Showdown: Symbolic Violence and Masculine Performance in "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" (As Told to Alex Haley)

Howard University

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: detaylor{at}howard.edu.

	Abstract

While written during Malcolm X’s Muslim years, the narrative standpoint of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (As Told to Alex Haley) often mirrors the "cool pose" he adopted as a hustler in the black ghettoes of Harlem and Roxbury. By focusing on the way that cool pose gets enacted through "showdowns," a symbolic transaction Malcolm and the other street hustlers in The Autobiography use to bolster their "masculinity," this essay supplements the performative model of gender with a consideration of the ways that "masculinity" also involves exchanges of gender power.
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