Exploring Racial Interpellation Through Political Satire

Abstract

In North America, race and racialization can be seen as products of domination that are (re)produced and perpetuated through the mechanisms of racial interpellation. This concept refers to the fact that identity and subjectivity are imposed on racialized subjects through institutions and practices such as racial profiling. In this sense, literature on race, racialization, and resistance in North America reveals that racial profiling is a key issue in the region even if a façade of post-racialism trumps the existence of ongoing injustices, inequalities, and limitations of freedom faced by racialized minorities. In this respect, this research emphasizes that language, representations and practices are at the core of this issue as components of dynamics of racial interpellation. This research also acknowledges the existence of endless struggles for respect among racialized minorities, specifically Arabs and Muslims in North America. These struggles seek to allow racialized subjects to be seen as members of a society in which race and differences are not the underlying concern. Since humour (satire) has historically been recognized as a tool of disruption of dominant discourses, in this research we ask: how do comedians issued from racialized minorities face these struggles? With ongoing atrocities faced by racialized minorities, in this paper, I seek to reflect on how the intersection of race and comedy can be used to negotiate (accept, tolerate, and resist) the reproduction of racialized subjects. I focus on the way political satire faces Althusserian ideological interpellation (later translated to racial interpellation by Frantz Fanon). Can the latter be resisted or challenged through humour? This thesis argues that when race and comedy intersect it allows comedians to voice challenges often faced by racialized communities in order to resist an existing reality and create new meanings. As Frantz Fanon once mentioned: “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it”. Is the fight against racialization part of the mission that popular comedians of minority communities have given to themselves?