Michael Sawyer (Colorado College)
Malcolm X has been thoroughly examined as a cultural figure and activists but there has been little work done to think of him as a particular type of political theorist and philosopher. The core argument is that Malcolm’s intellectual evolution follows four stages: Garveyism, an ethic of no ethics during his criminal phase, black separatism, and finally post-colonialism. The foundational question that preoccupies this philosophical transition is how to reconcile the existence of outsiders within a political order that is designed to marginalize them while at the same time employing the tools of that government to realize political viability. Much of this is exemplified by the thinker’s canonical speech “The Ballot of the Bullet.” The course features close engagement with Malcolm X’s speeches and media appearances to bracket something that can be characterized as Black Radical Political Philosophy that will be demonstrated to exist as a critical bridge between the post-colonial theory of Fanon and the Black Nationalism of the Black Panther Party and other groups.
Lecture One: What's in a Name
Students should be familiar with "The Forethought" and Chapter 1 "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" from WEB Du Bois' Souls of Black Folk and Chapter 5 "The Lived Experience of the Black Man" from Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks.
Lecture Two: Come Hell and High Water
Students should be familiar with the following speeches by Malcolm X:
1. Message to the Grass Roots: Detroit Nov. 10, 1963
2. The Ballot or the Bullet: Cleveland April 3, 1964
3. The Black Revolution: NYC April 8, 1964
Lecture Three: Malcolm's Black Thought Matters
Students should be familiar with Chapters 1 and 2, "White Power: The Colonial Situation" and "Black Power: Its Needs and Substance" from Toure and Hamilton's text Black Power: The Politics of Liberation.