With In and Out of This World Stephen C. Finley examines the religious practices and discourses that have shaped the Nation of Islam (NOI) in America. Drawing on the speeches and writing of figures such as Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Warith Deen Mohammad, and Louis Farrakhan, Finley shows that the NOI and its leaders used multiple religious symbols, rituals, and mythologies meant to recast the meaning of the cosmos and create new transcendent and immanent black bodies whose meaning cannot be reduced to products of racism. Whether examining how the myth of Yakub helped Elijah Muhammad explain the violence directed at black bodies, how Malcolm X made black bodies in the NOI publicly visible, or the ways Farrakhan’s discourses on his experiences with the Mother Wheel UFO organize his interpretation of black bodies, Finley demonstrates that the NOI intended to retrieve, reclaim, and reform black bodies in a context of antiblack violence.
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Black Bodies In-and Out-of-Place: Rereading the Nation of Islam through a Theory of the Body
- 1. Elijah Muhammad, the Myth of Yakub, and the Critique of “Whitenized” Black Embodiment
- 2. Elijah Muhammad, Transcendent Blackness, and the Construction of Ideal Black Bodies
- 3. Malcolm X and the Politics of Resistance: Visible Bodies, Language, and the Implied Critique of Elijah Muhammad
- 4. Warith Deen Mohammed and the Nation of Islam: Race and Black Embodiment in “Islamic” Form
- 5. Mothership Connections: Louis Farrakhan as the Culmination of Muslim Ideals in the Nation of Islam
- Conclusion: (Re)forming Black Embodiment, White Supremacy, and the Nation of Islam’s Class(ist) Response
- Wheels, Wombs, and Women: An Epilogue
- The “Louis Farrakhan” That the Public Does Not Know, or Doesn’t Want to Know?: An Afterword
- Farrakhan’s Swan Song?: A Postscript
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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