Dr. Fayyaz Ahamed H Ilkal

Belgavi, Karnataka, India

Abstract

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth exhibits three groups of various ethnic origins dwelling in north-western London. Despite other introductory works of contemporary Black British authors, Zadie Smith didn’t aspire to create a typical record of Black youth experience in Britain. However, White Teeth is penned from an identity exploration perspective of Smith. Perhaps Smith examines the battle between the personality of the character and family heritage. The acquired legacy of ancient times and societal approaches in establishing one’s identity besides the feeling of alienation, fret and fatigue of the diaspora in a multicultural land are explicitly intertwined in the character delineation plot construction dexterity of Smith. There is ample scope left untouched to explore the diasporic hybridity in Zadie Smith. Therefore, this paper aspires to investigate the untrodden arena of discussion on diasporic hybridity in Zadie Smith’s fiction namely White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time.

Key words: Diasporic Hybridity, Zadie Smith & Diaspora

Introduction

Zadie Smith, the Anglo-Jamaican author’s fiction extensively embarks on discrepant subjects namely, World War II, original transient life in the diaspora, late British youth culture, intergenerational family clashes, extremist strict fanatism and biogenetical designing. In White Teeth Zadie Smith states that “...They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.”The above quote overtly revolves around the diasporic hybridity that holistically deal with distinct individual framing a genuine personality in a multicultural society and the foundation of another public character in postcolonial Britain. Indeed, Zadie Smith opines, “In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.” (White Teeth). Smith’s characters are amalgamated with personality clashes. This perhaps edifies the heritage and hybridity observed in individual families when juxtaposed with the corresponding ancestry. Nonetheless, while hereditary legacy, social roots and ancient times appear to have a significant influence in the person's turn of events, possibility and individual decision are decisive elements which can possibly overrule any evidently foreordained life way. History and destiny are continually mixed all through the account, which helps in simultaneous handling of family adventure after settling in emigrant nation.

Diasporic Hybridity in Smith’s Fiction

The Diasporic hybridity in Smith’s fiction shall be studied from the branches of Eclecticism and Pluralism. The idea of ‘diaspora’ fundamentally recognizable in traditional world, has acquired force in the twentieth century (Robin Cohen). This term supports scriptural episodes relating to the relocation of Jews to a few spots. Subsequently, at first Jews fell under domain of diaspora. Steadily, Greeks, Armenians, and African outsiders have been retained into the examination of diaspora contemplates. Smith’s diasporic hybridity is enlightened by thirty diverse ethnic gatherings as diaspora in English land. This shall be inferred from her novels White Teeth (2000), The Autograph Man (2002), On Beauty (2005), NW (2012), and Swing Time (2016). Cultural Hybridity, Social Hybridity, Linguistic Hybridity get immersed in the flow of the fiction of Zadie Smith.

Hybridity in Zadie Smith’s Fiction

The eclectic society and hybrid lifestyle provinces to the limelight when Smith states, “Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.” (On Beauty 2005).The phrase ‘hybrid’with respect to dictionaries signify “a thing made by combining two different elements; a mixture.” This term is utilized as a modifier to portray a ‘blended character.’ Probably the term, ‘hybrid’ would have come from Greek. Initially the term, ‘hybrid’ came into practice in the nineteenth century to clarify the posterity of two unique types of flora & fauna. During the eighteenth century, the word was utilized to represent the posterity of various races of people. Homi Bhabha perceives hybridity as

Hybridity is the sign of productivity of colonial power, its shifting forces and fixities; it is the name for the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal (that is, the production discriminatory identities that secure the pure and original identity of authority). Hybridity is the revaluation of the assumption of colonial identity through the repetition of discriminatory identity effects. It displays the necessary deformation and displacement of all sites of discrimination and domination. (Bhabha 112)

The hybrid identity is positioned within this third space, as ‘lubricant’. However, people have ability to transverse both cultures and to translate, negotiate and mediate affinity and difference within a dynamic of exchange and inclusion. They have encoded within them a counter hegemonic agency. At the point at which the colonizer presents a normalizing, hegemonic practice, the hybrid strategy opens a third space for rearticulation of negotiation and meaning. (Bhabha 96). Samad in White Teeth points out that he is always trying to be somebody (he is) not’, and by doing so, rather than finding an identity, he may risk losing it (White Teeth 150).

Impact of Multicultralism on Hybridity

Smith utilizes numerous components that help making an effective novel that portrays the existence of the foreigners and the displaced people. White Teeth is a sort of the authentic novel, the bildungsroman, or family ancestry to reveal insight into the characters the author has depicted. In such manner, the novel uncovered numerous viewpoints concerning the first and the second ages of those transients and their life in Britain. The development of the person's character and the condition of diaspora just as the problem of self-assurance are the primary focal points of Smith in her novel.

Smith overtly outlines the enduring individuals who are of various beginnings which are addressed by misrecognition and prejudice that the white society received in its treatment to them when calling them "extraordinary". What is significant about Smith's epic is that it reveals insight into the intercultural battle of the transients to consolidate with the administering society. Plus, it honestly presents the conservative battle between the progressive ages of the travelers. The various ages have different points of view towards the prevailing society. The bygone one attempts to keep their own character while the new age endeavors to westernize their personality to dispose of being "unique". The tale as zeroing in on the topic of self-assurance.

A few experts perceive White Teeth as an authentic novel. It tells the perusers about the existences of three distinct families who live in Willesden Green. While Smith doesn't go behind the basic construction of the conventional novel, for example following the sequential life-composing. She is moving between different heights of time. Besides, by resembling among spots and ages the creator recuperates interventions in the past that helps offering subtleties to the current character difficulties of the characters notwithstanding their association in the existence of one another. What the writer attempts to investigate is the social idea of family. She does as such by uncovering broken developments and battles inside families. She shows the bonds and collusions between the Chalfens, the Jonses, and the Iqbals.

Summation

The hybridity hypothesis in White Teeth is improved by different dialects under a similar actual area. Millat accepting hybridity as a space to cover up and express his through and through freedom by joining Raggastani which was a mixture unit. Raggastani was comprised of four distinct dialects: English, Bengali, Jamaican and Gujarati. It is the element of having pieces of four diverse ethnic dialects all together unit caused it to gain various societies also. A similar angle is seen in KEVIN which is assumed to be an extreme Muslim gathering that has accepted different societies and surprisingly given its bunch English name (Trimm,2009:151). Additionally, the author of the gathering was not a genuine Muslim devotee however, a man from half and half age. Indeed, even in hybridity, the cross-breed age couldn't characterize their personality. Millat, he didn't find a way into his guardians' religion neither did he discover comfort in his preferred religions. He moved starting with one gathering then onto the next and surprisingly had issues concurring.

References

1. Bruneau, Michel, Diasporas, Montpellier, GIP Reclus, 1995.
2. Chaudhuri, Abhi. White Teeth: The story of the postcolonial expatriate, 2006.
3. Cheyette Bryan, Constructions of the Jew in English Literature and Society, Racial Representations 1875-1945
4. Cohen, Robin, Global Diasporas: An Introduction, London, UCL Press, 1997a. ––, “Diasporas, the Nation-State and Globalization” in Wang Gungwu (ed.), Global History and Migrations, Boulder, Westview Press, 1997b.
5. Cohen, Robin, Kennedy Paul, Global Sociology, London, Macmillan, 2000.
6. Homi K Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1994.
7. Smith Zadie, White Teeth, Hamish Hamilton, 2000.
8. Smith Zadie, The Autograph Man, Hamish Hamilton, 2002.
9. Smith Zadie, On Beauty, Hamish Hamilton, 2005.
10. Smith Zadie, NW, Hamish Hamilton, 2012.
11. Smith Zadie, Swing Time, Penguin Press, 2016.
12. Trimm, Ryan. After the Century of Strangers: Hospitality and Crashing in Zadie Smith's white Teeth Contemporary Literature (2015)