When I was in college, there were four people who influenced my life:
One. Franz Kafka, who taught me that we could exorcise our demons in fiction and be funny and ironic at the same time.
Two. Vladimir Nabokov, who taught me that literacy gave us our voice and a confident voice like Nabokov’s was helpful when someone like myself wasn’t feeling so confident on the inside.
Three. David Letterman, whose deadpan expression seemed like an appropriate countenance in a world full of bloated pretentiousness and fakery.
Four. Malcolm X, whose autobiography, written with Alex Haley, taught me that anger could be harnessed with literacy to breakdown the mythologies we have about society and to radically change our lives. I must have read the book at least three times while I was in college.
While I failed miserably to teach Kafka’s masterpiece The Metamorphosis twenty years ago (my guess is only three students read it and they hated me for assigning it), I am more optimistic this fall about teaching The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Here’s the assignment:
McMahon said in class that “Malcolm X was an autodidactic genius who showed us that literacy could be used as a vital tool for two essential undertakings: The first was to strip away the façade of a false America, replace the mythic America with a sobering reality, that of a country that relied on white supremacy as the foundation of its economy and identity and that this false religion, white supremacy, continues to metastasize across the country, in different forms, today; the second was to use literacy to reinvent the self, one from ignorance, degradation, learned helplessness, victimization, and moral dissolution into a person of knowledge, dignity, critical thinking, purpose, and effective action.”
But some people disagree with McMahon’s "exalted view" of Malcolm X and argue that Malcolm X was a hustler and a demagogue who reinvented himself through fabrication, contrivance, exaggeration of racism, and myth-making to reinvent his view of America, and himself, and that this view of America is unjustly skewed, pessimistic, and hellish in its rendering.
Which camp do you belong to, McMahon’s or McMahon’s critics? Defend your position in a thesis that generates a six-page research paper of about 1,500 words. Remember you don’t have to agree with McMahon to write a successful paper. However, you do need to devote a section of your essay to refuting your opponents if your essay is to be A-grade.
I want to address the question: Can we acknowledge a powerful personality and his contributions without resorting to hagiography? Can we acknowledge that person's weaknesses and mythologies on one hand and invaluable contributions on the other?
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