American Muslim Humor, Secular Aesthetics, and the Politics of Recognition
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AMERICAN MUSLIM HUMOR, SECULAR AESTHETICS, AND THE POLITICS OF RECOGNITION Samah Selina Choudhury A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies in the Graduate School. Chapel Hill 2020 Approved by: Juliane Hammer Carl Ernst Cemil Aydin Kumi Silva Harshita Kamath Sylvia Chan-Malik © 2020 Samah Selina Choudhury ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Samah Choudhury: American Muslim Humor, Secular Aesthetics, and the Politics of Recognition (Under the direction of Juliane Hammer) This dissertation focuses on the cultural productions of humor by South Asian Muslim men and the ways in which “Islam” is self-constructed and articulated through comedic performance in a contemporary U.S. context. I argue that humor is a mode of secular discourse, in which the ability to laugh at oneself has been disciplined into a prized personality trait of the ideal subject within secular social schemas. In such a humor regime, the gendered and racialized Muslim body becomes a signifier of communal belonging, exclusion, and religious difference. Through a critical analysis of films, television shows, and standup comedy routines by the comedians Aziz Ansari, Kumail Nanjiani, and Hasan Minhaj, I chart the discursive goalposts that demarcate when humor becomes explicitly marked and/or recognized as Muslim, and when these comedians themselves were named and name themselves as such. Under a progressive consensus of recognition, these men step into their Muslim identities through the language and hostile implications of racialization. They cultivate a Right Muslim self that upholds secular ideals like multiculturalism by taming bodily comportments that may otherwise affiliate with Islam outside the legible boundaries of racialized difference. The humor that these men stage subverts categorical assumptions about Muslim sedition and violence while also offering a performance of representative resistance to counter the hegemonic order that reads largely as white. This performance does not hold to account the disciplinary demands of secularity and the larger social discourses that have naturalized their difference in the first place. iii To Amma and Abba, my first teachers and beloved above all. Tomader chhayaye ami boshi. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS بسم هللا الرحمن الرحيم – In these acknowledgements I must first name Juliane Hammer. She is my Doktormutter, and every step of this project bears witness to that presence. I am grateful for her wisdom and guidance down this path, one that has never busied itself with doctrinaire browbeating but instead with a critical commitment and rigor for scholarship that has something to say to the world. It is an honor to have my entry to the professorial guild officiated by her. I also owe a tremendous deal to my other professors at UNC from whom I have had the great fortune to learn and study. They, too, always encouraged my pursuit of such work: Carl Ernst, Cemil Aydin, Brandon Bayne, Banu Gökariksel, Michelle Robinson, and Kumi Silva. I have fortunate to have mentors outside UNC in scholars like Sylvia Chan-Malik, Harshita Kamath, Stan Thangaraj, and Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst. Their willingness to advise, promote, and think through my ideas has expanded where I situate my scholarship and to whom I make it accountable. UNC’s Carolina Public Humanities and the Humanities for the Public Good initiative are why this dissertation takes on the subjects it does. My gratitude to Robyn Schroeder, Max Owre, Lloyd Kramer, and Rachel Schaevitz for emphasizing and funding socially conscious scholarship that is at once accessible and meets the demands of the societies we live in. To miriam cooke, Omid Safi, Bruce Lawrence, and Erdağ Göknar who gave me a home (and a job!) with the Middle East Studies Center at Duke University when I arrived in North Carolina in 2014: thank you for keeping me in the game. I have been able to share my research with colleagues due to the financial support of the Fadel Educational Foundation, the Hub Foundation, the Center for Islam v in the Contemporary World, the UNC Graduate School, the Department of Religious Studies, the American Studies Association, and the American Academy of Religion. My fellow graduate students were the lifeblood of my time at UNC: Israel Dominguez, Hina Muneeruddin, Yasmine Flodin-Ali, Annie O’Brien, Alejandro Escalante, Barbara Sostaita, Micah Hughes, Becca Henriksen, Isaiah Ellis, Brook Wilensky-Lanford, Shannon Schorey, Katie Merriman, John Miller, Shreya Parikh, and Arianne Ekinci. The same goes for my friends Magda Mohamed, Nabil Khan, Atiya Husain, Fatema Ahmad, Julie Gras-Najjar, Nabil Khan, Khadijah and Madiha Bhatti, Rana AlKhaldi, Nathaniel and Fatou Berndt, Daanish Faruqi, Thomas Williams, Siobhan McGowan, Mynti Hossain, Nadia Khan, Sarah Husain, and Anam Tareen. The care you have all taken to kindle community is a fiery beauty to behold. Your friendship has and will always be the best thing about these years of my life. The abiding support of my family has grounded me, especially in the inevitable moments of doubt that my ideas might matter. My khalas, especially Rupa Khala and Meena Khala, have always taken a genuine interest in my thoughts. My sister and brother, Allysha and Galib, never let my doubts linger for long. They know my true self and are the ones who keep me present in this dunya. My parents, Alamgir and Safina, have enabled my every good fortune, while Jarron has been there to realize those fortunes at my side. He has listened to my reasoning for every argumentative vector that appears in these pages and has read every word to boot. We are two kids from Kalamazoo, now partners in everything. He is my friend, my advocate, my colleague, my comrade, my love. These words are not enough, but there are none that will be. I set out to write something that recognizes and upholds the joy of Muslims despite the hostile world around us; my Khalil is the living, toddling embodiment of that joy. He is my life’s unrivaled delight and great mystery. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: FUNNY MUSLIMS ..................................................................................................... 1 Why Comedy? ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Representation and Seeing Muslims ..................................................................................................... 3 The Limits of Funny ............................................................................................................................. 6 A Note on Sources ................................................................................................................................ 7 Drawing the Perimeter .......................................................................................................................... 8 Why It Matters .................................................................................................................................... 10 Biographical Information .................................................................................................................... 12 Aziz Ansari ......................................................................................................................................... 12 Hasan Minhaj ...................................................................................................................................... 16 Kumail Nanjiani .................................................................................................................................. 20 Chapter Overview ............................................................................................................................... 23 Decisions on Methodology ................................................................................................................. 27 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER 1: THE TRAVELS OF HUMOR ............................................................................................. 30 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 30 Humoral Theory, From Body to Personality ...................................................................................... 32 The Analytic of a Joke ........................................................................................................................ 38 Purveyors of Conscientious Humor .................................................................................................... 41 Feminist Comedy ................................................................................................................................ 44 Black Comedy and the Endurance of Richard Pryor .......................................................................... 46 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 49 CHAPTER 2: HUMOR AND/AMONG MUSLIMS ................................................................................. 51 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................