Muslim subjectivity? Personae, self and the “demands of life” in the self-testimonies of a Muslim impostor (Magomet-Bek Hadjetlaché, 1870 (?) - 1929)

Abstract

In the context of growing studies on the history of “Muslim subjectivities” taken “from below”, i.e. the individual, the author suggests transcending the presumptions of the absolute performativity of subjectivity and going beyond the individual's “personae”, so as to reveal “techniques of the self” behind them. To do that, the author explores the correlation between self and the deliberately invented “personae” of the impostor and double-dealer M.-B. Hadjetlaché, a baptized Jew who claimed being Muslim, and was, inter alia, a journalist working both for the opposition-minded Muslims and the Interior Ministry and anti-Islamic circles. This extreme case of the invention of Muslim identity is taken as a prism which can “reveal patterns available for more everyday experience” (N-Z. Davis). The ways by which the protagonist constructs - in search of his subjectivity - his multiple “personae” are analyzed to disclose the distance between them and his self, and its structure. Given the strength of Hadjetlaché's Muslim identity coexisting with the memory of his rejected Jewry in his self-perception, and the fact that those around him (including a number of Muslims) considered him Muslim, the author puts the question of “Muslimness” of his subjectivity in the context of historiographic discussions on defining the boundaries of the Islamic identity.