Conditional Inclusion: A Comparative Study of Hybrid Identity in Post-9/11 Fiction (Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies and Amy Waldman's The Submission)

Abstract

The article proposes a new framework, Conditional Inclusion that expands and transcends Homi K. Bhabha's theory of the "third space" to consider hybrid identity in post-9/11 American fiction, comparing Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies (2020) with Amy Waldman's The Submission (2011). The study adopts the notions of third space, mimicry, ambivalence, and unhomeliness of Homi K. Bhabha. It examines how cultural background, religion, and nationality contribute to one's personal identity in a space of fear and prejudice. In this paper, instead of Bhabha's third space being a generative space of negotiation, it is a space that leaves the terms for a hybrid subject undertheorized. Conditional Inclusion names those terms: belonging is granted only while a Muslim American subject performs non-threatening. In this article, Generational Hybridity, this cycle is tracked across a succession of generations in both novels. The comparative reading demonstrates instead the cycle compounding rather than helping to resolve across generations, based on the securitized logic of the American national discourse of post-9/11. The essay concluded that the novels demand that hybridity be taken as a necessary part of American identity instead of an exception to it, conditionally tolerated.