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Appendix F: Description of “Lens” Concept
Traditionally, scholars have examined and discussed Malcolm X as a political
figure, and as a result, much of the existing scholarship has focused almost
exclusively on the political aspect of Malcolm’s life and legacy. What has
emerged from this single focus is a convincing portrait of Malcolm as a Black
nationalist.
While we accept that Black Nationalism was an important part of Malcolm’s life,
we believe that the complexity of Malcolm’s life and ideas cannot be fully
appreciated by viewing him simply as a Black nationalist. A more complex study
of Malcolm’s entire life reveals him to be not only a political figure in the tradition
of Black nationalism, but also a cultural hero, a global citizen, and a man of deep
faith.
As a young man in Boston and Harlem, Malcolm celebrates and participates in
African American culture and youth subcultures; during his time in the Nation of
Islam, he emerges as an important proponent of Black nationalism; after his
return from Mecca, he combines this Black nationalist ideology with a growing
Third World identity and socialist analysis; and through it all, he was a man of
faith whose relationship to religion, formal and informal, was key to his
development from his early childhood to his assassination.
In order for the MSE user to appreciate these “four Malcolm’s” we have
developed four lenses through which to examine and annotate the
Autobiography.
(1) Politics (Black nationalism)
Views Malcolm’s life and words through the critical ideas, people, places, and
events in African-American political life and history that contribute to the
development of his racial consciousness as a Black man in America, including
his upbringing by Garveyite parents, his membership in the Nation of Islam, and
his founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).
(2) International/Third World Socialism and Pan-Africanism
Views Malcolm’s life and words through the critical ideas, people, places and
events in the African Diaspora that contribute to the development of his global
consciousness into an international spokesperson for human rights, including the
role of his West Indian immigrant mother, his role as the Nation of Islam’s
emissary to the Muslim world, and his travels to Africa and Asia.
(3) Faith (Black religion, Christianity, and Islam)
Views Malcolm’s life and words through the critical ideas, people, places and
events in African-American religious life and history that contribute to the
development of his faith, including the role of his Garveyite minister father, his
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irreverence as a youth (“Satan”), his ministry in the Nation of Islam, his
pilgrimage to Mecca, and his founding of Muslim Mosque, Inc.
(4) Culture (African-American culture and youth subcultures)
Views Malcolm’s life and words through the critical ideas, people, places, and
events in African-American culture that highlight his changing celebrations
African-American culture and his emergence as an African-American cultural
hero, including his days as the “Zoot suiter” and “Detroit Red,” paying special
attention to the music, oratory skills, aesthetics, and style that were important to
him throughout his life.
Although each of the four “Malcolms” loosely correlates with a particular phase of
his life, with one persona more often than not occupying center stage of his
narrative at any given time, Malcolm was the sum total of all his experiences.
The technical implementation will therefore enable the user to appreciate the full
depth of Malcolm in each of these four areas and the full breadth of his life in
which he engaged all four simultaneously.
Having these four specific lenses through which to view The Autobiography of
Malcolm X is particularly useful to the user who wishes to examine the narrative
from particular disciplines of study, which privilege a certain aspect of text, such
as the following
(1) American studies, African-American studies, literature, musicology (Culture)
(2) Political science, social science, U.S. history, African-American history
(Politics)
(3) International studies, African studies (International/Third World Socialism)
(4) Religious studies, Islamic studies, Christian studies (Faith)
The implementation of the lenses will satisfy these educational requirements in
terms of the particular technical backend and interface frontend solutions we
have developed. In order to provide four perspectives our researchers have
been assigned to writing annotations for each chapter based on one of the four
perspectives, Politics, Internationalism, Faith and Culture separately and
specifically where their unique expertise lies. For each annotated word, then, the
XML knowledge base will store four annotations (plus one general language
annotation) for dynamic presentation based on the preferences of the user. In an
exciting innovation for frontend information design, the user will be able to set
preferences for one or any number of the lenses. When any annotated text item
is clicked then the proper annotation will be display according to user
preferences, with the other angles available but one click away. So for example,
if the user has selected Faith as her preference, and then she clicks on Elijah
Muhammad in the spine text, she will be presented first with the Faith annotation
on Elijah, which will discuss his version of Islam in more depth than, say, his
political ideology. A list of links to the others (Politics, Internationalism, Culture,
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and the basic bibliographical annotation) will be present immediately as well, so
no information is hidden, only preferred.
We have explored the interface and pedagogical ramifications of the notion of
lenses, and after exploring various possible implementations feel that our
conclusion to proceed in the above manner is sound. We discovered various
challenges in the process, one of which will be illuminating if we describe our
solution in more detail. It is this: not every imagined text item that needs
annotating will be germane to all four lenses. Malcolm’s status as having red
hair, for example, can be explored for sure in terms of the politics of race, and
can be explored in terms of culture, but could not be provided with a Faith
annotation. In addition, some items will only need a basic annotation for
background information, such as the inventor of photography, which is useful
only for the student’s increased background knowledge and does not impact
directly our thesis in relation to the Autobiography. The inventor of photography
will be annotated in discussion of the fact that Malcolm always carried a camera
with him, but the historical information on photography will not be analyzed in
terms of Politics, Internationalism, Faith, or Culture. Instead, it will receive only a
basic annotation. For the eventuality of any text being annotated in less than the
four possible lenses we have created a mechanism to deal with the user who has
set her preferences to the lens that is not available. Our backend development
environment, Raptor, has been extended to file each annotation in an array that
can mirror the metaphor of preferences. In any possible case where the
preferred lens is not available, then the knowledge base will provide the basic
general language annotation as the default by scanning down the array past the
preferred but empty cell down to the default or basic annotation.