“Our Various Hues of Brown”: The Politics of Polyvocality in Ayad Akhtar’s American Dervish

Abstract

This essay examines the politics of polyvocality in Ayad Akhtar’s American Dervish, a novel that shares with many others the aim to showcase the diversity of voices within Islam. While polyvocality is often celebrated as a challenge to representations of Islam as a monolith, American Dervish illustrates that it is neither a neutral concept nor an end unto itself. Written in the bildungsroman form or the story of formation of a Muslim protagonist into a national citizen, the novel orchestrates polyvocality toward specific ideological ends. The bildungsroman’s insistence on reconciling Islam with national belonging necessitates a univocal resolution to polyvocality, which requires the novel to draw distinctions between the Islamic approaches, legitimize hierarchies between them, and privilege select voices that reinforce national agendas. American Dervish, specifically, draws on Sufism’s embattled and marginalized position within Islam to project it as amenable to national inclusion, and dismisses and discounts other Islamic voices, sanctioning hatred against them.|Keywords: polyvocal, bildungsroman, pluralism, Sufism, distinction