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Malcolm X and the zero point

example · historical/African-American · retold in 3 talks

By choosing X as a family name, Malcolm X did not call for return to African roots but seized the void created by slavery to forge a new, more universal identity; he was killed for this by the Nation of Islam.

As told 1

“the point of choosing X…was not to mobilize the Blacks to fight for the return to some primordial African roots, but precisely to seize the opening provided by X.”

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

Its cast and sources

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Every retelling 1

By choosing X as a family name, Malcolm X did not call for return to African roots but seized the void created by slavery to forge a new, more universal identity; he was killed for this by the Nation of Islam., illustrating symbolic suicide,passage through zero point,concrete universality,zone of non-being