The Nation of Islam (NOI) has intrigued American society since its inception in 1930. Historically, the religio-nationalist organization has been the object of admiration for its uncanny ability to reform the lives of downtrodden blacks. At the same time, the NOI has garnered condemnation for the controversial, racialized and divisive doctrine that it espouses. This condemnation has led to a dismissal of the NOI’s doctrine as reactionary, bigoted, and fanciful myth-making. In recent decades however, scholars have begun interrogating the doctrine (...) of the NOI. Rather than dismissing it, scholars in various fields have recognized the critical and phenomenological nature of its doctrine as it goes about the “mental, physical, and spiritual resurrection” of black Americans. In this article, I interrogate three of the most controversial claims of the NOI: The White man is the devil, the Black man is God, and its endorsement of the separation of Blacks into their own territory. Viewed through the lens of phenomenology, I submit that the NOI’s doctrine and actions should be viewed as the establishment of an emancipative and recuperative “Phenomenology of Blackness” that counters a lifeworld built upon the disembodiment and dehumanization of Black bodies. Reframing the NOI’s doctrine in this way positions it as a linguistic, religiously stylized, praxis-oriented critical hermeneutic phenomenology. (shrink)

This essay takes up the claim made recently by Simon Critchley in The Companion to Continental Philosophy that a feature common to many philosophers in the Continental tradition is the utopian demand that things be otherwise. The general question I pursue has to do with whether or not such a claim includes movements within Continental philosophy that do not self-identify with the utopian (like critical theory). The particular question has to do with whether or not the movement of phenomenology is (...) utopian or does it, because of its other commitments, view the utopian as the antithesis to its orientation, which makes that claim that phenomenology is utopian seem strange. My thesis is that phenomenology can be seen as a utopian tradition but that some account must be given that demonstrates this connection to the utopian. In particular, I argue that Maurice Merleau-Ponty''s phenomenology provides an understanding of the utopian, which I call a non-conventional view, that is vastly different from the one assumed by most when they see or hear the word utopian, which I label conventional. I show that such a non-conventional understanding can be developed in a way that neither requires us to view the utopian solely as opposed to finitude and contingency, nor a form of thought and action from which we necessarily need to dissociate ourselves. It is this non-conventional view of the utopian that in the end enables us to understand how Continental philosophy in general and phenomenology in particular are important bearers of the utopian demand that things be otherwise. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to carve out a political understanding of the Muslim identity. The Muslim identity is shaped within a religious mold. Inseparable from this religious understanding is a political one that is valuable in its own right in order to secure any sustainable possibility of participating politically as Muslims within a democratic liberal democracy, such as the United States. Here I explore not the historical or theological formation of the Muslim identity, rather a metaphysical understanding of (...) it, in order to mobilize politically while avoiding the traps of essentialism. I begin with a brief overview of the early understandings of the term “identity politics” in the United States. Moving beyond interest-based movements I explore María Lugones' particular understanding of the self as multiplicitous. I then offer examples of the Muslim identity within the context of a social movement and individualist claims, in order to draw out the political aspects of the Muslim identity. In the final section I argue that the theological criteria that define “who counts as a Muslim” is a crucial aspect of how many Muslims may understand their identity as Muslims. However, I claim that in order to avoid the traps of marginalization of Muslim minorities, one must understand oneself as a multiplicitous political agent and that, furthermore, such an understanding is not at odds with Islam or one's own understanding of their identity as Muslim. (shrink)