Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgment

Few figures haunt the collective American psyche like Malcolm X. Hoodlum, convict, convert, prophet, nationalist, and martyr, Malcolm’s life spans the Civil Rights era like an index of America’s racial anxiety. Dozens of books and hundreds of articles have analyzed his life, his work, and the various ways that his image has been appropriated by American culture. Not much has been done, however, to analyze his speeches. This would be a glaring omission in the body of scholarship about almost...