White Teeth
Zadie Smith's White Teeth and the 'us vs. them' post-colonial discourse of identity
One of the difficulties of constructing an identity through the post-colonial discourse of race, religion and ethnicity is the difficulty of filtering out the discourse of the oppressor, the 'us vs. them' binary that defines colonialism. Colonialism is constructed upon a series of binaries, of 'savage vs. civilized,' 'English vs. native,' 'white vs. non-white,' and of course 'good vs. bad' and 'pure vs. impure.' The logical response for the rebellious colonized peoples of the world who wish to oppose colonialism would seem to be to vow to become everything that colonialism is 'not.' To be against colonialism is to celebrate a pure, native culture, before it was impinged upon by colonialism. However, to do so is impossible -- no identity is 'pure.' Even native cultures themselves are fusions and hybrids, and tensions exist within the culture as well as between the 'natives' and the oppressive power. The idea of a pure, entirely 'un-English' postcolonial identity is just as constructed as the idea of English identity itself. And the idea of pure identity excludes individuals rather than includes other people in a very damaging fashion, in a way that is just as damaging as the 'us vs. them' colonial mindset.
This can be seen in the character of Millat Iqbal in Zadie Smith's novel about English and East Asian identity and inter-generational conflict entitled White Teeth. Millat wants to create an identity that is entirely un-English and is only connected to his Bengal roots abroad. He throws himself into the Islamic radical movement of his London neighborhood, without appreciating the irony that this philosophy is part of his colonial situation, of having to live in England. The idea of a Bengali identity is contested, but in different terms, in East Asia, between warring Hindu and Muslim, Indian and...
Cesaire portrays France's less intrusive but still stridently nationalistic colonization of Africa is as a creating void of national identity, rather than as an imposition and a source of cultural clash and conflict, as chronicled in India by Smith. It is important to remember of the earlier document of Cesaire that the author spoke to a populace still attempting to define itself anew, linguistically as well, as a nation after
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