Even earnest first-person testimony can be recuperated by the Islamophobic frame it contests.

Evidence

Although expectations of genre may be destabilized, prevailing prejudices are not. Aboulela’s choice to present directly an experience of Muslim femininity already overdetermined by critical and political exegeses is a pioneering attempt to set the record straight. Yet it is one that, arguably, is entirely recuperable within the terms of the framing discourse about Muslim women’s perennial, self-defeating victimhood. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 509

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is the exact test to run on Changez’s narration in Reluctant Fundamentalist: does his first-person testimony escape recuperation, or get swallowed by it? Great hinge tool.
• DEFINE: Supplies a working definition of ‘contesting’ — genre destabilization is not enough; the text must avoid recuperation into the framing discourse.
• SEED: Angles: ‘When testimony backfires’ — analyzing why direct Muslim self-presentation gets read as victimhood no matter its intent.