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By Shaurya Mahajan
Keywords: Race, Orientalism, Muslim, Identity, Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, Diaspora, Post 9/11
I. Introduction
Disgraced, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Ayad Akhtar, presents a commentary on the intertwined relationship between our identities and our worldviews and relationships. The character of Amir forms the central character and encapsulates the conflict between our inherited identity and our acquired country and society, a conflict unique to the diaspora. It also represents the racialisation of the ‘Muslim identity’ in post-9/11 American society and the widespread acceptance of the stereotype of the ‘Muslim terrorist’. Amir’s interactions with the other characters, the dilemma regarding defending the Imam, and his associated anxiety about the effects on his career - all point towards this racialisation. In trying to resolve this conflict, it becomes essential to question the lasting relevance of identity itself. This question becomes ever more pertinent to ask in the case of diasporic Muslim identity in post-9/11 America. The question arises as to the nature of this identity or as Dolan puts it - Is being Muslim is something inherent, an essential identity that cannot be denied. This paper argues that Muslim diasporic identity in post-9/11 America is not just a religious identity but a racial one, finds itself in conflict with the American identity, and, like all identities, is inescapable.
II. Dichotomous Muslim Identity
A. Muslim Identity
The identity of being ‘Muslim’ is more than just religious, especially for diasporic populations – it is racial. To understand this racial identity, it is essential to understand the aspect of race itself. As Lucy Salyer has eloquently said, “Race is not an objective biological fact but rather social and political constructions which establish and perpetuate hierarchies of power”. These hierarchies of power and their perpetuation become visible and operate through racialisation and subsequent racial subordination. Post-9/11, there has emerged a widespread acceptance of the ‘Muslim terrorist’ stereotype, leading to the racialisation of the Muslim identity. This racialisation includes both migrants and Muslims born in the US and even extends to people who were born as Muslims but have denounced their faith. This is visible from the fact that even though Amir is not devout, it does not free him from his ‘Muslim’ identity. It is only his strategic decision to adopt ‘Kapoor’ that allows him to distance himself from it. This indicated that the ‘Muslim identity’ has moved from being one based on faith and religion to one based on race. This racialisation is so intense that the mere existence of markers commonly associated with Muslims, such as brown-skinned men with beards and women with headscarves, was enough to be categorised as ‘Muslim’ and be subjected to hate crimes and discrimination with no regard to actual religious or ethnic origin. The intensity and frequency of these instances against people who ‘look like’ Muslims is a testament to the widespread acceptance of the racialised identity of the ‘Muslim terrorist. Similar to all racial identities, it is ascribed and imposed on people, is unaffected by their religious assertion, and, if anything, makes it all the more difficult. This Muslim identity includes a “raced understanding” and includes people whose ancestry roots can be traced back to countries where Islam is the dominant faith. Amir’s Muslim identity is treated very differently by him and his wife, and the Neo-Orientalism that underscores this perspective and disagreement. This racial neo-orientalism is represented and conveyed effectively by the anachronism between Amir’s rejection of his identity and Emily’s embrace of it.
B. The Dichotomy of Identity: Rejection and Embrace
While Amir makes a conscious effort to reject his Muslim identity, his wife Emily consciously embraces Islamic culture, their disagreement on the matter being nothing but the conflict between the mimicry aspiration of the colonised and the white saviour complex of the coloniser. This can be effectively illustrated in the scene when Emily is painting the Velasquez painting in Amir’s mould and he remarks, “Your own personal Moor” (Akhtar). Issac’s comment on the painting puts it even better – “The slave finally has the master’s wife” (Akhtar). Putri and Destari in their examination of Amir and Emily’s relationship explain how the painting reveals inherent power relations at play between Emily and Amir, which are evident through Emily’s control and dominance over Amir’s oriental identity. This objectification, control, and resistance are all illustrated by Emily’s remark in response to Amir’s comment– “Muse is more like it” (Akhtar). The scene with Amir and Emily disagreeing over Islam and life under it during the dinner party. Their disagreement and relationship can be better understood in reference to what Putri and Destari have called Neo-Orientalism, wherein Amir’s decision to paint Islam as backward and violent prompts Emily’s ironic defence. It represents the conflict and duality between the American imagination of Middle Eastern society and the narrative account of the reality of diasporic people. While the diasporic account is based on lived reality and experience, the American imagination is characterised by what Cole calls ‘American sentimentality’, the emotionally driven and short-sighted urge to solve the problem of race without fully understanding or acknowledging its nuances. This sentimentality is built upon the ‘White Saviour Complex’ and fails to acknowledge the root cause of the issue and takes away the agency of the people living in that reality, just as Emily does by trying to ‘elevate’ the Islamic artistic tradition. As Putri and Destari have explained, this ‘elevating’ Islamic artistic tradition by Emily in her narrative represents the domination of Islamic culture by Western narrative, expressed through a white saviour complex fuelled by sentimentality. It is this sentimentality that forms the cause and need for the racialised people to write about their lived experiences in connection and relation with the world they live in – in stark reality to the self in white man’s work.
III. Following in the Footsteps
The play follows the tradition of South Asians and minorities, in general, to gesture towards and write about larger and outside forces and their impact on the self. The interaction of these outside forces with the self and their impact on the individual, derived from their own lived reality, makes the work rich and unique. Amir, despite being a non-practising Muslim, is unable to escape his Muslim identity – even though he stops seeing himself as a Muslim, the world does not. The character of Amir superbly depicts internal conflict and illuminates how the personal psyche is always formed at an intersection of current and historical political realities. The character of Amir and the play as a whole represent the overlap between the personal and the political. Dolan in her review sheds light on the interaction between the character's identities and the environment within which they are placed, explaining how both affect each other. The character’s identities derive meaning and significance from the larger public and political sphere within which they operate. This political public sphere also, in turn, shapes the personal identity, resulting in the emergence of a dialectical relationship. The harmonic interaction between these aspects forms the core of our lived reality. This interaction remains stable and symbiotic when the identity and political sphere remain in sync, as is the case for majority groups in countries where they dominate. The problem arises when the identity and society find themselves in conflict when the inherited identity is opposed to the political and social sphere it operates in – as is the case in diasporic communities where the political sphere is acquired and not inherited. This conflict is thus unique to diasporic communities and stems from an inherent conflict of values; it is a conflict between the inherited and the acquired.
IV. Centrality of Conflict and Inescapability
A. Conflict of Identities
This inherited identity finds itself in conflict with the acquired society and values. Amir represents the incapability of South Asian Muslims to reconcile their religious and cultural identity with American civic and political life. This inability to reconcile can be illustrated with Amir’s words with respect to a cornerstone of American life, the separation of the Church and the State - “In Islam, there’s no difference. There’s no distinction of church and state” (Akhtar). Amir sees Islam as a backward religion and criticises it in an attempt to distance himself from his cultural Islamic identity. This is evident from his remark about Islam – “Islam comes from the desert. From a group of tough-minded, tough–living people. Who saw life as something hard and relentless. Something to be suffered” (Akhtar). This conflict between the inherited identity and the acquired environment generates mental discomfort in the individual. This leads the person to make efforts to solve the conflict to alleviate the mental discomfort by bringing the inherited and acquired in sync. This involves changing the inherited personal identity to conform to the acquired environment, essentially imitating the acquired identity and its inhabitants. This imitation is what Bhabha discusses as ‘colonial mimicry’ and discusses it as the “desire for a reformed, recognisable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite”. This is seen in the play as Amir starts to ‘mimic’ the values, identity, attitudes, and style of the acquired culture. Mostafa in his work on the representation of colonial mimicry in the play explains this as an effort to gain power, an effort that is central to immigrant identity. This approach is common as a pattern of behaviour in cases of immigrants; they start copying the acquired culture and people in power, hoping to one day truly be a part of it and have access to that power. However, while doing so, they suppress their own inherited identity. Ali and Asmaa in their review of the play shed light on the Islamophobia that it seeks to capture and provide an approach for understanding its pervasiveness. This approach stems from systemic colonisation of the mind, wherein Muslims lose their own cultural identity and have to strive to get accepted in a system that inherently advantages the coloniser. This leads to Amir taking conscious steps to integrate into his acquired environment. Despite this, he cannot help it and feels the internal conflict generated by his inherited personal identity, as is evident from his unexpected remark about 9/11 – “You can’t help but feel just a little bit of pride.” This conflict further reinforces the inherited identity, forming a circle through which the inherited identity becomes inescapable.
B. The Inescapability of Identity
Despite conscious efforts to shed the inherited identity, it seems impossible. The identity appears to be inescapable. Even if the person himself rises above this inherited identity, his acquired environment does not let him forget it. Amir struggles with this dilemma as well and expresses his inability to resolve it when he remarks – “It’s tribal, Jor. It is in the bones. You have to work real hard to root that shit out” (Akhtar). It is ironic to note that it is so inescapable for an aspect that takes so much effort to ensure it’s not there. The root of this inescapability goes back to ‘colonial mimicry’ itself. Putri and Destari have shown how the act of the colonised imitating the coloniser makes them seem alike and simultaneously makes them different. This is substantiated with reference to David Huddart’s work on Bhabha’s concept of Mimicry, where he remarks - “colonial discourse wants the colonised to be extremely like the coloniser, but by no means identical”. In his work, Bhabha posits that Mimicry emerges as an opposition to stereotypes that aim to bind the individual to a specific reference and deny them their identity. A synthesis of Putri and Destari’s work on colonial imitation and Bhabha’s concept of Mimicry allows it to flow logically that a higher level of ‘effectiveness’ of Mimicry symbolises resistance towards the coloniser. Even while trying to shed their identity, they end up reinforcing it, and the very act of trying to shed it in’ mimicry’ itself represents resistance to the overtaking of identity by the coloniser. This inherited identity transforms into an inescapable one, which they cannot escape; no matter how hard one tries, they cannot.
V. The State of Muslim Diasporic Identity: A Way Ahead
Muslim diasporic identity in post-9/11 America is, thus, more than a religious identity; it is also a racial identity. The stereotype of the ‘Muslim terrorist’ and the mimicry response it generates together contribute to the racialisation of the Muslim identity. This racialisation is grounded in ancestral origin and looks past Islam as a ‘faith’, considering people who ‘look like’ Muslims to be Muslim. The relationship and disagreement between Amir and Emily illustrate the underlying racial angle and the neo-orientalism at play. The inherited Muslim identity finds itself inherently opposed to the acquired American identity. Amir’s rejection of his Muslim identity is a move towards assimilation and Mimicry in his acquired society. Despite his conscious effort to break free of his inherited identity, he finds himself in a confused state, finding his inherited identity to be inescapable, both internally and externally. The conflict between the inherited and acquired identities and subsequent efforts to assimilate within the acquired environment make the inherited identity inescapable. It gives rise to a new identity, similar to the one acquired but not identical. This new identity gives diasporic communities their unique perspective, allowing them to write about their lives in relation to larger forces and movements in their environment. This unique identity is supposed to represent the American melting pot, but it has come to represent the polar opposite. The play effectively illuminates the complexity of diasporic Muslim identity in post-9/11 America. It sheds light on the complicated and nuanced relationship and conflict between personal inherited and acquired identities. It reveals through Amir’s character and perspectives the inescapability of the inherited identity, reinforced by the neo-orientalist attitude of their environment, as his disagreement with his wife illustrates. Like the view from Amir and Emily’s balcony, the play offers no answers or solutions, merely asking us to introspect and examine the world we live in and our place in it. The play represents the world as it is and for what it is: an imperfect and complicated place, but our reality nonetheless.
Shaurya Mahajan is a second-year law student at Jindal Global Law School. Main areas of interest are Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, International Law and intersection of society and law.
