A new tradition of American Islam: Muslim-American rhetorics and consensual power. Makstenieks, S. T. Ph.D. Thesis, Indiana University, United States – Indiana, 2016.
A new tradition of American Islam: Muslim-American rhetorics and consensual power [link]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
On September 11, 2001, over one billion people quite suddenly became visible. For millions of Americans, that new multitude was a startling schism in the fabric of reality. Quite obviously, the world’s Muslims did not physically come into existence that day. However, Islam was (re)born in America through powerful rhetorics that cast it as a looming, external-internal Other – the barbarians at the gate and inside the walls. Despite recurrent Islamophobic claims about silent complicity, American Muslims have responded to these negative interpellations and have (re)constituted their dual identity as Muslim and American through various rhetorical realities. This dissertation proposes and employs a Gramscian approach, defining rhetoric as the creation of reality through consensual power. Using this critical heuristic, along with an emphasis on agonistic deliberation, I engage the rhetorics of three prominent American Muslim leaders – Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, revealing how they accrue consensual power through broad Islamic realities and through specific constructions of American Muslim identity. Bombarded by negative interpellations from hegemonic American rhetorics and disrupted by progressive and reactionary challenges to the hegemonic Islamic Real, these rhetors confront that discursive landscape through various articulations of Islam, tradition, moderation, civilization, and American identity. While the stability of traditionalism provides them more powerful hegemonic consent, especially for Nasr, it also creates a norm that can reduce agonistic diversity and can discourage robust rhetorical agency. Likewise, civilization rhetorics of “the West” and “the Muslim world” often provide a more cohesive internal reality, but they impede a broader consensual power across divided American realities. For Yusuf and Rauf, in differing ways, the contemporary American Muslim identity is typified by a dynamic liminality that offers an opportunity to reshape both Islam and America, but contemporary challenges also encourage reification of less productive, less deliberative realities. On a disciplinary level, this dissertation takes a necessary step to robustly recognize Muslim rhetorics and helps us further understand the dynamics of rhetoric as consensual agonism.
@phdthesis{makstenieks_new_2016,
	address = {United States -- Indiana},
	type = {Ph.{D}.},
	title = {A new tradition of {American} {Islam}: {Muslim}-{American} rhetorics and consensual power},
	copyright = {Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.},
	shorttitle = {A new tradition of {American} {Islam}},
	url = {http://search.proquest.com.pitt.idm.oclc.org/docview/1845021831/abstract/FBC42D25380E4EBCPQ/1},
	abstract = {On September 11, 2001, over one billion people quite suddenly became visible. For millions of Americans, that new multitude was a startling schism in the fabric of reality. Quite obviously, the world’s Muslims did not physically come into existence that day. However, Islam was (re)born in America through powerful rhetorics that cast it as a looming, external-internal Other – the barbarians at the gate and inside the walls. Despite recurrent Islamophobic claims about silent complicity, American Muslims have responded to these negative interpellations and have (re)constituted their dual identity as Muslim and American through various rhetorical realities. This dissertation proposes and employs a Gramscian approach, defining rhetoric as the creation of reality through consensual power. Using this critical heuristic, along with an emphasis on agonistic deliberation, I engage the rhetorics of three prominent American Muslim leaders – Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, revealing how they accrue consensual power through broad Islamic realities and through specific constructions of American Muslim identity. Bombarded by negative interpellations from hegemonic American rhetorics and disrupted by progressive and reactionary challenges to the hegemonic Islamic Real, these rhetors confront that discursive landscape through various articulations of Islam, tradition, moderation, civilization, and American identity. While the stability of traditionalism provides them more powerful hegemonic consent, especially for Nasr, it also creates a norm that can reduce agonistic diversity and can discourage robust rhetorical agency. Likewise, civilization rhetorics of “the West” and “the Muslim world” often provide a more cohesive internal reality, but they impede a broader consensual power across divided American realities. For Yusuf and Rauf, in differing ways, the contemporary American Muslim identity is typified by a dynamic liminality that offers an opportunity to reshape both Islam and America, but contemporary challenges also encourage reification of less productive, less deliberative realities. On a disciplinary level, this dissertation takes a necessary step to robustly recognize Muslim rhetorics and helps us further understand the dynamics of rhetoric as consensual agonism.},
	language = {English},
	urldate = {2017-06-01},
	school = {Indiana University},
	author = {Makstenieks, Scott T.},
	year = {2016},
	keywords = {2.DL\&R participant publications, Muslim-American rhetoric, constitutive rhetoric, race, sovereignty},
}
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