Gabriel Malli

Between practices of faith, consumption culture and feminism: the discursive construction and affective animation of female Muslim subject positions in German-language YouTube productions

The dissertation deals with the construction of Muslim female subject positions, practices and affects in German-language YouTube videos. Therefore, I analyze productions by Muslim producers that mediate norms and make recommendations how a moral and aesthetic life as a Muslim woman can and should be lived in the context of secu-arized societies. I understand YouTube as a media dispositif that provides an infrastructure for discourse and establishes affective relations between its users.

Drawing on discourse analytical approaches, I reconstruct three subject positions: Con-structed in videos of conservative preachers, the first, a "moral-exclusive" position, calls for a self-alignment to religious moral codes and a distinction from secular conceptions of femininity. Traceable in videos of religious influencers, the second subject model draws the pic-ure of a hybrid Muslim self that entangles practices of faith with an openness for "Western" consumption culture. The third, "reflexive/empowered" position, which is present in talk- and comedy-formats, implies the model of a "self-determined" Muslim woman who is conerned with feminist issues and distances herself from stereotyping ascriptions as well as from pressure in Muslim "communities".

All productions address typical tensions in the lifeworld of (Western) European Muslim women, resulting from a political problematization of Islam, discrimination, or experiences of cultural ambiguity. Trying to apply affection strategies to draw on sensibilities of their audiences, the proponents of the described subject positions formulate dissenting solution models for tensions that reach from a separation from the non-Muslim majority society to critical participation. This provokes conflicts, in which a long-standing hegemony of "mor-al-exclusive" positions on YouTube is increasingly questioned by "reflexive/empowered" agents.

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