Self-mortification

Abstract

As the third moment of Unhappy Consciousness, self-mortification is a striving to self-annihilate that evokes the extreme asceticism of the medieval church and Luther’s Protestantism. Malcolm X’s life was a structurally similar process of self-mortification. During his early years, the Black self that the white devil told him to believe was liquidated as he entered the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X erased his changeable individuality so that nothing is left but a mere X, which was replaced by the will of the mediator. Malcolm X later broke with the Nation of Islam and became his own mediator to Allah. Through his pilgrimage, Malcolm X became El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Yet Angela Davis offered and still offers a more radical approach -- that selfless commitment requires that one be willing to erase oneself in service to the collective. Davis’s life is one of collective commitment. Unlike X, Davis moved in step with the various groups of which she was a part -- such that her fate was linked to the fate of the group. X lived a life of isolated (near)asceticism; Davis lives a life of collective commitment.