Facing the Nation: A Theo-Philosophical Examination of Media and Academic Violence toward the Nation of Islam and the (Re)Veiling of the Nation’s Levinasian Face

Muhammad, Eugene Enright

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Facing the Nation: A Theo-Philosophical Examination of Media and Academic Violence toward the Nation of Islam and the (Re)Veiling of the Nation’s Levinasian Face

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MLA citation style (9th ed.)

Muhammad, Eugene Enright. Facing the Nation: A Theo-philosophical Examination of Media and Academic Violence Toward the Nation of Islam and the (re)veiling of the Nation’s Levinasian Face. ctschicago.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/d164bbf1-7caa-4006-93dc-1cce67226870.

APA citation style (7th ed.)

M. E. Enright. Facing the Nation: A Theo-Philosophical Examination of Media and Academic Violence toward the Nation of Islam and the (Re)Veiling of the Nation’s Levinasian Face. https://ctschicago.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/d164bbf1-7caa-4006-93dc-1cce67226870

Chicago citation style (CMOS 17, author-date)

Muhammad, Eugene Enright. Facing the Nation: A Theo-Philosophical Examination of Media and Academic Violence Toward the Nation of Islam and the (re)veiling of the Nation’s Levinasian Face. https://ctschicago.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/d164bbf1-7caa-4006-93dc-1cce67226870.

Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.

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Muhammad, Eugene Enright

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Abstract

This dissertation examines particular forms of violence toward the Nation of Islam in popular media and academic literature from 1930 to 1996. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, this project engages a philosophical examination of the same’s, that is, the dominant society’s, allergic response to the alterity perceived within the Nation of Islam. Taking Emmanuel Levinas’s metaphysical reappropriation of ontology and ethics seriously, this work demonstrates that the Levinasian face of the Nation has been the intended target of this violence. Furthermore, this work argues that the radical alterity that authentically belongs to the Nation has been the casualty of monstrosification, understood here as the intentional disfigurement, veiling, reconstruction, enervation, and absenting of the other’s Levinasian face. It traces the methodological precursors of this violence within an ontologically centered tradition and calls for a pre-methodological response that disarms the violent machinery of the dominant society and facilitates direct encounters with religious others, such as the Nation of Islam. The pathway beyond the violent tropes and categorizations leveled against the Nation calls for discursive hospitality and welcome within an inhospitable American context. It is here that the Levinasian face-to-face encounter becomes a critical injunction of justice, one that reduces harm and allows the Nation to speak the impossible story concealed beneath violent and muting tropes. Underneath the veil of monstrosification, the Nation speaks a restless love story. This command to preserve the other’s life allows the Nation’s Levinasian face to unveil its disruptive alterity, which is rooted in an impossible story—an impossible love story.

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