ENGLISH LITERATURE & CULTURE

‘I’ IS ANOTHER:AUTOBIOGRAPHYACROSS GENRES

Camelia Elias

historical context – the 60s• issues of integration• Malcolm X:

violence could be a revolutionary tool• Martin Luther King:

used non-violent moral pressure• blacks and whites (women,

environmentalists, Latinos, gays, Indians, hippies, students) against the Johnson Administration: Hey, Hey, LBJ! How many kids you kill today? Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate! Power, Black power!

Malcolm X (1925 – 1965)

• born Malcolm Little• took the name of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz,

to go with his role as an American Black Muslim minister and a spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Shahbâz (Persian): "royal falcon“, "royalty and

nobility"

• Brother Malcolm: resource site• Study guide: Malcolm X for beginners

Malcolm X's Autobiography• autobiography as dictation• a question of mediation

multiple selves ex: a loyal public Malcolm X describing a religious

movement in which he casts himself in a subordinate and self-effacing movement

subversive Malcom X, who revises his manuscripts in the margins of scaps of papers, using red-ink ball point

Haley casts baits: makes him talk about his mother which triggers the details

• Reflections on Malcolm X

Malcolm X's Autobiography• recounts his transformative journey into the leader he

became.• raises questions of the meaning of the Black American

experience. How does one find meaning in oppression?  in suffering?  What makes for a truly human community?  How does one's vision of the transcendent affect the

kind of community one builds?  How do our cultural values get in the way of genuine

community?  How do we get past the cultural presuppositions that

prevent the formation of genuine human community? 

relations between people• the autobiography investigates the power of people's

attitudes on Malcolm's personal growth and development.  What kind of person did he become as a consequence of

those attitudes, his own and others'?• raises the question of structural oppression. 

Is it enough to be a good person as an individual?  Do our responsibilities go beyond personal goodness?  Is it enough to pursue personal happiness?  How can we appreciate the humanness of others who

are different from us?  How can we find common ground with them?  What makes this appreciation difficult?

narrative of redemption• likens himself to Paul on the road to

Damascus (not saved by Jesus, but by Mohammed)

• the historic truth of influence and conversion must be realized. but in retrospect the truth comes to include

jealousy and misunderstanding where the Elijah Muhammed’s muslinism was concerned.

• two-part narrative before/after lost/found evangelical motive

conveying moral power

• “there are a lot of things I could say that passed through my mind at times even then, things I saw and heard, but I threw them out of my mind. I’m going to let it stand the way I’ve told it. I want the book to be the way it was.”

autobiographical relativism

• “autobiography, like other literary forms, is what a gifted writer makes of it”.

Alfred Kazin, “Autobiography as Narrative”, 1964)

fictive and historical ‘design’ and ‘truth’

preoccupations with:

• the mimetic question of the interplay of history and fiction

• the formal question of the tension between purposive form and experimental development

• the generic question of intention (of the autobiographer’s fluctuating idea of his purpose and of the reader he would reach)

autobiographical patternsnarrative:• traditionally recovered lifedramatic:• the autobiographical situation in which the

autobiographer recognizes, interrelates, and attempts to manipulate toward some truth or integrity his relationship with his recoverable past, with his formal or technical options and with his rhetorical and psychological intentions.

• any description in form must take into account both its narrative momentum and its dramatic evolution. Malcolm X: a dramatic phase of self-formulation

(Francis Hart, “Notes for an Anatomy of Modern Autobiography”, 1970)

narrative/dramatic formsconfession: • personal history that seeks to communicate or express the

essential nature, the truth, of the self• as an intention places the self relative to nature, reality• ontologicalapology:• personal history that seeks to demonstrate or realize the

integrity of the self• places the self relative to social and/or moral law• ethicalmemoir:• personal history that seeks to articulate or repossess the

historicity of the self• places the self relative to time, history, cultural pattern and

change• historical or cultural

incompleteness

• In life nothing is permanent, not even life itself (413-414)

• “I” is suspended in the time of other selves

• “I” can be captured but only for a moment in a photograph of the self

• the autobiography succeeds because it fails as an autobiography

identity• Malcolm Little• Malcolm the Detroit Red• Malcolm as Satan• Malcolm as Malcolm X• Malcolm as El-Hajj Malik El-ShabazzRoles• the victim• the militant• the philosopher• the martyr