Fractured Belongings: Transnational Identity and Cultural Performance in Disgraced

This paper examines the construction of transnational identity in Ayad Akhtar’s play Disgraced, focusing on how globalization, migration, and post-9/11 politics shape the subjectivity of its protagonist, Amir Kapoor. Positioned between South Asian Muslim heritage and American professional success, Amir embodies the tensions of a transnational self-negotiating belonging across cultural, religious, and national borders. The play reveals that transnational identity is not a stable synthesis but a fragile performance, continually reconfigured under social and political pressure. Amir’s attempt to assimilate into elite American society through secularism, legal success, and marriage to a white artist reflects a desire to escape racialized and religious categorization. However, moments of public scrutiny and private conflict expose the persistence of inherited histories that resist erasure. Through charged dialogue and domestic confrontation, Akhtar dramatizes how Islamophobia, internalized prejudice, and global political violence infiltrate intimate spaces. Amir’s disavowal of his Muslim identity paradoxically reinforces its visibility, illustrating the double bind faced by transnational subjects who are compelled to explain, defend, or deny their origins. The dinner-party scene operates as a microcosm of transnational encounter, were liberal multicultural tolerance collapses into ideological hostility. Disgraced thus critiques the myth of seamless cosmopolitanism, revealing how unequal power structures determine which identities are granted mobility and which remain perpetually suspect. By foregrounding emotional volatility and moral ambiguity, Akhtar complicates celebratory narratives of hybridity. The play ultimately suggests that transnational identity, rather than offering liberation, can intensify alienation, as individuals navigate conflicting loyalties in a world marked by cultural surveillance and political fear. Keywords: Transnational identity; Diaspora; Islamophobia; Hybridity; Post-9/11 American drama