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Chapter 8 - The Necessary Violence of Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X in Global Black Revolution

from II - Culture and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2022

By
Kelly M. Nims
Edited by
Shelly Eversley
Shelly Eversley
Affiliation:
Baruch College, The City University of New York
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Summary

Engaging with the rich complexities of revolution, this chapter troubles the accepted narrative of Black resistance in 1960s America, specifically the uses of violence, and the ways it stretches the movement across space and time. It considers the violence of Black protest in the 1960s in more expansive terms, going beyond the turn-the-other-cheek violence of what often is described as nonviolent protest. Engaging with Malcolm X’s Autobiography (1965) and selected speeches, read through the influence of Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), this essay reads the two as representative of a global Black model of revolution predicated on outwardly directed violence. This chapter’s counter-narrative challenges the geography, temporality, and structure of Black revolution in the 1960s, decentering the U.S., acknowledging the influence of French intellectualism, and reaching back to acts of resistance of earlier generations, ultimately complicating the linear narrative of nation-bound, peaceful protest that has come to define Civil Rights.

Keywords

ViolenceprotestrevolutionBlack PowerglobalMalcolm XFrantz Fanon
Type
Chapter
Information
African American Literature in Transition, 1960–1970
Black Art, Politics, and Aesthetics
 , pp. 199 - 226
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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