Post Colonial Identity in Zadie Smith\'s Novel White Teeth

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 Pakistani factions.

Admittedly, colonialism exacerbated native tensions by through its artificial map-drawing, based upon the British Mother Country's own needs, rather than the needs of the populace. British colonialism has had a largely negative influence in its outreach all over the world. But becoming an Islamic radical does not erase colonial influence from an individual's character. In fact, the idea of Islamic radicalism that spans across nations is spawned by colonialism itself, as it would hardly be intelligible to many native Muslims living on the South Asian subcontinent, much less to Bengalis, Indians, or Pakistanis who had lived before colonialism. Only Muslims exposed to the West construct their religious identity as opposed to the West.

Another difficulty of assuming an identity based upon the binaries created by colonialism is, once this is done, now personal and social conflicts cannot be separated. The tensions that exist between fathers and sons, and sibling rivalries become expressed in the political discourse. It becomes harder to admit that a son needs love or distance from his father, when he has defined who he is as a human being entirely against his father's religious values. Millat, for example, is rebelling against his father, whom he sees as excessively controlling. He, like any other adolescent, desires to define himself against his parent. This actually makes him very much like any Western adolescent, but Millat is so fanatical in his religious, pro-Islamic beliefs he cannot appreciate the irony of his situation.

The idea that adolescents must create their own break-away identities and move on from their parent's homes, values, and cultures, is a fairly recent ideological development in human history. Whether he can admit it or not, Millat is a part of the culture that has produced him. He yearns to break from his parents because Western culture idealizes the autonomous adult who is free of parental influence. To find a stable identity, Millat creates an ideology that makes him different. It also enables him to feel some sense of superiority to his favored brother Magid.

Magid was sent away to his native land as protection from the noxious forces of Anglicanization, secularization, and immorality, feared by the boy's father and mother because of Millat's earlier, wild behavior. However, Magid, in a land where the colonial power still has substantial influence upon the educational system, rejects religion entirely in defiance of his brother's and parents values and comes to embrace the values of the Enlightenment -- science, rationalism, an English cultural identity. Magid also sees his identity as pure, free from the old superstitions of the past, and based upon intellectualism and the need for an identity apart from his home country.

Magid is also struggling to break away from his father Samad and his mother Alsana, again by rebelling, like his brother, in terms of what one is 'not.' And like Millat, when identity is identified in this type of reductive fashion, one always to some degree acknowledges the 'other' by incorporating him or her into one's identity. Just as Millat is 'not' his brother, and 'not' English, Magid sees himself as 'not a fundamentalist,' and 'not' like the rest of his family.

While the two boys see themselves as 'pure,' either as pure rationalists or 'pure' Islamcists, this idea of purity is of course very modern, very much a product of the West, and thus makes them both hybrid figures. This degree of self-consciousness about identity is anything but scientific and rational, and Magid's embrace of the Chalfens shows that although he may have a fine mind and an interest in science, science becomes all the more intriguing when it is linked to a post-colonial denial of the national and religious affiliations of the past. Likewise, Millat sees himself as pure, but his fundamentalism is clearly a very modern construction. Furthermore, his early, angry rebellion and sexual experimentation with forbidden alcohol and premarital sex also reinforces the idea that his trying on various moral identities is part of his adolescent quest for identity and he wants more than simple spiritual satisfaction. Smith deliberately includes these incidents and Millat's early past, not to imply that Millat is a hypocrite, but to show how he has incorporated the 'us vs. them' ideology of colonialism into his own psychological makeup. More so than being an Islamic radical, Millat needs to be against something that he associates with his parents, and to be against England, a society in which he sees himself as a failure.