In the previous two chapters, I have suggested that identity for the passing figure can be theorized by dialogical self theory and the work of R.D. Laing. Through my adoption of these approaches, I have positioned the phenomenon of passing as an individual activity reflected in the localized concerns of both theories. Both dialogical self theory and Laing’s divided self concept focus on the internal theoretical structure of the person engaged in the act of passing or who possesses multiple identities. However, I am now going to demonstrate the equally significant role of the audience as a wider social structure in creating the passing figure’s identity. When The Mimic Men’s Ralph Singh identifies Lieni after a period of twelve years, he rejects her attempt to be the ‘smart London girl’ and instead identifies her as a full-bodied woman who ‘could be recognized at a glance as an immigrant’.340 It is significant given my use of performance as the mechanism that constructs identity, that as with a dramatic performance, it is the task of the audience to authenticate the events and identities that are placed before them. The process of successful identification on the part of the actor necessarily relies upon the complicity of the audience in accepting the identity offered to them by the performer or passing figure. Ralph enters into the role of the audience in identifying Lieni, with the result that despite her best intentions to appear as the ‘smart London girl’, she is instead identified as something other. The example of Ralph and Lieni suggests a connection between the individual self and a wider social structure in the process of constructing an identity.
In proposing a postcolonial framework that modifies the foundational ideas borrowed from poststructuralism, existentialist writers such as Sartre and Fanon offer a more informative approach to the issue of postcoloniality as a lived condition experienced by millions of people throughout the world. As such, a primary concern of a framework complicit with
underpinning a theory of postcoloniality is the connection between the individual self and a wider society. This chapter will focus on making such a connection explicit through a reading of Hanif Kureishi’s writings.
I have selected Hanif Kureishi because his work specifically addresses the struggle for the construction of identity in the midst of an ideology of multiplicity. I will illustrate how his wide body of writings rejects the modern assimilation model in England, as it relies on a homogenous notion of “Englishness” which cannot be verified in the novels and screenplays
Kureishi has produced. I am referring to the assimilation model as ‘modern’ as it is more than likely a product of the large influx of immigrants to the United Kingdom between 1950 and 1970. The sharp rise in immigration caused a concern over the integrity of the nation-state’s racial and cultural purity and necessitated the production of a re-imagined English identity which excluded those first and second generation immigrants. Figures such as Enoch Powell, whose politics were widely considered as racist, facilitated the construction of an exclusive English identity through his use of the imagery of a military invasion as synonymous with the immigration influx.341
A reading of Kureishi’s writings will reveal the difficulty in locating a definitive notion of “Englishness” within his narratives. Instead, he offers a version of England characterized by a fluid and heterogeneous community of hybrid figures. The significance attached to a model of heterogeneity in his work signifies an involvement in a postcolonial politics of cultural hybridity. Such hybridity, exemplified in his characters switching from one identity to another, is complicit with the performed identity. I will adopt the example of Shahid from
The Black Album (1995) to illustrate the performativity that Kureishi uses to reject the
modern assimilation model. Shahid re-models himself into different identities in the text, illustrating the construction of identity as a conscious process of self-formation which stands in opposition to the heterogeneous nation necessary for the modern assimilation model. The employment of a performative politics underlines the multiplicity of identities that may be constructed, paving the way for a huge diversity of figures to emerge.
Developing from a demonstration of Kureishi’s politics of postcolonial multiplicity, I will closely read The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) to suggest that both Haroon and Karim are subject to re-interpretation depending upon who comprises the audience authenticating their identity, leading to them becoming the passing figure through a “mis”-interpretation. To apply such a reading, I will adopt Stanley Fish’s thesis on the “interpretive community” to theorize the important role played by the audience in “reading” the passing event
subjectively. Fish’s reader-response theory allows for the demonstration of how multiple identities can be constructed in the passing figure as well as the explicit role of the audience in constructing identities for passing figures, securing the connection between the individual self and a wider social structure in the experience of postcoloniality.
Stanley Fish’s “interpretive communities” thesis argues that meaning is not inherently contained within a text but is brought to the text in the form of a reader. Essentially, Fish suggests that ‘the reader’s response is not to the meaning; it is the meaning’.342 Fish supports
his argument by maintaining that readers encounter texts with a plethora of knowledges and experiences which help shape an “interpretive strategy”. The subjective individualized interpretive strategy guides the reader to extracting a specific meaning from the text, opposing any notion of a meaning implicitly located within the text. People who hold different interpretive strategies form different interpretive communities, and as such read various meanings in the same text.343 In redeploying interpretive communities from legal theory into identity politics, I am arguing that the passing figure’s identity is interpreted differently depending on the interpretive strategy of the audience to their passing attempt. As readers of a text find meaning according to their own interpretive strategy, so to do audience members “read” the passing figure in light of their own ideological framework. As such, not only does the passing figure become a multiple figure many times over in the
reinterpretations of different people, but the connection between the passing figure’s construction of identity and the wider social structure of interpretation is made explicitly clear, developing our self and society approach to postcolonialism.
Kureishi’s Postcolonial Strategy: Rejecting the Modern Assimilation Model for a Cultural Hybridity
As with many postcolonial writers, Hanif Kureishi’s writing frequently supports a cultural and racial hybridity in his depictions of England. The representation of a hybrid diversity necessarily stands in opposition to the ideology of assimilation, which acts to remove all difference through the process of homogenization. In adopting a postcolonial hybridity, Kureishi rejects the binaristic logic of assimilation (immigrants either become the same as us or remain other). In discussing The Buddha of Suburbia, Ronald Shusterman asks:
Why does Kureishi wish to reject binary logic-what good will it do him-or us? Clearly, however flippant or irreverent [The Buddha of
Suburbia] may be, Kureishi’s purpose is political in the final
analysis.344
Shusterman proceeds to answer his own question by arguing that ‘the rejection of the old logic of either-or is necessary for the emergence of a multiracial society’ before fully exploring the role of knowledge in The Buddha of Suburbia.345 Shusterman’s recognition of the novel’s work to ‘make firm knowledge seem impossible, if not undesirable’ before using the bildungsroman narrative structure and Karim’s gaining of knowledge throughout the text
to argue that the unknowable can become the known suggests that Kureishi is working towards a politics of multiplicity in identity construction through the deconstruction of these binaries suggesting that the ‘ineffable in-betweenness can become part of the realm of conventional knowledge’.346 Without doubt, in rejecting binarism in identity construction Kureishi makes possible the multiplicity upon which postcolonialism strives to develop. He also makes assimilation into an English culture particularly problematic as there are now a myriad of ways to identify oneself; conforming to one homogenous ideal is increasingly unnecessarily restrictive. If Shusterman is correct, and the unknowable can become the known, the hybrid identity (either cultural or racial) which currently has no place to presence from, becomes not only a place from which to presence but the place due to the
deconstruction of the normative mode of assimilation.
Hanif Kureishi’s own relationship to “Englishness” is problematic as was indicated when Amitava Kumar noted how an editor once informed him that ‘“American’s think he’s a Brit, Brit’s think he’s an Indian, Indians think he’s all Westernized.”’347 In perhaps a prime example of interpretive communities applied to identity politics, Kureishi’s own identity becomes a matter of multiplicity through the various interpretive strategies brought to a reading of him. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Kureishi’s work reflects his own position between England and the East. It questions how an immigrant can assimilate to a model which is characterized by variety, diversity, geographical displacement and linguistic multiplicity. Assimilation suggests the presence of a consistent and unified construct of identity, whereas Kureishi’s politics suggests a rejection of consistency and the embracing of diversity in the figure of the cultural hybrid and the passing figure.
Once more, the employment of the hybrid figure to represent a political diversity in identity construction works to make clear the connection between the individual and society. The postcolonial figure is identified not only on their own presentation of an identity but also critically upon the reception and re-interpretation of that identity in a wide social structure. By demonstrating the rejection of the modern assimilation model and its subsequent replacement with a postcolonial ideology of cultural and racial hybridity, the foundational role played by society in shaping identity constructions becomes more explicit.
Before we proceed with a close reading of Kureishi’s writings, it would be beneficial to define more precisely the meanings of “assimilation”. I have so far used assimilation in order to represent the adoption of the cultural signs and markers of the majority of the population in order to maintain an image of homogeneity and structural rigidity in identity. However,
Chantal Lacroix’s recent book, Immigrants, Literature and National Immigration (2010), offers a more accurate definition of “assimilation”. According to Lacroix, assimilation can be described as a ‘one-way and one-sided process of adaptation’.348 When immigrants meet with the majority population in a new country, they are ‘to give up their prior linguistic, cultural and social characteristics, adopt the values and practices of the mainstream receiving society and become indistinguishable from the majority population.’.349 Lacroix notes that this may take more than one generation to achieve.350 Within such an environment, it becomes impossible to recognize diversity in identity constructions. The position of the hybrid or passing figure is problematic as they cannot conform to the prescribed ideal that wider social structures designate is necessary.
With specific reference to the British context, Lacroix argues that integration policies operate under just such a one-sided approach. Integration becomes a compromise between the twin threats of coercion into adopting British practices and the possibility of separatism. However, for Lacroix there is an implicit assumption that the ultimate aim is to achieve a ‘fuller integration’ while maintaining the principal of homogeneity.351 Kureishi’s move to reject a homogenous England is significant in the context of an ideology that pervades all societal levels and bars minority cultural patterns from being recognized, it places him in contrast to the dominant ideology and renders his championing of the hybrid figure an effective postcolonial strategy of creating identity.
Similar readings of Kureishi’s work have been offered before. For example Benedict Alliot has suggested in a discussion of The Buddha of Suburbia that the novel is constructed from two halves, with South London and London City representing a Disraelian divide. Similarly, the numerous locations included within the novel, including for example Orpington, Beckenham, Bromley, and Brixton, are all markedly divergent and ruled by a rigid class structure that differentiates between them. This demonstrates that there is no homogenous identity but more likely, several identities.352 Alliot’s recognition that Kureishi represents many different versions of “Englishness” correlates with our argument that his postcolonial strategy supports a multiplicity of identities. The Buddha of Suburbia is not the only text that Kureishi has published in which his multifarious English identities are present. Indeed, it appears to be a trait that pervades the greater corpus of his work. I will demonstrate the continued re-creation of multiple English identities in his well-known novels and
beautiful Launderette (1986), before discussing The Black Album (1995) as depicting
performance as a mechanism for hybridity.
As an example of Kureishi’s ever-present rejection of the modern assimilation model through the portrayal of an Englishness riven with heterogeneity, we could begin by looking at smaller details in his fiction such as the dramatic description provided for the opening scene of Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. His directions indicate ‘A mixture of black and white’ people forming a crowd.353 Further on he refers again to ‘A crowd of black people and some whites’,354 with the added implicit irony that white people now occupy a racial minority. The picture he constructs is not the white homogenous nation that assimilation necessarily
demands. The notion of a homogenous England is distinctly under threat when Kureishi describes ‘an injured white kid is with his black girlfriend.’.355 As Sammy and Rosie Get Laid is a screenplay, Kureishi visually constructs an England dominated by a heterogeneous mixture of both black and white races. The demographics of the black people are also unspecified, leaving the reader of the screenplay the uncertainty of whether Kureishi was referring to Indians, Africans or another black minority in the rather general and non- descriptive label ‘black’. The possibilities are widely distributed and the England in
Kureishi’s screenplay may be one formed of a very large number of black and white people. More overtly anti-homogenous references are also present in Kureishi’s work. His
rejection of the modern assimilation model is not just confined to dramatic directions. For example, Rosie’s friends represent a particularly varied crosscut of London society. Early on we are introduced to Eva, Rani, Bridget and Margy and informed that Eva is a Jewish
intellectual.356 Given that Rani is presumably a South Asian immigrant or at least has by way of heritage some South Asian cultural identification, only two out of four of Rosie’s friends can conform to the homogenous England ideal. Exactly half of them are rejected from identifying as English by the ideology of the modern assimilation model.
Assimilating into this nation is an impossibility given that there exists no normative standard against which cultural behaviours, manners and values may be modelled upon. Vinay Swamy has similarly noted Hanif Kureishi’s ‘(not so) implicit claim […] that a well- defined sense of the nation-state-instituted hitherto as a permanent, organic entity-is no longer a viable model in the context of contemporary (postcolonial) British society.’.357 The permanency of the nation-state which Swamy suggests is no longer viable, is displaced by an impermanency of identities characterized by the hybrid figure who switches between
Kureishi’s rejection of a normative mode of Englishness continues from dramatic directions and character demographics through to the relatively minor and seemingly insignificant details that furnish his fiction. For example, we might take Rafi’s visit to Alice during which she offers him a stereotypical British reception: Earl Grey tea and then shortly later a piece of Jamaica Rum cake.358 Significantly, both items can be read as representative of the inherently heterogeneous nature of modern British society. A slice of Jamaica Rum cake implicitly refers to England’s colonial past and its involvement in the plantations where presumably such cakes among other dishes were traded back to the motherland; England’s colonial history specifically makes assertions of pure nationality difficult to uphold given the long involvement with numerous countries and their peoples. Similarly, the Earl Grey tea is reportedly derived from Chinese black tea and bergamots grown in Italy. An afternoon tea, illustrative of British values and norms, is actually suggestive of a multinational interaction whereby the influx of cultural influences has flowed in both directions.
The same representations of a heterogeneous society are also present in a cursory reading of My Son the Fanatic. For example, once more the mixture of peoples belie a marked diversity, as Parvez, our protagonist, drives a German visitor to a meeting with ‘a group of suited Asian and white businessmen’.359 The main plot features a conflict between a father and his son on the very issue of integration and separatism. Our protagonist Parvez, as the father believes in integrating within wider British society, whereas his son, Farid, rejects his father’s modernity and embraces a religious separatism. Farid argues with Parvez suggesting that ‘In the end our cultures […] they cannot be mixed.’ to which Parvez concludes,
‘‘Everything is mingling already together, this thing and the other.’360 Parvez further argues his point by asking Farid ‘Anyhow, how else can we belong here except by mixing up all together? They accuse us of keeping with each other.’361 In a narrative strongly affiliated with Parvez over Farid, identification with his perspective is most likely Kureishi’s intended reader response. The reader is guided to conclude that the nature of Englishness is a
continually contested entity rather than a fixed homogenous category. Parvez eventually puts his politics into explicit practice when he becomes romantically involved with the prostitute Bettina, claiming his son is incorrect on the matter of separatism:
And Farid says the cultures cannot mix. Jesus, they can’t keep apart.362
Beside the continual presence of people from a variety of cultures in My Son the Fanatic, the plot’s conflict actively works to resist the separatism that develops in the absence of a
cultural hybridity. Parvez bridges the divide between British and Indian, becoming the tool through which Kureishi carves his politics of the multiple identity into his fiction.
Like both My Son the Fanatic and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, Kureishi’s rejection of a normative English identity is also evident in The Black Album. The novel’s principle
character, Shahid is located in a bedsit in north-west London. Specifically, however, Kureishi describes his location as next to a Chinese restaurant and the buildings residents comprising of ‘Africans, Irish people, Pakistanis and even a group of English students.’.363 By tagging ‘even a group of English students’ onto the end of his description, Kureishi imparts a hint of irony which illustrates the rarity of the English students. Much more common, then, is the diverse mixture of peoples from different racial and cultural heritages. The locale of The
Black Album, cannot conform to a modern assimilation model as it has no normative English
identity to which its characters could assimilate. The college that Shahid attends is also described in a similar fashion: ‘sixty per cent black and Asian.’.364 Shahid’s brother
introduces him to an even more heterogeneous England in their travels over the city. Among