that I am presenting amounts to stating that the hegemonic nature of American political culture that serves to marginalize the political, social and economic lives of the “Other,” in this case, African–Americans, establishes the conditions for a counter-culture to exist as the inevitable way of being. By establishing the “so-called Negro” as always outside of coherent and robust participation in governance, this subject is left few choices. This establishes a specific type of marginalized subjectivity that disallows banal political existence. There is a broad statement regarding the nature of political philosophy that I wish to underscore.

Efforts on the part of arguably “universalist” arguments regarding the provenance of philosophical thought often turn on a reading practice similar to that employed in literature that requires the “disappearance of the author” from the analysis. What this means generally is that serious philosophical thinking is purported to have been conducted at some distance from the biographical facts of the philosopher who has produced the philosophical system. What this allows is a type of abstraction of political context that, in theory, facilitates the transportation of systems of thought beyond the context of their existence. An example of this is the Western preoccupation with systems of thinking from the fifth century B.C. The idea that Aristotle, for one example, was a thinker of sufficient power that he was able to distance himself from the context of his existence and produce ideas that are sufficiently abstract to represent something like “timeless truth,” exemplifies this notion.

At the beginning of this book I mentioned the difficulty of disentangling the activist Malcolm X from the political philosopher Malcolm X. The problem is perhaps more complex in that it speaks to this Western preoccupation with philosophical thought that privileges the notion of abstract rationality that allows distance from life circumstance. The notion that people of African descent demonstrate a lack of reason through an inability to exercise this form of personal exorcism of the self from the condition of the self in order to facilitate universal thinking negatively prefigures the conversation regarding the thinking of Malcolm X in this realm. Neither of these conditions is supported by facts: “philosophers” recognized by the Western canon are not divorced from their personal circumstances and people of African descent who speak to a specific social context are not revealing an inability to demonstrate elevated thinking by doing so. It is only necessary here to background the biographical Malcolm X because his thinking can find the marginalia of biography overwhelming the text that is to be the preoccupation of the project. This requires the effort here to walk a fine line that I believe actually demonstrates the complexity of the project facing a thinker like Malcolm X.

What I am proposing is that one result of subjective marginalization, understood here as the creation of political subjects whose political existence is in fact meant to demonstrate the imperative to disallow their political viability because (in large manner) their grip on rationality renders them ineligible for positive political existence, makes it impossible for these same subjects to think philosophically about ameliorating their condition. This means that a thinker like Malcolm X has to operate in an environment that simultaneously recognizes and disavows subjective marginalization. The subject situated in this position, in order to imagine (from a perspective that allows thinking in the realm of political philosophy) must (1) simultaneously be aware of the forces of marginalization that assail them; (2) understand that this condition represents the prevailing context of their political existence; (3) understand that “thinking” cannot be divorced completely from its prevailing social context; (4) through this understanding be able to redeploy the forces of marginalization to create intellectual force to deconstruct that circumstance, and (5) be prepared to maintain subjective existence through the process of subjective deconstruction otherwise known as remaining sane.

This may appear abstract, but an examination of the question regarding the evolution of Malcolm X’s thinking on a return to Africa for diasporic people of African descent demonstrates the practical application of this thought experiment. Further, this is where we can witness the intellectual structure that upholds the project of something like “Black nationalism” that we will find is able to use the geographic and legalistic structures that are implicated in anti-Black racism to serve as the locus of political viability. As mentioned in the Introduction, there are four themes that outline the thinking examined here. These four points outline the path I will follow to trace the essential elements of Malcolm X’s thinking that are preoccupied with three manifestations of social injustice: political, social and economic. They are:

1. Recovering Black identity;

2. Establishing sustainable subjectivity;

3. Bridging the gap between civil and human rights; and

4. Developing a national project.

That being understood, the foundation of Malcolm X’s thinking is based upon a process of restoring what he understands to be positive subjective self-regard and recognition. When I say the “foundation,” what I am proposing here is that there is a particular epistemological element to this thinking that is based upon a system of morality that antecedes what I have described as the more obvious involvement of Malcolm X with the theological and ethical systems of the Nation of Islam. This epistemological formation is related to the always/already oppositional existence of the Black subject in the coercive context of white supremacy. These structures oppose positive identity formation that then renders it a project of radical reformation of the subject to achieve robust political, social and economic existence.

Stated simply, Malcolm X, prior to “becoming” Malcolm X through the praxis of a syncretic version of Islam, was intellectually invested in a form of morality that holds governmental structures accountable for the destruction of positive subjectivity. This accountability for regimes of power designed to do harm appears in the thinking of Malcolm X in two important ways. First, he argues that the first role (or goal) of the oppressor is to persuade the subject under assault to doubt the efficacy of their relationship and status in a given political perception. This leads to the second stage of this project, which renders political oppression inevitable in a dual vector: the oppressor oppresses because the subject under assault is ineligible for positive political identity and the oppressed, led to believe that they are “worthless,” are not in a position to develop projects of political viability, much less revolution, because there is no legitimacy as understood by the community of actors who are believed to validate the viability of political projects. This is not “new” thinking and identifying its relationship to the thinking of W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon on this subject lends depth to the argument that Malcolm X provides an important intellectual bridge between these two canonical thinkers. This requires careful consideration.

Broadly understood, W. E. B. Du Bois, in his The Souls of Black Folk, establishes the existence of two related concepts that define the political existence of Black people in America: the “color line” and his formulation of Second-Sight, Double Consciousness and Two-ness, which I call “tripartite subaltern self-consciousness.” In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois proposes, ultimately, a putatively unsolvable binary relationship between the Negro and the American. Recall the canonical passage that is relevant here:

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world – a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but ONLY lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of ALWAYS looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One EVER feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.¹

There is a penchant in Africana scholarship generally and scholarship surrounding Du Bois specifically, to focus on Double Consciousness. The reason I emphasize the tripartite nature of his formulation – Second-Sight, Double Consciousness, and Two-ness – is to mark the cause and effect relationship, beginning with Second-Sight, passing through Double Consciousness and ending with Two-ness as representative of a complex way of being that includes, in its manifold relationship of these discretely complex ideas, a way to dismantle its logic. In giving careful and close consideration to this foundational system of thought, it is necessary to indulge in an exercise in hermeneutics to tease out a way forward through this complex idea. Here it is useful to revisit the elements of this passage from Du Bois one at a time:

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world – a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but ONLY lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.²

This passage requires close and careful attention, particularly in light of the fact that we find an important turn of phrase that delineates three things: the “world”; a particular way of seeing it; and the effect of the first two. First, the Negro, in this account, is “gifted” with this way of seeing in “this American world,” leaving open the question of whether, in Du Bois’ formulation at the time, Second-Sight might be present in other worlds or in other subjects. Second, it is the “world which yields him no true self-consciousness.” This concept has to be held close to the forefront of any thinking engaged in unravelling this proposal. The implication is that Second-Sight is a way of seeing that exists independently of awareness of the fact of its existence. Stated differently, Du Bois is proposing that America, as it exists, does not provide for the existence of true self-consciousness for the Negro. This is different than a false notion of self-consciousness existing because of a way of perceiving the self. For instance, it doesn’t matter whether you believe in or are aware of gravity as such or not. It acts independently of cognition. Finally, the last phrase, “… but ONLY lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world,” requires that we deal with the cause and effect relationship between revelation of the other world and only seeing himself through it.

With respect to the framing here as “revelation,” I read the passage as relating to this understanding as a product of the veil, as Du Bois positions it in his account, the divide between Black and white; his “color-line.” In other words, it is a structural fact of this Manichean world that the Negro has no true self-consciousness.

At this stage we are left to decide whether Second-Sight is seeing oneself through the revelation of another or is in fact a way of being aware that you are seeing yourself through the eyes of another, which I take as two very different propositions. Second-Sight will be situated as the cognition of the fact of a lack of true self-consciousness as opposed to a way of seeing that is itself the cause of this problem. I am proposing that this passage implicates Second-Sight as a form of consciousness that allows the Negro awareness of the fact of a lack of true self-consciousness as a result of a separation between Black and white.

It seems clear from the text that Du Bois structures a clear “if–then” statement. If there is Second-Sight, then there is Double Consciousness and further Two-ness. Moving forward in Du Bois’ text from where we left off we can examine his proposition.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.³

Du Bois describes Double Consciousness as a “peculiar sensation,” not a mode of cognition as such. Second-Sight remains the manner of perception and Double Consciousness the sensation that observation causes. Du Bois, in this account, positions the Negro as profoundly sensitive to the stimulation of Second-Sight. Therefore it seems clear that Double Consciousness can neither exist without nor antecede Second-Sight. This leaves us with Two-ness to address. Returning to the text:

One ever feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.⁴

Two-ness is understood here as a feeling that I wish to consider in relation to the notion of “sensation.” The way I would like to parse the difference is to propose that a “feeling,” in this context, requires a type of cultural awareness or perhaps a premonitionary stance in that sensations can be felt independently of context, cultural or otherwise. It seems here that Du Bois is using feeling in the sense of it being linked to an understanding of what the sensation of Double Consciousness causes the subject to feel: the separation of mind and body (“I think therefore I am”).

All of that being said, and further recognizing the existence of an instance of mechanical causality that I am proposing exists here that is resistant to separation of the parts from the whole of this thinking, it is Two-ness that serves as the path forward to Fanon through Malcolm X. Du Bois, for his part, gives us a set of physical and metaphysical relations that have to be accounted for prior to interrogating the assemblage also known as “civil society” that may or may not include certain subjects and in fact may only be considered whole through a process of selective dys-inclusion. What Du Bois accomplishes here is to situate the “Black body” as different from the Negro and its opposite, in this formulation, the American. This thinking requires us to enter into a practice of translation between Du Bois’ “Negro” and our “Black” in o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Ontology
• 2. The Body
• 3. Geographic Space
• 4. Revolution
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index