I think we are in fact in agreement overall, and your line about the quest for the historical jesus made me laugh.
>Would it be too much to suggest that Malcolm X did some good things and
>some less so? Or that, given the hand he was dealt he did some
>remarkable things, but that his wasn't necessarily the last word? Or do
>we have to go headlong into the proposition that 'each age creates its
>own Malcolm X'?
Actually I agree with both these things, though I would also say I have not actually seen any hagiography from Louis or from Ken -- they are both trying to give an overall picture, as well as better accounts of the KKK/NOI/SNCC relations. I do not take them as saying Malcolm X is beyond critique, but that overall, his legacy and his personal example are worth valorizing and affirming, and that Rakesh's overall valuation and interpretation of Malcolm X is wrong. I do not think Rakesh has simply "slammed" Malcolm X, and in so far as this matters, I do not doubt his sincerity or faith. But I agree with Louis's and Ken's analyses, not simply b/c of the facts/counter-facts they provide, but also b/c I think Malcolm X's symbolic value and "example" are both still damn important and as much a part of the Real Malcolm as any of his mistakes or bad moments.
I also do not see how the fact that each age creates its own Malcolm X contradicts anything. "We" keep doing this with the "New Woman," for example, even if there is an obvious continuity to all the manifestations. Even if we could establish a record of every single thing Malcolm X ever did and thought, each "age" -- each historically determined group or society -- would still in effect produce their own version of him and his legacy. I think this is so for a couple reasons. One is that societies and cultures in history are complete and utter "messes", even if we can tease out patterns within them; this also has to do with the fact that a correspondence view of truth (and of langugae and knowledge and epistemology) is a fantasy (imho). The other reason is that Malcolm X -- like Mao and Trotsky and most actual revolutionaries -- was simply not a systematic, utterly consistent thinker and actor; their abilities to change their thinking and their actions, in response to constantly changing circumstances and pressures, was a real virtue on their parts, and one of the conditions of their successes.
Not surprisingly, and as Ken noted, we are now seeing him re-created as this misunderstood liberal assimilationist. It is clear that this society -- the US at least -- can seemingly no longer imagine anything other than the vision and model and ethos of a benign, triumphal liberal-democratic-capitalism.
Jameson (I think) has noted that each age invents its own Hegel/version of the dialectic, and I think this applies to marxism, too, as well as Malcolm X. I think this is because there is a real, yet tacit, historical problem in each of these cases, or in other words, there seems to be a need for our societies to have these things, in whatever form they take, whether that of "post-structuralism," or "Keynsianism," or the liberalist-Malcolm X. This isnt relativist, though -- its not like the 80s/90s Malcolm X is entirely unrelated to, say, the 60s/70s Malcolm, for had the real flesh and blood Malcolm not existed and did the things he did, then the issue of his "interpretation" in history would be moot. Moreover, "what counts as" Malcolm X at a given moment of time is quite important, is a matter of political/cultural "struggle"; and some of these accounts are better than others.
So, yes, in my view facts do exist, but I think all we can do is struggle over them, not simply to establish some of them in the first place, but also to struggle over which ones count the most, and over what me make of them. I think it is important to get all the bad stuff down too, not the least of which would be Malcolm's and NOI's, etc.'s gender-politics. But, rather than use this to trivialize him as a whole, we need to use this to contruct a better Malcolm X as he exists today. Either way, he is not going away -- thankfully.
But I dont think we can simply say which account is better than the others on the basis of the "objective" facts alone -- this is a political question, and therefore also one of value/values. I am not trying to put words in your mouth, however..... I suspect that where we would disagree would be on the relative weight of "facts" in general. If I sound like I am always riding the theory-horse, that is b/c for better or worse, I am stuck in that saddle most of the time. I am not actually a purist about "theory," and I dont think our collective problem lies in finding a correct one, but in finding a way to talk across them, so that positivists, post-structuralists, marxists, feminists, scientists, etc. can begin to get our collective shit together. I still have some residual, stubborn faith that somewhere beneath all of our private languages, and all of our material differences, we face a common, historical and therefore surmountable, problem. "Late capitalism" is one, misfit word for that.
cheers to all, Dan
---------------------------------------------------- Daniel Vukovich English; Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801 vukovich at uiuc.edu ph. 217-344-7843 ----------------------------------------------------