In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera
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Richard X III
Richard X, III is a scholar of Black Critical Studies and Black Religion. As a student of Afro-pessimism, he studies the prison, and the experiences of confinement that Black flesh endure and resist every day. As a practitioner of Black Religion, he serves as the Protestant Chaplain at Rikers Island. After earning degrees at Bowie State University and Yale University, he is currently a Doctoral of Philosophy student at Fordham University in Social and Theological Ethics.
Abstract
Speaking of the phenomenon of American confinement, Malcolm X retorted on multiple occasions, “if you were born Black in America, then you were born in jail” (1965: 27). These haunting words from Malcolm X provide a kind of origin story for the supposed problem we mistakenly term mass incarceration. The problem of confinement as an ontological problem rather than a problem of procedures, policy, or policing radically upends popular narratives of mass incarceration. Confinement, by which I mean antiblackness, is the apparatus of black life, or more accurately, black ‘social death.’ To be blackened by the European gaze is to be confined. To be confined is to be Black. This chapter, in conversation with Black Religious studies, Afro-pessimism, and Critical Prison studies, asks if Malcolm X, even in death, is still confined? Asked another way: can Malcolm X ever be free? And perhaps most pressingly, does Malcolm X still have a word to say to those still in the confinement of the prison we call America? To think across these questions and disciplines, this chapter examines the dual and dualling narratives in the newly debuted Metropolitan Opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. I argue that while the opera's Afrofuturist aesthetics suggest a narrative of transcendence, its deeper theoretical implications, in particular, Act 2, titled “In the Devil’s Grip,” align more closely with Afro-pessimist thought. By juxtaposing these two frameworks, this chapter explores how the opera engages with the broader discourse on the condition of Blackness, prison abolition, and confinement of Malcolm X.
Abstract
Speaking of the phenomenon of American confinement, Malcolm X retorted on multiple occasions, “if you were born Black in America, then you were born in jail” (1965: 27). These haunting words from Malcolm X provide a kind of origin story for the supposed problem we mistakenly term mass incarceration. The problem of confinement as an ontological problem rather than a problem of procedures, policy, or policing radically upends popular narratives of mass incarceration. Confinement, by which I mean antiblackness, is the apparatus of black life, or more accurately, black ‘social death.’ To be blackened by the European gaze is to be confined. To be confined is to be Black. This chapter, in conversation with Black Religious studies, Afro-pessimism, and Critical Prison studies, asks if Malcolm X, even in death, is still confined? Asked another way: can Malcolm X ever be free? And perhaps most pressingly, does Malcolm X still have a word to say to those still in the confinement of the prison we call America? To think across these questions and disciplines, this chapter examines the dual and dualling narratives in the newly debuted Metropolitan Opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. I argue that while the opera's Afrofuturist aesthetics suggest a narrative of transcendence, its deeper theoretical implications, in particular, Act 2, titled “In the Devil’s Grip,” align more closely with Afro-pessimist thought. By juxtaposing these two frameworks, this chapter explores how the opera engages with the broader discourse on the condition of Blackness, prison abolition, and confinement of Malcolm X.
Chapters in this book
- Acknowledgments 5
- Table of Contents 7
- Confinement Studies in American Popular Culture 1
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Part I: Confinement Narratives on the Screen
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Cinema and TV Series
- The Individual vs. the Institution: Narratives of Confinement in New Hollywood Cinema 15
- Trapped in Bluebeard’s Castle: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as a Self-Contradictory Story of Empowerment and Imprisonment 31
- (Dis)ableing the Confinement: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God 47
- Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010) 63
- “Where the City Started and the Suburbs Ended”: The (Sub)urban Confinement of Post-Industrial America in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows 87
- Never Let Me Go: Home, Family, and Confinement in Umma 103
- Confinement and Consciousness: Exploring the ‘ Nomadic Consciousness’ in Maid 117
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Documentaries
- Incarceration Documentaries after the Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography 133
- Dream in Place: Understanding Confinement through the Tactics of Fiction in Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack 151
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Part II: Confinement Narratives from/about American Prisons
- Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement 171
- Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur 185
- Into the Lone Star Labyrinth: Texas Prison System Reflects The Death Gate Cycle Prison 201
- Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There 217
- “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars 235
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Part III: Confinement Narratives within Performances
- Taylor Swift’s American Retreat: Covid, Cardigans, and Confinement in folklore 253
- In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera 269
- Index
Chapters in this book
- Acknowledgments 5
- Table of Contents 7
- Confinement Studies in American Popular Culture 1
-
Part I: Confinement Narratives on the Screen
-
Cinema and TV Series
- The Individual vs. the Institution: Narratives of Confinement in New Hollywood Cinema 15
- Trapped in Bluebeard’s Castle: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as a Self-Contradictory Story of Empowerment and Imprisonment 31
- (Dis)ableing the Confinement: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God 47
- Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010) 63
- “Where the City Started and the Suburbs Ended”: The (Sub)urban Confinement of Post-Industrial America in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows 87
- Never Let Me Go: Home, Family, and Confinement in Umma 103
- Confinement and Consciousness: Exploring the ‘ Nomadic Consciousness’ in Maid 117
-
Documentaries
- Incarceration Documentaries after the Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography 133
- Dream in Place: Understanding Confinement through the Tactics of Fiction in Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack 151
-
Part II: Confinement Narratives from/about American Prisons
- Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement 171
- Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur 185
- Into the Lone Star Labyrinth: Texas Prison System Reflects The Death Gate Cycle Prison 201
- Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There 217
- “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars 235
-
Part III: Confinement Narratives within Performances
- Taylor Swift’s American Retreat: Covid, Cardigans, and Confinement in folklore 253
- In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera 269
- Index
