Dal PC al CP : political correctness, genere, disabilità e arabofobia nella stand up comedy di Maysoon Zayid

The essay investigates the interrelationships between Political Correcteness, stand-up comedy, and minority groups, by concentrating on the performances of an Arab-American disabled comedian, the “Palestinian Muslim virgin with cerebral palsy” Maysoon Zayid. Focusing on PC as a set of linguistic practices whose effect is the sanitarization of public discourse (especially when minorities are concerned), and stand-up comedy as a set of speech acts aiming at both the affirmation and/or the transgression of identity boundaries, the essay investigates the relationship between PC and comedy, and the way they interact within the three “spaces of minority” Zayid embodies: ethnicity (Arab-Americaness in the wake of 9/11), gender (womanhood and its relation to both Arab and American cultures), and disability, under-represented in American culture and the media.