The Poetics Of Identity And Representation Of Hybridity

The issue of identity under multicultural and postcolonial contexts becomesunprecedentedly sensitive and essential especially from the cultural perspective. Thecommon assumptions about identity with a sense of coherence and integrity areproblematized by rapid diasporic mobility and global cultural changes. TheBritain-born British Asian novelist and playwright Hanif Kureishi, who is claimed tobelong to the first wave of immigrants writing in Britain, stages his attack on theessentialist notion of identity which is defined by one’s race or ethnicity and has nopossibility for change, and welcomes new hybridized identity and cultural affiliation,which is more tolerant, flexible and more focuses on relations instead of essence.Kureishi’s writing, especially his early oeuvres The Buddha of Suburbia and TheBlack Album, and My Beautiful Laundrette is concerned with the life and experienceof Asian British people, with an exploration of the hybridized identities of the ethnicminority people in the postcolonial and multicultural Britain especially in London. Headdresses the effects of the legacy of colonialism on immigrants and their offspring inBritain, as well as the racial discrimination they have to face up to. As a culturetranslator himself mediating between majority and minority communities, heexamines the paradoxes of their position as hybrid insider and outsider mediating twocultures. Not only Kureishi “explores a range of ‘black’ identities,” Ranasinhacomments that “his intersections of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and classexamine identity in terms of these multiple, overlapping, and colliding categories”(Ranasinha220).As far as the structure is concerned, this thesis consists of four main chaptersframed by an introduction and a conclusion.Following the introductory remarks, Chapter One focuses on Kureishi’sbiological background and the critiques of his writing; then it introduces the object ofthe thesis, Kureishi’s early writing The Buddha of Suburbia, The Black Album and MyBeautiful Laundrette (respectively Buddha, Album, and Laundrette later), in order to prepare the reader for the following analysis.Chapter two attempts to give a brief introduction to the theories and concepts inthe field of intercultural communication and postcolonial studies that the analysis ofthe thesis relies on. This chapter first explores the concept of identity and itsimplications in contemporary cultural studies. Then it goes to the some essentialtheories concerning identity construction, mainly about Homi K. Bhabha’s hybriditythe Third Space, and Stuart Hall’s concept of culture, and the adaptation strategydiscussed in intercultural communication.Chapter Three examines the characters’ identity construction in the novel fromthe perspectives of ethnicity (race), class, gender and nationality. This chapter beginswith an overview of the phases of immigration to the United Kingdom and closes withthe summary of the protagonist’s strategies of building his identity.Chapter Four focuses on the similarities and differences among the first andsecond generation of immigrants regarding their strategies of adapting to the hostcountry and their definition of their identities and the factors that are responsible forthese differences and similarities.