博士学位论文

将世界主义去浪漫化：扎迪·史密斯小说研究

学 院: 外国语学院

专 业：外国语言文学

研究方向：英国文学

作者姓名：郑松筠

指导教师：何伟文教授

完成日期：2019年1月
Deromanticizing Cosmopolitanism:
A Study of Zadie Smith’s Fiction

Author: Zheng Songyun

Supervisor: Professor He Weiwen

School of Foreign Languages

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Shanghai, China

January, 2019
 Acknowledgements

A special thank you to Professor He Weiwen, who gave me the supervision more
illuminating, rigorous, and thoughtful than I could ever imagine. She generously

supported me during my doctoral studies and provided me with the most invaluable
help and constructive comments throughout my writing of this dissertation. She
continuously impresses and inspires me with her academic excellence, loving
kindness, and firm guidance. It is my top honor to be her student.
Thank you to other professors at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, particularly

Professor Hu Quansheng, Professor Peng Qinglong, Professor Shang Biwu, Professor

Liu Jialin, Professor Du Lanlan, Professor Suo Yuhuan, Professor Zuo Xiaolan,
Professor Liu Longgen, Professor Wang Zhenhua, and Professor Zhu Zhengcai.
Special thank you also goes to Professor Qiao Guoqiang at Shanghai International
Studies University, Professor Wu Jianguo at Shanghai Maritime University, Professor

Yan Jinglan at East China University of Science and Technology, and Professor Wang
Gaidi at East China Normal University. Their generous remarks were of great
importance to my research and the completion of this dissertation.
Warmest thanks to Professor Galin Tihanov, who offered me the opportunity to
study under his guidance at Queen Mary, University of London. This dissertation

could not have been completed so smoothly and enjoyably without his kind help and
generous encouragement. Thank you to Dr. Heather A. Campbell and Dr. Lu Mingjun
for their detailed comments and thoughtful advice. Warmest thanks to Diane Williams
for her invaluable and instant help when it was most needed. Also to my fellows, Dr.
Cong Xiaoming, Dr. Lin Qin, Dr. Zheng Ronghua, Dr. Zheng Hongsheng, Dr. Wen

Xiaomei, Dr. Yue Jianfeng, and Dr. Chen Wei, for their suggestions and considerable
encouragement.
Special thanks go to my parents- in- law and my parents, for their selfless love and
understanding. Thank you Yangyang for bringing me the most precious comfort and
happiness. Thank you Xiang, for your unconditional love and support.
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 摘要

扎迪·史密斯为英国当代杰出作家。她在长篇小说中描画了一幅完整的伦敦

全景图，在跨国、跨洲际的叙事空间中反思当今身份和种族问题。本篇博士论文
围绕史密斯现已出版的五部小说展开研究，从《白牙》、
《签名收藏家》、
《论美》、
《西北》到《摇摆乐时代》，每一章聚焦一部作品，试图从不同角度揭示史密斯
小说中的世界主义。史密斯的创作多以种族、信仰与文化间的碰撞与交融为背景，
小说人物多为祖籍亚洲、非洲和加勒比地区的移民及其子女。然而，史密斯小说

所传递的并非一种无根、无国、无界的世界主义。相反，她的世界主义具有去浪
漫化特征 — 扎根现实、关乎平凡人、关注个体性，既非脱离现实、理想化的社
会愿景，亦非空洞抽象的博爱说辞。成见、种族主义、性别歧视、自我歧视与自
我堕落，这些是史密斯眼中的黑暗，却也是她寻找光明的起点。作品中，她不但
正视因种族、性别和阶级带来的创伤，而且还以质疑和挑战的眼光看待这些先入

为主的观念。史密斯的世界主义体现在日常活动中，与每个平凡人相关；它珍视
身份中的独特性与本源，与地方性和个体性不可分割；同时，它在对当代身份的
反思中落脚于尊重、包容与关爱。世界主义者作为一种身份，亦非既成的事实。
生活在多元社会中的人们，游走于各国、各文化之间的行者，同时受多种宗教思
想影响的现代人，他们唯有化多元为和谐共存，化对立为相互支撑，才能成为混

与杂的受益者，并将自身的特性与异禀转化为打破成见、踏出创伤阴影的动力。
本论文希翼能够为丰富世界主义在文学作品中的内涵研究提供一定启示。
在史密斯小说研究的现有成果中，虽涉及从世界主义的视角分析史密斯小说
的人物思想和城市地缘，但是，鲜有学者能够对史密斯的世界主义特征做出明确
定义，并在此基础上对其作品中的世界主义主题进行探讨。本论文认为，全球化

背景、世界性大都市、跨国跨种族的婚恋，这些仅是史密斯作品可被认作世界主
义小说的客观前提而非决定性因素。史密斯小说中展现出的世界主义，其去浪漫
化特征与道德自觉相辅相成。一方面，流散、创伤与成见影响所有人亦连接所有
人；另一方面，超越历史记忆禁锢，打破成见枷锁，在多种族与多信仰间实现平
衡，这些并非一蹴即至，而是主人公在经历过迷茫、自我否定、身份危机与歇斯

底里后逐渐寻取的思想境界。在她的五部小说中，这就体现为对多样文化融会共

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存的接纳，革除成见的努力，走出创伤阴影的历程，以及对任何人、任何物不加
成见的欣赏。
本文从“世界主义者的形成过程”、 “宗教的后世俗回归”、 “本土性的独

特之美”、 “伦敦的世界性与贫民性”和“奴役历史的现代烙印”五个方面展开
论述，探究史密斯小说中世界主义的去浪漫化特征。《白牙》展现了世界主义者
身份的构建过程，揭示出所谓权威身份的静态与死板，强调对多元身份以及对生
命中他者包容与接受的重要性。小说人物对自我本源持有或绝对、或摇摆、或中
立的态度。相应地，书中的新伦敦人在身份构建中或迷失，或挣扎，或在调和中

实现身份重构。调和的过程是自我与多重身份间从相互妥协到互相融合的过程，
在该过程中世界主义者的思想得以形成。《签名收藏家》以宗教与世俗间的互动
为背景，将禅宗与犹太教传统融于中英混血主人公的身份中，体现出宗教对现代
人潜移默化的持续影响，以及宗教在现代叙事中富有意义的回归。该作品展现出
史密斯世界主义的共创性，即曾经看似不相关甚至不相容的内容不但可以共存，

而且能够相互作用，产生积极影响。《论美》中本土性的描述对象为北美非裔、
加勒比移民及加勒比海地文化。从非洲-加勒比美国人的完美外形、艺术天赋与
内心美，到海地音乐、绘画与文化的多元化与活力，书中将非加地区与欧洲平起
平坐，展现出对美与艺术不加偏见的欣赏与赞誉。《西北》中的伦敦是文学共和
国的圣地，却也苍凉而黑暗，遍布着精神与实体的贫民窟。栖身陋室的移民因社

会的偏见而挣扎于堕落和以暴制暴的绝境中，而身居豪宅的富人则在虚伪、身份
迷失和道德腐化中陷于精神的贫民窟。书中模糊了社会公认的疆界，在对本地人
与移民、高尚与卑劣的反思中重审了各类伦敦人。《摇摆乐时代》以舞蹈为媒，
展现出非裔英国女孩与非洲本土女孩的美貌与天赋的异同，并将身体上的世界主
义者与精神上的世界主义者置于同一西非国家中。革除成见、宽恕罪过，书中主

人公在经历苦痛甚至歇斯底里后，逐渐摆脱黑奴历史挥之不去的阴影，将与生俱
来的多元性转变成构建自我身份的动力，并成为接受自我、尊重和包容异己的世
界主义者。五部小说所体现的世界主义主题互为补充、互为支撑，体现出史密斯
对当代多元社会与复合身份的深入思索与道德诉求。
关键词：扎迪·史密斯，世界主义，去浪漫化

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 Abstract

Zadie Smith is a preeminent British novelist, and is praised by critics as an

outstanding depicter of London, a portrayer of twenty- first century identity, and a

recorder of contemporary ethnic issues. This dissertation focuses on Smith’s five

novels published so far: White Teeth (2000), The Autograph Man (2002), On Beauty
(2005), NW (2012), and Swing Time (2016). With these novels serving as the focus of
the five chapters, this dissertation examines the cosmopolitanism in Smith’s fiction.
Smith’s writing is characterized by the interaction between different ethnicities,

religious beliefs, and cultures. Her protagonists are usually first generation
immigrants and their descendents with Asian, African, or Caribbean origins. This
dissertation argues that what shares in common among her fictional works is not a
rootless, stateless, all-encompassing, and boundary-less cosmopolitanism. Rather, she
deromanticizes cosmopolitanism, enabling it to connect closely with reality, banality,

and individuals, and to transcend its traditional conception as a utopian social vision
or abstract humanism. Stereotypes, racism, gender discrimination, self-discrimination,
and self-deterioration are the bleak elements in life that Smith recognizes and even
personally experiences. However, what emerges in her fiction beyond the recognition
of such bleakness is a lingering hope for a promising future, as she not only faces

life’s trauma but also endeavors to challenge and deconstruct these stereotypical
impressions. Smith’s cosmopolitanism has a quotidian and multifaceted nature, which
interrelates with daily activities and is inseparable from particularities or local
uniqueness; it also entails moral and sentimental concerns, underlining the importance
of respect, love, and inclusiveness. Accordingly, being a cosmopolitan in Smith’s

fiction is not a given, the gaining of which involves struggles; and it is through the
practices of reconciliation that people can become cosmopolitan and advantageously
embrace the uniqueness and otherness in their identities. The endeavor made in this
dissertation enriches the significance of cosmopolitanism in literary studies.
Few previous publications on Smith’s fiction have undertaken a thorough
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research on her cosmopolitan style, let alone explicating her cosmopolitanism, or her
deromantized handling of a morally- fueled cosmopolitan depiction. Her
cosmopolitanism is not merely featured by some overly recognizable characteristics,

including the kaleidoscope of different accents, ethnical origins, and religious

affiliations. Rather, it confronts social reality without being exhausted by the bleak
side of life, and gains its impetus from seeking the possibility for a co-creative
synergy gained from the coexistence of various and even traditionally contradictory
elements. On the one hand, Smith’s cosmopolitanism entails an attitude to confront

social injustice, historical trauma contained in blackness, and the universal diaspora
presented by people living across the Atlantic. On the other hand, transcending
historical stereotype and reconciling oneself to a multifaceted identity calls for a
painstaking negotiation, during which people may go through confusion, self-denial,
identity crisis, and even extremity. However, it is after experiencing such unpleasant

feelings that individuals gradually become capable of facing the multicultural reality
in which they are absorbed, stepping outside the stereotype, ceasing to be haunted by
traumatic memories, and starting to appreciate the beauty of everyone and everything,
free from the traditional Euro-American perceptions.
The five chapters of the dissertation demonstrate various facets of Smith’s

cosmopolitanism through the interpretation of “attainment of cosmopolitan identity”,

“postsecular return of religion”, “vernacular beauty”, “cosmopolitan and ghettoized
London”, and “post-slavery trauma”. White Teeth displays the process of becoming a
cosmopolitan. It reveals the stillness of an authentic identity, and emphasizes the
importance of accepting one’s multi- featured self, as well as respecting the other in

life. The protagonists, who are new Londoners, take an either absolute, or changeable,
or indeterminate attitude towards roots. Some of them achieve identity reconstruction
after going through a state of confusion and suffering. Reconciliation here implies
mutual compromise, mutual acceptance and transformation, during which the identity
of a cosmopolitan starts to form. The Autograph Man, with a half-Chinese,

half- British protagonist who benefits from his Jewish and Zen traditions, presents the
interrelationship between the religious and the secular, thus demonstrating religion’s
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meaningful return to a secular society. This novel indicates the co-creative strength in
Smith’s cosmopolitanism, as the once unrelated or even contradictory elements not
only coexist but positively interact with one another. On Beauty rediscovers a

differentiated blackness, and revisits the vernacular in its cultural dimension, which is
incarnated by African Americans and Caribbean Americans, as well as Haitian culture.
Those immigrants’ beautiful appearance, talents, and kindness, and the dynamics and
charm of Haitian music and Haitian arts, for Smith, should coexist with its European
counterparts, rather than being reduced to a mark of “low” culture. NW celebrates

London’s transcending natural beauty, which has been providing inspirations for
generations of British writers. In the meantime, it also shows the failure of a
cosmopolitan utopia. This book revisits different types of Londoners, blurring the
established boundaries between the wealthy and the impoverished, and the local and
the immigrant. Swing Time presents the transcontinental double between local African

girls and British girls of Afro-Caribbean linage, and distinguishes a physical

cosmopolitan from a moral cosmopolitan. It also displays a relationship between
cosmopolitanism, stereotype, and forgiveness. Articulating the hope for everyone to
view identity beyond stereotypes, this novel casts light on the characters who forgive
the unforgivable, an endeavor which helps them turn their inherited diversity to an

advantage, and accordingly frees them from mental enslavement. The five novels,
with their varied yet complementary cosmopolitan themes, are reflective of Smith’s
ever deepening moral thoughts on identity and heterogeneity in a contemporary
context.

Key words : Zadie Smith, cosmopolitanism, deromanticizing

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 Table of Contents
Acknowledge ments ...................................................................................................... I
摘要............................................................................................................................... II
Abstract...................................................................................................................... IV
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1
Research Background ............................................................................................. 1
Literature Review.................................................................................................... 6
Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered: Its Deromanticized Dynamics.......................... 25
Organization .......................................................................................................... 37
Chapter 1 White Teeth: Attaining a Cos mopolitan Identity ................................... 41
1.1 Smith’s Cosmopolitan Novel .......................................................................... 42
1.2 Beginning: A Dilemma without Reconciliation .............................................. 49
1.3 Middle: Double Standards towards Cosmopolitan Experience ...................... 63
1.4 End: Cosmopolitan Indeterminacy ................................................................. 66
Chapter 2 The Autograph Man: Postsecular Return of Religion ........................... 73
2.1 Smith’s Neutral Space ..................................................................................... 74
2.2 Postsecular Style: Co-creation and Cosmopolitan Attributes ......................... 76
2.3 Varied Religious Heritage in a Contemporary Postsecular Context ............... 83
2.4 Postsecular Identity and Postsecular Presentation .......................................... 88
Chapter 3 On Beauty: Blackness and the Vernacular........................................... 100
3.1 Various Blackness ......................................................................................... 102
3.2 The Vernacular Reimagined .......................................................................... 114
3.3 Vernacular Art and Culture: Deconstructing the High and the Low ............. 120
Chapter 4 NW: Cos mopolitan and Ghettoized London ....................................... 132
4.1 Deromanticizing London and Decategorizing its Citizens ........................... 133
4.2 Cosmopolitan London................................................................................... 139
4.3 Ghettoized London: Physical Deprivation .................................................... 144
4.4 Ghettoized London: Moral Deterioration ..................................................... 151
Chapter 5 Swing Time: Post-slavery Trauma and Cos mopolitan Prospects....... 162
5.1 Revisiting Stereotypes................................................................................... 163
5.2 Post-slavery Trauma...................................................................................... 171
5.3 Cosmopolitan Prospects ................................................................................ 186
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 192
Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 199
攻读博士学位期间取得的主要科研成果 ............................................................... 222

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 Introduction

Zadie Smith gained international fame as a novelist in her twenties and continues

to write, teach, and publish into her forties. She is a prolific contemporary writer, an
outstanding social observer, depicter, and critic. Her identity as a half- Jamaican,
half- Ireland female, and her education and career trajectory from Cambridge to
Harvard and then to New York University provide numerous inspirations for her
creation and her development from a literary prodigy to an established author. She is

the interviewer of Ian McEwan in literature and Eminem in hip hop music; she takes
part in the debate of Brexit and publicly supports the preservation of the local library
in her community; and she is the core of many literature festivals and the director for
the television adaptation of her book Swing Time (2016). Her name appears regularly
in The Guardian, Granta, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books, on

which she published a number of short stories, reviews, and critical essays. She was
listed twice, in 2003 and 2013, as Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists — a
once-a-decade prescient list that helps Smith become and continue to be an
established bestseller and one of the most beloved authors of her generation. Her
oeuvre spans various genres, serving as an essential reference for the analyses of this

dissertation, which focuses on her five full- length novels published so far. The
following parts include research background, literature review, and Smith’s
cosmopolitanism, as well as an overview of the organization.
Research Background
This dissertation places its emphasis on Smith’s five novels: White Teeth (2000),

The Autograph Man (2002), On Beauty (2005), NW (2012), and Swing Time. Her
works have been recognized by a range of awards, including Guardian First Book
Award (2000), Whitbread First Novel Award (2001), Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
(2006), and Langston Hughes Medal (2017). White Teeth, which was pronounced as
epic, audacious, and astonishing (Mallon 143), is included in TIME Magazine’s list of

100 Best English- language Novels from 1923 to 2005, won a plethora of awards, and
earned the 24- year-old undergraduate the fame about which the majority of students
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in literature can hardly dream. The book demonstrates a panoramic view of Britain at
the turn of the twenty- first century, and for Dominic Head, it is “an apt summation of
the triumphs and the limits of English multiculturalism” (Head, The Cambridge

Introduction 183). Her second novel, The Autograph Man, appeared two years later,
and won Jewish Quarterly Wingate literary prize for fiction in 2003, the judges of
which praised the protagonist Alex-Li Tandem as the one who “swims in London’s
multiracial mixandmatch, and somehow stays Jewish” (qtd. in Meinig 66). When
reviewing the history of Jewish novel, Andrew Furman regards Smith’s The

Autograph Man as a remarkable breakthrough which “actively engage[s] with the

pressing cultural crises of our day … in our increasingly multiethnic, multiracial, and
transnational world” (Furman 7).
As a writer who keeps challenging herself on different styles, Smith then created
a twenty- first century “Edwardian” campus novel On Beauty, with a profound

rumination about African, and Euro-American cultures and identities. On Beauty was
shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, won the Orange Prize for Fiction (2006), and
has been attracting extensive academic attentions as scholars explore the literal,
historical, aesthetic, ethic, and ethnic values of the novel. Philip Tew contributes to a
book series “New British Fiction” in 2010 with his monograph entitled Zadie Smith,

focusing on her oeuvre, which confirms her excellence in presenting the changing
urban cultural landscape across the Atlantic. Peter Childs selects Smith as the only
young novelist of her generation in his book on contemporary British fiction writers,
along with some of the widely acclaimed authors such as Ian McEwan and Julian
Bares, and highlights her talent by commenting that “ … [Smith] presents a more

eclectic and exuberant image of modern British society than most writers born in the
forties and fifties” (209).
Smith continues to portray urban space and its dwellers in NW, which again takes
place in her most familiar London borough Willesden, and was shortlisted for Baileys
Women’s Prize for Fiction (2013). She is praised as an urban realist because of NW,

winning the applause of James Wood — this is rather remarkable as Wood once
criticized her White Teeth and The Autograph Man (Wood “Books of the Year”),
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claiming that the former is so dazzlingly multicultural and the latter merely portrays a
simple-minded and plain protegonist. The novel is a celebration of London’s street
conversation which Smith is good at demonstrating. More profoundly, it represents an

endeavour to engage with all things and all people, so muddled that may not appeal to
the so-called mainstream publishers. Nevertheless, this reaffirms Smith’s commitment
as a moral realist, who is aware of the unpleasantness in life without losing faith in the
encouraging facet of the common life. After the publication of NW, Philip Tew —
succeeding the appearance of Zadie Smith: Critical Essays (2008) edited by Tracey L.

Walters — brings together articles on Smith’s fictional works in a collection entitled

Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond (2013). Along with her
increasing public recognition, Smith continues to concentrate on the work of fiction.
Long expected and widely praised, over forty reviews and interviews on Swing Time
appeared on the mostly read newspapers and magazines within the first week of its

publication. Apart from the attention drawn by literary critics and her contemporaries,
this novel was the finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award 2016, and
longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017. Smith also publishes academic articles,
short stories, and book reviews, and she is the author of two collections Changing My
Mind: Occasional Essays (2009) and Feel Free: Essays (2018). Her achievements as

an excellent critic further extend her influence in the world of literature, and her
publication in various genres serves as valuable references for researchers to explore
her works and thoughts.
Smith articulates the voices of her time and her people, providing the
kaleidoscopic panorama of contemporary society. This dissertation examines Smith’s

fiction by paying particular attention to her cosmopolitanism, which distinguishes

itself from the stereotypical understanding of this concept. It argues that Smith’s
fiction by confronting rather than sidestepping life’s trauma illustrates a
cosmopolitanism of efficacy. Cosmopolitanism in her fiction is more than a romantic
vision where a person takes obligations to the entire human beings and regards

everyone around the globe as its fellow city dwellers. In other words, her
cosmopolitanism develops from but also goes beyond the philosophical moral concern
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dominated by an abstract articulation of love and kindness. Smith’s cosmopolitanism
emerges from an unpleasant reflection on the identity crisis of immigrants, the
difficult reconciliations between the traditionally conflicting elements, the

displacement affecting everyone regardless of their social positions, and the historical
memories that still cause emotional trauma for people of African and Caribbean
origins. More importantly, by revealing these realities, her fiction demonstrates the
strength of cosmopolitanism, which not only welcomes the coexistence of differences
but possesses a co-creative advantage that can bring about a transformation for

contemporary urban residents living in the midst of diversity and mobility. Therefore,
Smith’s cosmopolitanism transcends the physical fact of multicultural mixing, but
emphasizes on the relationship between the self and the other as well as between
particularity and diversity. The gaining of a cosmopolitanism mindset, as it will be
explicated throughout this dissertation, is a process, a phenomenon in the making.

Smith’s cosmopolitan features facilitate a becoming, a negotiating process of gaining

an ever-developing identity. In the meantime, she depicts reality accompanied by no
small measure of subjectivity. Her writing is rooted in her reflection of the physical
and mental suffering, the (sub)conscious fear of being an mentally enslaved African
immigrant, the historical trauma of slavery, and the identity crisis caused by a

prejudiced yet predominate understanding of self. This dissertation, in particular, tries

to avoid using terms that strip characters in the first place of their self-esteem and
personal uniqueness. Terms such as African Americans, Asian Britons, and
Afro-Caribbean immigrants are used wherever possible. As a depicter who looks
closely at social surroundings, Smith demonstrates in the fiction her attachments to

the home city London, and her praise of the people who she shares the same origin.
Dedicated to transcending the established boundaries, and to deconstructing
stereotypes, she looks back to the trauma-ridden past, makes the best out of the
not-so- idealistic present, and bears hope for a promising future.
What can be traced throughout Smith’s writing career is an ever-developing

consciousness of the complex relationship between the physical reality and literary
ideal, and what remains consistent is a transcontinental narrative consisting of the
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encounter with the once exotic and unfamiliar. In this regard, the five novels share the
commonalities of being “mixed”. They leverage such heterogeneity by demonstrating
the significance of returning to the unbiased form of each constituent, be it ethnicity,

religion, or gender. Mixed in lineage and marked by her dark complexion, Smith
consciously expresses a hope of reaching beyond stereotypes, both in her fictional and
non- fictional works. She highlights the cultural contingency in identity; and she
reminds her readers that in order to deal with the ever complicated relationship within
self, and between self and others, it is important to advantageously accept one’s varied

heritage and any other marks that define the ever-hybrid contemporary identity.
This dissertation, as a continual endeavor to explore what Smith’s texts actually
say, explores her beyond-stereotypical understanding of “black” and “white”, the
centered and the marginalized, and the religious and the profane. It aims to probe into
the constant negotiations between people and their surroundings. What seems helpful

is to treat Smith’s fiction as an organism of which its components (characters,

communities, social environment, and cities) have been continuously undergoing
transformation. In her narrative, influences are no longer exclusively exerted by the
traditionally understood “privileged” individuals, and in effect, what prevails is a
depiction of inauthenticity. It means that Smith wishes to create a group of modern

citizens who start to, though gradually and with painstaking effort, challenge
stereotypes. It is not an attempt to resist or deconstruct the so-called “dominated”, but
an endeavor to discover tentative possibilities of how to live in this ever mobile world
driven by transnational and transcontinental memories and experiences. Smith’s
differentiated cosmopolitanism, accordingly, is revealed in her meditation on these

elements. Within her literary imagination, cosmopolitanism no longer carries the

presumption of either an assimilation tool for colonization/post-colonization or an
overly optimistic yet abstract celebration of globalization. The emergence of new
ethnicities, multi- identities, and postsecular attitudes makes it possible to negotiate the
co-existence of the once incompatible. Smith’s fiction, with these subjects, presents a

cosmopolitanism rooted in everyday life and concerning about everyone. Her

cosmopolitanism finds its impetus in the harshness of reality, the trauma caused by
5
blackness, and the uncertainty about self. Smith believes that it is morally
recommendable for writers to invite more people in the story, and accordingly, her
cosmopolitanism is muddled and multifaceted, in which every established boundary is

blurred, and every character is treated with equal attentiveness.

Lite rature Review
Smith constantly expresses her appreciation and indebtedness to her precursors.
“[Writing] comes out of reading, being a reader, and wanting to create something like
what I’ve read”. 1 As a devoted reader, Smith admits to Jessica Murphy Moo in the

interview that “[a]ll my books are made up of other books. They’re all deeply
structured on other fiction” (Moo). The reviews on the connection between Smith’s
literary creation and her mentors’ are mainly divided into two categories: imitation
and transcendence. Scholars have discovered the influence of other writers — mostly
with English, African, or Indian origin — on Smith. Lewis MacLeod believes that the

student- homework- like White Teeth is framed entirely within the template of Salman
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) in terms of its social, characteristic, and
linguistic presentation, and is created to satisfy readers’ “established, authenticated
and naturalized” understanding of hybridity (165). 2 Examining On Beauty, Robert
Alter discovers no innovation in Smith’s book, regarding this 2005 novel’s plot as an

unsubtle and superfluous imitation of Howards End; similarly, Maeve Tynan insists
that Smith, in On Beauty, only manages to fill the temporal chasm between the early
nineteenth century England and the twenty- first century America, which means she
negotiates peacefully with the source, and “updates rather than challenges the
concerns of the previous novel” (77-78).

The sameness between Smith’s novels and her precursors’, however self-evident
it seems, is far less decisive in terms of its role as a specific feature of Smith’s
fictional creation. Beyond sameness, some scholars turn their attention to Smith’s
creativity and diversity. When comparing On Beauty with Howards End, Frank

1
Smith, “Zadie Smith by Jackie Nickerson”, a video posted on The New York Times Style Magazine,
00:00:12-00:00:19.
2
Interestingly, Smith, as Christopher Holmes elucidates, is against the deliberate perfection of novels, and
presupposed thoughts.
6
Kermonde claims that Foster and Smith both concern about truth, otherworldliness,
and prophecy, which are characteristics embedded in the significance of their writing
(“Here She Is”). Similarly, Fiona Tolan establishes a fundamental relationship

between Smith and Forster by undertaking a comprehensive analysis of Forsterian

ethics in Smith’s White Teeth, The Autography Man, and On Beauty. Like Forster,
Smith “unites disparate ideologies” and advocates the “admixture of banality and
brilliance” (“Zadie Smith’s Forsterian Ethics” 138), echoing the famous line “only
connect” — the prefatory of Howards End. Moreover, Anna Grmelová, Catherine

Lanone, and Tolan reaffirm Smith’s interconnection with Forster by approaching the
novel beyond the superficial plot coincidence. Grmelová concentrates on various
connections and consequences of disconnections in On Beauty, emphasizing that,
compared with Forster, Smith’s connection covers a much wider range of
underprivileged African Americans, from Haitian immigrants, a native English

professor, to a Trinidadian Afro-American bourgeois. Lanone specifies the dazzling

multiculturalism in On Beauty, and explores Smith’s redefinition of “the muddled”,
which penetrates in Forster’s Howards End. She insists that the former is a campus
novel which questions roots and fundamentalism, and embraces the interconnection of
multiple identities through painting, music, and personal transformation — it presents

a negotiating process of how to cope with life’s complexity in a multi- featured

landscape of contemporary society. This Jamaican-British author celebrates the
chaotic and the muddled, an evocative behavior which is in tune with Forster ’s
comments that “London is a muddle, and not always an unpleasant one” (Mellet 187),
and with his preference for combining “a humorous appreciation of the muddle of life

with a kind sense of its beauty” (Forster, Aspects of the Novel 19). 3
Distinct from the scholars who merely underline the link between Smith and
Forster, Ann Marie Adams elucidates the interrelationship between Elaine Scarry’s

3
Apart from contextuality, another aspect discussed widely in scholarship about On Beauty is the association
between aesthetics and academic institutionality. It cast light on the inability of academia, which deconstructs
rather than appreciates beauty. Such concern, correspondingly, is the focal point of Gemma Lopez who divides the
characters of On Beauty into intellectuals and non-intellectuals, and finds out that only those who are not
theoretical can truly be a human trilled by the beauty of art. Briana G. Brickley also shows how university may
turn out to be a resistant rather than a driving force for the appreciation of arts and beauty.
7
On Beauty and Being Just (1999) and Smith’s On Beauty. It is Forster’s ameliorative
power of beauty that Smith attempts to capture, Adams argues, and through Scarry,
Smith realizes a connection between a love of beauty and being just (Adams 382).

Apart from making connections between Smith and Forster or between On Beauty and
Scarry’s aesthetic philosophy, Susan Alice Fischer discovers the allusive relationship
between Smith’s humanization of race and color and Zora Neale Hurston’s unique
character of being an African American without a white mask. Fischer emphasizes
Hurston’s unawareness of her blackness and her consciousness of seeing herself as a

human being rather than a minority. Such reading encourages dynamic and flexible
“human transformative possibilities” (“A Glance from God” 291) characterized by
Hurston’s Haitian goddess Erzulie, which finds her contemporary incarnation in the
African-American female character Carlene Kipps in On Beauty. Inspired by
Fischer’s perception of the relationship between Smith and Hurston, Nicole King

further extends the former ’s established reading of Erzulie, both in the realms of arts
and divinity. Applying a creolization framework, which signifies a constant process of
remaking, becoming, and acquisition of meanings under new circumstances, King
places most of her emphasis on Carlene, a seemingly minor character, and elucidates
that Carlene embodies Erzulie the goddess, who is pure, unpredictable, and ready to

love and be loved. Erzulie the painting is also a representation of creolization which
symbolizes the independence of Carlene, the class war between Haitian immigrants,
the postcolonial community, and the cultural looting of colonizers. Creolization and
its reinterpretation play a central role in associating Smith with many other writers
who endeavor to present the open-to-change Caribbean culture in literature.

Comparative studies between Smith’s fiction and other writings are bridged by
common themes related to aesthetics, religion, morality, and sexuality. Anne Rowe
parallels Iris Murdoch’s Under the Net (1954) and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, with a
perception that although both novels are morally serious and aesthetically attached,
Smith is more deconstructive and adventurous in her exploration of race and gender.

Susan Willens makes a parallel review of Bee Season (2001) and The Autograph Man,
emphasizing their reinterpretation of Jewishness and classic motifs in Jewish
8
Mysticism by intermingling popular culture and holy tradition. Willens gives both
writers credit for their use of Kabbalistic imaginary characterized by universalization
and boundlessness, which in turn shape readers’ understanding of the contemporary

reality. By grounding the tale happening in a multiracial city on the ancient discipline
of Kabbalah, these novels highlight the universal suffering of people, while
simultaneously, they reveal a hopeful future which can offer more possibilities
(126-27). Kathleen Wall conducts a comparative study of On Beauty and McEwan’s
Saturday (2005), using beauty as the bond bridging the two novels. Wall contends that

individuals’ engagement with art and beauty will transform their belief and their ways
of being in the world. She explicates this assumption through the analysis of two
characters, namely a Trinidadian-American professor (Monty Kipps) and his
English- immigrated colleague (Howard Belsey). The former’s appearance, gestures,
and behavior are expressive of his elitism, who supports the idea that only the

privileged should receive education, and who treats the disenfranchised African
immigrants with disdain; the latter’s deadlock situation is caused by his static and
cynical prejudice towards beauty and art. The protagonist of Saturday, too, with a
scientific mind, has difficulty in appreciating the truly beautiful, but after the conflict
and interaction with a local driver, he generally realizes that it is beauty which is

“human and ethical” (786). Tolan (“Painting while Rome Burns”) discovers a
common ground between On Beauty and Pat Barker ’s Life Class (2007), and bridges
the two novels with ethical value of art and beauty. Tolan contends that, as two sides
of the same coin, Smith and Barker hold open and conservative attitudes respectively
towards the function of art. Dissimilar to Barker ’s cautious and anxious stance on art’s

transcendental and definite value, Smith believes that art connects people of
diversified backgrounds, endows artificial works, both canonized and popular, with
perpetual worthiness, and represents a good that cannot be measured in financial
terms. Alberto Fernández Carbajal discovers an intertextual coherence between NW
and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), a comparison made possible by

discovering a shared “queer resistance to sexual normativity” existing between

ethnicities and sexualities, pains and pleasures (4, 13). This point echoes with David
9
James’s analysis, who aligns NW with Joyce’s stream of consciousness before locating
the novel in a larger context of postmodern metafiction. His stance on Smith’s
experimental endeavor is that NW is notably different from the traditional, focalized,

and multicultural themed works created by her predecessors.

Each writer may remain indebted to his/her mentors throughout their writing
career, but such a connection exists hand in hand with personalized dynamics, which
help them to be an author articulating in their own voices. Smith herself seeks a
writer’s independence to establish her recognizable styles, which are influenced by

her personal experience and are developed from her encounters with the social
environment and her interactions with people. Smith admits in an interview that
“where On Beauty meets Howards End are the least interesting bits of the book for
me” (Penguin Random House). Moreover, even though she has often been compared
with Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi, they belong to different generations of British

writers with somehow varied experiences and perceptions of societies and

communities. What needs to be highlighted further, therefore, is Smith’s distinct
interpretation on the constructive elements of identity — ethnicity, gender, and class
— framed in a context of art, emigration, and her imagination of contemporary urban
space.

Smith is a born and bred Londoner, and her home city is like her Muse. White
Teeth and NW are set in London, or to be specific, Willesden where she grew up. The
Autograph Man is about younger generation Jews living in London, On Beauty
connects London and Boston, and Swing Time’s narrative space spans London, New
York, and Africa. Claudia Buonaiuto and Marta Cariello believe that London in

Smith’s immigrants’ mind exists in a “Past-tense Future perfect” tense (103). Their
colonial encounters with the past remain substantial, and their memories of history,
nation, and culture are not exclusively Eastern or Western, but combined. Such a
combination leads to a mixed feeling towards the city. Confining her attention also on
urban space, Dagmar Dreyer asserts that Smith’s “bright city” provides a thematic and

stylistic contrast to Diran Adebayo’s “hell London”, as White Teeth entails new
mixtures, and by and large, a paean to hybridity and multiculturalism. The city,
10
existing for the sake of literary depiction, functions as a gathering place, and the
culturally diverse realm where people of different ethnicity encounter one another.
Though not perfect or utopian, this is a hopeful land open to new identities, especially

for third generation immigrants. Laurent Mellet articulates a similar argument. He

uses an “overdetermined London” to thread Smith’s first three novels, believing that
although Smith portrays a city which may not be as open as people have imagined, the
connection between the urban space and its residents, like that advocated by Forster,
still provides a fertile ground for the writer to create new possibilities, historically and

geographically. A middle position is taken by Eric Tabuteau. He associates Smith’s

London in the 1970s with Sam Selvon’s London two decades earlier, casting lights
both on the citizens’ outcry of misery and the changing landscape of the city
contributed by West Indian and Caribbean immigrants.
If Dreyer and Mellet adopt a contemporaneous perspective to approach Smith’s

London, then Jan Lowe chooses to feature the extraordinariness of this metropolis in a
diachronic context. Lowe discovers that though both focus on immigrants, the
panorama view of London in Charles Dickens’s fiction cannot parallel that in Smith’s,
the latter of which is far more multi-ethnic, dynamic, and intermingling. She points
out that White Teeth is largely situated during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher,

which is marked by cultural racism and, quoting Stuart Hall’s comment on the same
historical period, is “torn with racial tension” (“What is this ‘black’” 258). However,
the English native Archie, a character developed from Smith’s father, is not only
saved by an immigrant butcher, but also respects and values immigrants, treating their
difference with openness, an attitude that Thatcher and right-wing English nationalists

fear most (Lowe 177). Smith thereupon reframes the London of Thatcher ’s time, and
reshapes readers’ understanding of this piece of history, with an ultimate purpose of
searching for a possible position where the Britain in the new millennium lays.
Similarly, her depiction of London in NW, as Wendy Knepper explores, remaps
“known relations to places” (116), and shifts “spatial history through lived and online

experience” (123). Focusing on Smith’s London displayed in her first four novels and
the novella The Embassy of Cambodia (2013), Eva Ulrike Pirker points out Smith’s
11
insistent perseverance of returning to North London and discovers the repeated local
motifs inserted in her fiction. By following the characters who “move in cars, cabs or
buses, or on the Underground” or on foot (68), readers become particular observers of

Smith’s London with an impression of its multiplicity and its limitations.

Even though London provides the urban space for each of Smith’s novels, her
position as a tenured professor in New York University, and her regular journey
travelling back and forth between London and New York also offer impetus for her
writing. Regine Jackson provides insights into Smith’s dramatized imaginary of the

city by analyzing the decisive influence of immigrant presence on her portrayal of

Boston. Turning her attention to On Beauty, and in particular, to the presence of
Haitian immigrants in the novel, Jackson argues that Smith’s depiction of Haitian
people challenges the principled readings of the city promoted by socialists,
authenticates her own imagination of Boston, and subsequently builds a world beyond

her own (which is not London or England). Jackson affirms that fictional Wellington
represents no place other than Boston, and the author’s imagination of this space is so
important that it enlarges and thus challenges the stereotypical understanding of how
people of color inhabit in the city. This is confirmed by Raphael Dalleo’s argument:
“Smith shows how Caribbean people have moved into London and made it their own,

and how Caribbean culture has become a central part of the culture of the city” (92).
“Creolization” of Smith’s London and characters, as Kris Knauer explains, enables
“Londoners to live together and create new values and styles” (185). Multiethnicity, a
typical feature of metropolis, maximizes its vitality in Smith’s novels. This confirms
her identity as a “young London writer” who tries to present “a certain shift in

viewing cultural belonging” taking place in “London’s unsegregated schools,

residential areas, housing estates, and entertainment venues, as well as streets and
often homes” (170).
Smith’s London is her irreplaceable focus. The image of the city is alive in
Smith’s writing, and in its rich pageant, there contains the balance, counterbalance,

coexistence, and resistance between the old and the new, the historical and the present,
and the so-called locals and immigrants. It may be appropriate, in this regard, to avoid
12
the norm-oriented and hegemonic understanding of race and migration, which
exclusively indicates a sense of displacement endured by the African immigrants, the
Jew, and if considered more generally, foreigners and strangers defined on a relative

basis. It is worth noting that foreignness is universal, be it in self or other. In the same
sense, diaspora is also applicable to locals who are considered as English, a usual
alternative reference of the “white”.
The following part is composed by a review of scholarship with respect to the
analyses of emigration and identity. The foundation of these analyses is largely laid on

postcolonial experiences and concerns, arranged specifically to fit in the subject of

postcolonial imagination. Supriva Nair concentrates on roots and identities of Smith’s
characters, claiming that the objective Caribbean, Indian, and colonial history has
been applied subjectively by the author in a postmodern manner, and the seemingly
rootless or at least transnational sense of belonging is de facto a fake impression.

Those immigrant figures in the book are rooted, argues Nair, and their fear of
assimilation, anger of being corruptive, and hurt feelings caused by misidentification
reflect their inability to balance the different identities and cultures where they live in
(“Dented History”). Sara Upstone (“Same old, Same old”) emphasizes the recurrence
of diasporic representation determined by postcolonial stereotype in White Teeth and

Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003). Upstone insists that both novels, though depicting a
“new” Britain, share the same prejudice with other postcolonial writings, and the
confidence gained by the British-born second generation immigrants is in effect
diluted by their traumatic migrant past. Similarly, focusing on White Teeth, Andrea
Ciribuco discovers the two generations of British Asians are tied to a colonial past,

thus making them impossible to find their place in the twenty- first century Britain (4).
From a seemingly distinctive yet virtually similar perspective, Fatma Kalpaklı intends
to show White Teeth’s differentiated Indian nationalism, but ends up in displaying
characters’ struggle between immigration and identity, entailing a similar sense of
postcolonial trauma as the previous scholarship does. When turning attention from

Smith’s characters to her London as a metropolitan city, Laila Amine metaphorically

finds the city as a house of two doors. Smith’s immigrants may access through the
13
front door legally while invisible sojourners in the film Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
have to slip into and out of the backdoor secretly and illegally. The new British
national identity, rather than being an established fact, is still in the process of

becoming — a status which Smith tries to accomplish in her dramatized London. Both
the novel and the film reveal the connection between immigrant identity and
colonized history, and question the imagination of London as a promised land of
multicultural liberalism. Similarly, Ged Pope and David Marcus highlight the
impossibility of “unredeemed optimism” (Marcus 72) in Smith’s NW, believing that

people are trapped by their origins (70), and is haunted by a sense of inauthenticity
(Pope 173). In other words, through a postcolonial traumatic reading and in the midst
of cultural mixing, these scholars find “painful underbelly of migration” (Tancke 36).
This dissertation believes that approaching Smith’s work calls for a framework
that goes beyond the established and enclosed perception of trauma, discrimination,

and displacement. The reason is that her writings are created against a backdrop of
great social mobility across the Atlantic, which infuses all aspects of urban life. Her
fiction, mirroring her identity and living experience, is multifaceted, varied, and
complex. It further indicates the impossibility to explicate her work in a
single- minded perspective, and this brings about the importance of comprehending

her fictional communities displayed in her transcultural and transpatial narrative

through a personalized rather than a strained perspective. It might prove to be
rewarding, therefore, to focus on the contradictory elements of her writing, while at
the same time, to trace the promising indications and hopes that are crucial for people
living through mobility. Although some of the aforementioned scholars have indicated

a differentiated and extended understanding of Smith’s city and her characters, none
of them have unfolded the significance as such in detail. For example, despite
Upstone’s argument that in White Teeth, Smith keeps on representing the “same old”
as her precursors did, she briefly remarks that Smith’s novel “should not be
homogenized into an easy postcolonial model” (343), and a post-postcolonialism may

be more pertinent and applicable. Such extension indicates the complexity of the new
century literature, which is not only dominated by traumatic or diasporic memories
14
but also by a hybrid narrative that mixes pessimism and optimism. Amine opens up
yet does not sufficiently explore the new space for ruminating over the being and
becoming of new identities and ethnicities, which accordingly will exert a sustainable,

transformative influence on cultural and ethnographical landscape of society. In a

word — as Walters elucidates in her discussion on the stereotyped portrayal of female
characters in Smith’s first three novels — closed and biased apprehension and
mindsets can be destructive (128).
The complexity of Smith’s characters stimulates scholars to approach her identity

construction from postcolonial, religious, and cultural perspectives. Brian Bantum

highlights the quotidian impact of religious belief on everyone, including those who
regard themselves as atheists. From Islamic belief, Islamic fundamentalism to
Jehovah’s Witness, religion in White Teeth animates people’s daily lives (both first
and second generation immigrants), and exerts a sustainable impact on their

self-understanding and practice. Focusing on the same novel yet from a different
perspective, Sofía Muñoz-Valdivieso discovers the African identity’s engagement in
the contemporary Britain and European narrative by illustrating a Shakespearean
black lady in White Teeth. By elucidating the indication of “what is past is prologue”
from The Tempest (the epilogue of White Teeth), she indicates that the image of “black

lady” undermines the exclusiveness of white European narrative and the

marginalization of Africans and other minorities in literary contexts. Jonathan P.A.
Sell analyzes Smith’s identity construction from a philosophical aspect. Using a
“determinism versus indeterminism” model (30-33), he contends that Smith discredits
the specific contour of identity while supporting a sort of self-recognition which is

free of constraint and not wholly determined by history, tradition, or culture.

Therefore, compared to other writer ’s/character’s insistence on a determined identity,
Smith’s model of indeterminate identity is a “more human achievement” (Sell 42) that
is comic and applicable in postmodern and multicultural society. In terms of the
Jewish elements in Smith’s fiction, Sigrun Meinig examines how Jewishness engages

with contemporary popular culture during which it justifies its own existence in the
multiethnic and multi- faith identity building. Moreover, Furman also claims that the
15
protagonists in The Autograph Man represent the “viable identity” (7) of many Jews,
especially of young people, in a multiethnic, multiracial, and transnational world. He
praises Smith’s innovative exploration of Jewish identity, implying that the book, as a

welcome new contribution, drives the ever depressed Jewish literature out of its
lifelessness and inactivity. Likewise, Natasha Kumar Warikoo believes that On Beauty
makes space for ethnic re- identification, which reflects the “British bewilderment
about Americans’ obsession with race”, immigration, and religious beliefs (Warikoo
468). She thus remarks that the novel reshapes readers’ understanding of race, religion,

and culture, which nowadays are variable, changing, and open-ended.

One special analysis among all the multicultural introspection on Smith’s fiction
is from Jarica Linn Watts which scrutinizes the linguistic mixing phenomena in White
Teeth, concluding that crossers (immigrants and their descendents), although may
“navigate the boundaries between languages” (853), can hardly overcome the fixed

barrier of ethnicity. Such a qualitative analysis, however, is relatively flat and

untenable if being placed in a background of new century metropolis and the
overwhelmingly multidimensional consciousness of the author. Also focusing on race
and ethnicity, Pilar Cuder-Domínguez looks into Bernardine Evaristo’s and Smith’s
portrayal of London, affirming the maintenance of “ethnocentric attitudes” (185) and

the impacts of the “history of colonization” (183). At the same time, however, she also
moves a step forward to acknowledge that both writers “pose intriguing questions
about the nature of Englishness” (187), and thus concludes thought-provokingly that
“[t]hese two writers’ reconfiguration of Englishness goes beyond a mere inclusion of
the (post)colonial, or even beyond a historical glance on their presence in London”

(188).
Tew takes Smith as an example of contemporary painter of hybridity and
multiplicities. Through depicting ordinary and marginalized lives, Tew believes that
her fiction impresses the readers by changing their understanding of migrants and the
imagined imperial culture, and shows how people of all backgrounds and ideologies,

come together and interact with this hybrid society. Overlapping yet more focused
than Tew’s viewpoint, Nick Bentley demonstrates the extension and reconstruction of
16
Englishness in White Teeth. He discovers the binary characteristics of Smith’s
multiculturalism, which on the one hand negotiates a model of Englishness that
embraces a range of new ethnicities while on the other hand remains “skeptical about

such an idealized construction of the nation” (Bentley, “Re-writing Englishness” 500).

The contemporary Englishness seems to distance itself from the English national
identity which is closed, exclusive, and regressive (Hall, “New Ethnicities” 447), and
has emerged as a new feature that though existing in England carries with it more
intricate significance than this term initially envelopes. Head defines multiculturalism

in Smith as a complex concept of triumphs and limits, which looks similar to the
binary feature of Bentley’s Englishness. Furthermore, he further points out the
significance of such a feature by arguing that Smith’s haphazard yet vibrant
multiculturalism is inevitable in a world which never ceases to experience the
movement of people. Multiculturalism here shares the commonalities with utopian

hybridity or planetary humanism, which is open to negotiation and may be applicable

to a broad, thus inclusive, understanding of today’s Britain. This also echoes with
Bryan Cheyette’s analysis, which focuses on Smith’s establishment of neutral ground
in her first four novels. Being neutral means to create the space where different
religions co-exist, and people of various racial origins interact with one another

regardless of their ethnicities. Cheyette believes such creative composition, which

moves beyond discipline, albeit risky, is worth the efforts since it enlarges individuals’
sense of self and what it means to be a human.
Many of the subjects discussed hereinbefore, such as multiculturalism,
creolization, black identity, immigrants, and diaspora are correlated with the

unprecedented complexity of modern society and with the increasingly common

phenomenon of being mixed. Scholars like Fischer, on the other hand, have realized
that although it is important to apprehend the influence of long- lasting historical
events exerted on people’s lives, it is crucial to take a step further on comprehending
the diversified interaction between people of difference races (Fischer, “Temporal

Layers” 91-95); or as Tew comments on The Autograph Man, albeit the novel’s theme
appears to be muddled and sometimes even suffocating, it is “still capable of
17
sustaining a certain hope” (Tew, “Celebrity, Suburban Identity and Transatlantic
Epiphanies” 67).
A cosmopolitan impression, which is both observable as a physical movement,

and intangible as a universal value transcending boundaries, is overtly or covertly

discussed by scholars in their analysis of Smith’s fiction. The locales in which most of
Smith’s stories take place, be it London, New York, or the imagined Boston
(Wellington in On Beauty), are highly cosmopolitan. Lowe summarizes the
anthropological London boroughs, which “Southall and Wembley are Indian towns,

Brixton and Acton are Caribbean, the East End is Bengali, Neasden is Nigerian,
Golders Green is Jewish and Kilburn is Irish” (171). When reviewing Smith’s “touch”
of Forster, John Sutherland senses the transatlantic journey the writers from Henry
James, Rushdie to Smith takes, in order to “forge necessary connections” (50). Such a
transnational “pilgrimage” makes it possible for Smith to relocate her

England-oriented post-Forsterian novel in Boston, and to create a half- Jewish,

half-Chinese Londoner who admires a New York based actress. Smith’s cosmopolitan
theme, perhaps most expressively, finds its trace in the religious and ethnical
heterogeneity with which she is familiar. In White Teeth, “the three main families are
Muslim, half-Jamaican, and Jewish … and an Irish bar is run by a Muslim” (King,

“White Teeth by Zadie Smith” 116). This confirms Eleanor Wachtel’s argument that
Smith as a writer moves “easily between sensibilities, ages, and intellects” (323).
White Teeth “[partially] serves as a celebratory cosmopolitan agenda” (Fowier 83),
and On Beauty looks indefinitely on racial authenticity, places emphasis on the
variability of black Americans (Warikoo 2009), and underlines a thematic connection

that bring together people of different classes, cultures, and ethnicities (Grmelová). As
Tew summarizes, “Smith seems to position all of her characters in the wider
complexities and variations of being that affect all social selves and our ontological
understandings of them” (“Celebrity, Suburban Identity and Transatlantic Epiphanies”
56).

Smith has a cosmopolitan empathy with her characters, who find their dwelling
space marked by cosmopolitan features. Lydia Efthymia Roupakia revisits White
18
Teeth through the lens of the ethics of care, in which she initiates an analysis on how
care is missed, misused, or ignored by most of the protagonists in the novel, before
introducing the ultimate act of love conducted by Alfred Archibald Jones, the only

leading character of white complexion who realizes the significance of care, which is
“a mixture of hospitable attentiveness to particularity and self- reflexive guarding
against erroneous response” (150). In a similar discussion on elucidating Smith’s
inspiration for her writing, Jennifer J. Gustar places emphasis on the shared human
sentiments in banality. As Gustar argues, the deeds of Archie is freed from the

repercussion of the colonized history or his English identity, but points to a

universality of love and respect for everyone, be it the immigrant Muslim, the Nazi
scientist, or the Ireland descendent. Such cosmopolitan empathy also points to the
discovery of “the precious”, fueled with a critical reflection of depicting beauty
beyond stereotypical impressions. As Tolan (“Identifying the Precious”) discovers, in

On Beauty, physical attractiveness, natural endowments, and artificial handcrafts

transcending the category of high and low culture, African and European arts, are the
precious elements that Smith praises, which make people cease to take a stand on the
static and predetermined self-authenticity.
Such cosmopolitan empathy that unbiasedly pays attention to everything and

everyone also indicates a feature of openness and optimism in Smith’s fiction. Such a
quality affords characters the leverage to get along with change, conflict, and diversity
in Smith’s multicultural world. Laura Moss discovers in White Teeth an “everyday
hybridity”, highlighting the rediscovery of the ordinary, which echoes with Smith’s
own interpretation of mixture in her first novel — “a utopian view of race relations”.

What remains coherent throughout Smith’s first three novels, as Clifford Thompson
indicates, is that she prioritizes individuality rather than group affiliation in an
open-ended way, freeing everyman from the scaffolding of race, religion, society, or
culture, and regards them first and foremost as human beings. In her fiction, “human
trumps the sociological” (Thompson 16). Smith also admits that such an ideal

relationship between people “might exist now, and certainly in the future, with the
amount of mixing up that has gone on” (Tancke 27). On this account, she defines
19
inclusiveness as the dominating feature of the society (Amine 2007), and chooses
preferably to project immigrants and colored race as cordial, affectionate, and genuine.
Similar indication is also discoverable in The Autograph Man, where Smith

dramatizes the Jews in the midst of the oppression and confusion, who still look
forward to a happy ending beyond the historically traumatized holocaust (Willens
126).
Katina Lynn Rogers, Kanika Batra, Christian Moraru, and Laura Domenica
Marostica approach Smith’s fiction, partly or wholly, from a cosmopolitan perspective.

Influenced by the essentialist and homogenized implication of neo-imperialized

cosmopolitanism, Rogers contends that cosmopolitanism can only act as a
counterforce if being applied to analyze Smith’s White Teeth. Batra and Marostica
turn their attention to the specified and transformed version of cosmopolitanism
which combines “vernacular” and “rooted” respectively to characterize the recently

emerged residents, especially immigrants and their descendents living in the new
century. When analyzing Smith’s On Beauty, Batra mentions cosmopolitanism, using
vernacular and theoretical to elucidate the characteristics of reality and ideal
respectively, exemplifying the impossibility of balancing the two. However, her
viewpoint is decentralized in which politics, gender, sexuality, blackness, black

studies, and transnationalism are also listed as her foci, and no specific explanation is
made on the significance of her vernacular cosmopolitanism. In Marostica’s article
focusing on Smith’s NW, she finds a common ground for Smith and Forster, and what
bridges the two writers is a “rooted cosmopolitanism”, pointing to the coexistence of
patriotism and cosmopolitanism illuminated by Kwame Anthony Appiah. Marostica

believes that the cosmopolitanism in Smith’s NW is both promising and limited, and
somehow implies the failure of struggling for a cosmopolitan ideal in metropolis.
What seems problematic in Marostica’s analysis, however, is that she overwhelmingly
emphasizes Forster’s influence on Smith. By approaching Smith’s ethical articulation
in the framework of a contemporarily contextualized conception of cosmopolitanism,

Marostica marks NW with a Forsterian-Edwardian tag, a connection that appears to be

forced and self- serving.
20
 Among these four articles, Moraru’s argument seems to be the most rigorous and
convincing. Moraru states the nuanced connection between Smith and Forster by
elucidating a differential cosmopolitanism initiated in Howards End, which tends to

be expended and sublimed in On Beauty. He firstly casts light on Forster ’s

cosmopolitanism back in the early 20th century. It entails an unconfirmed space in
which the seemingly contradictory and traditionally conflicted elements co-exist.
Based on such a clarification, he then defines Margaret Schlegel as a German
cosmopolitan. In order to highlight the uniqueness of Smith’s cosmopolitan writing,

Moraru reviews briefly yet comprehensively the imperial-biased and

Eurocentric-oriented nature of cosmopolitanism prevailed throughout the last century.
Compellingly, in Forster, difference is the bondage which makes the world more
hospitable and beautiful (143). Whereas the practicality of Margaret’s value is
undermined by “exploitation, inequality, and pain then rampant in British and German

Empires” (144), Smith, in order to bring together self and others, extends and
reinforces the bond by adding artistic elements and inviting in Africans and slave
descendents (145).
There are a handful of publications on Smith’s fiction contributed by Chinese
scholars, with varied foci from immigrants, diaspora, Englishness, multiculturalism,

aesthetics to ethics. Qian Cheng centers upon mainstream topics of immigrants,

identity confusion, and cultural difference, and applauds Smith’s reinterpretation of
race which transcends conflicts and divergence and leads to a harmonious end of
coexistence. Li Qiong analyzes the migrant identity in White Teeth, of which the first
generation immigrants are dedicated to the pursuit of purity, the second generation

immigrants are subject to assimilation while the third generation immigrants are
marked by a rather flexible and hybrid identity. Tolerance and love, as Li concludes in
his article, is the ultimate resolution to confliction. Ma Hongqi devotes the entire
argument to the diasporic theme in White Teeth, delineating each main character as the
victim of immigration who should seek for reconciliation through inclusiveness.

Wang Hui and Yao Zhenjun draw attention to the reconstruction of Englishness in
White Teeth and to how the novel contributes to the remaking of social
21
multiculturalism in the twenty-first century. Wang Hui and Yang Jincai inspect On
Beauty through a binary lens, placing subjectivity and intersubjectivity against the
backdrop of ethical significance which is widely examined in Smith’s novels. Based

on the theoretical framework of ethic literary criticism, Wang Zhuo reflects on the
dynamic interrelationship between “subject” and “object”, “self” and “other”, “host”
and “guest”, and the protagonists’ attempt in balancing the multiple identities in a
multicultural London. Wang Hui, in her latest two publications, focuses on NW,
elucidating the determinedly stratified social reality in London, and senses a fading

pride of British imperialism deconstructed by an increasingly vibrate groups of

immigrants from Africa and other parts of the world. Zhao Jinhui looks into the
portrayal of city image in White Teeth, exploring the interrelations between Smith’s
writing and the ever-changing impression of urban life in the twentieth century
London. There is one Ph.D. dissertation on Smith’s fiction completed by Xu

Zhaoyang, in which Xu unfolds the research based on the framework of literary

stylistics and pays primary attention to the linguistic analysis of Smith’s hybrid style.
This dissertation intends to discover the productive complexity in Smith’s
writing, and to approach her style from a cosmopolitan perspective. It is important,
first and foremost, to distinguish the author ’s use of literary techniques from

enclosing her works in any established framework of literary theories, just as Matthew
Paproth highlights that there is a division between “form and content, between
postmodernist tales and modernist telling” (27). Smith’s novels have been approached
in a context of postcolonial traumas and diasporas, defined as a typical writing of new
Black British Literature, praised for their celebration of multiculturalism, and

criticized for being extremely postmodern, “hysterical realistic”, or “exhausted and

overworked”. 4 Established categories such as postcolonialism, postmodernism and
multiculturalism, if being examined closely, might appear to be too generalized to
represent Smith’s theme and style.

4
For the discussions on Smith’s postcolonial diaspora and traumas, see Upstone, and M uñoz-Valdivieso. For
approaching her fiction within the category of Black British Fiction, see Powell; Tew, Zadie Smith. For the
analyses featuring Smith’s multiculturalism, see, M oss; Tew, The Contemporary British Novel. For the criticism
about her heterogeneity, see Jakubiak 206; Wood, “Hysterical Realism”.
22
 Firstly, many of Smith’s characters are originally rooted in different cultures
while simultaneously being engaged in metropolitan life where they become absorbed
in a hybrid, inclusive, and individuality-dominated environment. Therefore, they

cannot be wholly marked by trauma, displacement, or diaspora — concepts which are

usually connected with postcolonial literature. Secondly, the term “black” itself is
problematic. It is a reflection of skin color, defined as an opposite to the “white”, and
indicates a stereotyped understanding of Asian, African, and Caribbean
people/immigrants. However, if placing Smith’s Jamaican-Irish lineage in a wider

context, it is not difficult to discover that she is a narrator far more ambitious than a
simple articulator of multiculturalism or anti-racism. Instead, she unfolds her stories
beyond the range of the stereotypical black culture in general, and opens up a realm
for those — not limited to the “Black” — who hold transnational and trans-cultural
memories. Moreover, researches conducted within a postcolonial framework largely

compile to the assumption of dominating/dominated categorizations in which the

colonized would always live in the shadow of traumatized memories. Circumstance
changes, but a feeling of displacement is still engraved in their words and behaviors.
This stereotyped impression, though remaining to characterize postcolonial discourse,
has nonetheless been reconstructed by the experience of growing up as second

generation immigrants. In response to this, this dissertation explores, on an equal

basis, the interaction between local/immigrants and social environments, and tries to
prove that identity construction is a “becoming”, subject to reframing and
transformation.
Thirdly, Smith appears to be a critical multicultural portrayer, who is conscious

of the growing pains and gains of globalization and migrancy. With characters of
various ethnicities, religious affiliations, and cultural backgrounds, who are bonded
together by marriage, friendship, or other relationships, the significance of Smith’s
mélange runs deeper than a static montage of diversified cultures or a celebratory
coexistence of diversity and uniformity. Rather, it points to a turbulent yet fruitful

progress of transcultural interaction, which brings transformation both to specific

23
individuals and social atmosphere. 5 Fourthly, even though Smith uses postmodern
techniques to frame her narrative, she is a serious realist dedicated to presenting the
genuine anthropological and geographical landscape of contemporary urban space.

Coincidentally, Smith also issues a denial of simplified groupings, insisting that urban
hodgepodge is a reality and a common experience for every Londoner of her
generation (qtd. in Tew, Zadie Smith 28), and claiming that she has no part to play in
deciding the generic elements, including her ethnicity and linage, and she “only love[s]
to be so” (Smith, Changing My Mind 141). As Smith’s character Michael Kipps says,

“being black was not an identity but an accidental matter of pigment” (Smith, On
Beauty 44). Therefore, to understand Smith calls for an awareness of inclusiveness —
valuing diversity and decentralization as well as challenging fixed general ideas about
identity and ethnicity. Recent publications on Smith, in this regard, also show an
increasing recognition of her predilection for “de- labeling”, calling into question the

“essentialist presumptions” of previous researches and begin to “pay attention to what

her texts actually do and say” (Tew, Celebrity, “Suburban Identity and Transatlantic
Epiphanies” 2).
Even though some of the articles discussed above mention Smith’s cosmopolitan
feature, locate her works in the realm of cosmopolitan agenda, or describes the venues

where her story happens as cosmopolitan, few researches elucidate the

cosmopolitanism of her fiction. It is a quotidian, dynamic, and multifaceted
cosmopolitanism representing one dominant feature displayed in her writing. Roger,
Batra, Moraru, and Marostica have pioneered in discussing Smith’s work from a
cosmopolitan perspective, but nonetheless their elucidations are either decentralized

5
There is an uncritical use of multiculturalism among scholars who believe this term refers to a celebration of
diversity. However, what has been left unnoticed is that multiculturalism, insofar as the globalized new century is
concerned, largely promote a mosaic, parallel, and thus isolationist model in the contemporary fictional and
non-fictional world (Tihanov, “Cosmopolitanism in a Discursive Landscape of M odernity”). An uncritical
multiculturalism can be dangerous, a frequent overgeneralization which is recognized by Robbins in his
examination of internationalism. In Robbins’s words, it can be a dis guised Americanism or a reckless American
expansionism (“Some Versions of U.S. Internationalism” 3). Rushdie, in his radical and furious condemnation of
British racism during Thatcher’s premiership, defines multiculturalism as a “new catchword” like integration or
racial harmony which is simply an invitation for the British Asians to be silenced and obedient while no progress
was every made to relieve their grievances (Rushdie, Imaginary Homeland 129-138). Superficially,
multiculturalism seems to resist homogeneity and advocate diversified cultures especially for minorities, but under
such fanciful dis guise, it in fact opposes individualism since in its realm “individuals are merely epiphenomena of
their cultures” (Beck 67).
24
— interweaving her cosmopolitanism in the fabric of other larger frameworks — or
vague which fails to clearly define this phenomenon. This dissertation, on the other
hand, aims to discover the multifacetedness in Smith’s cosmopolitanism. Most

importantly, it proves that as a concept and a phenomenon, cosmopolitanism’s

efficacy and vitality is gained through Smith’s positively indeterminate understanding
of life’s mixture. People on the move transform the society with “newness” — a term
as well as a phenomenon explicated by Homi K. Bhabha which builds its impetus
through the activities undertaken voluntarily and forcedly by immigrants. Smith’s

contemporary residents, also characterized by Bhabha’s newness and hybrid identities,

reshape self, urban imagination, and transatlantic outlook with their gradually attained
cosmopolitanism.
Cosmopolitanism Reconside red: Its Deromanticized Dynamics
Cosmopolitanism as a concept has often been associated with people who are

citizens of the world. It enjoys a long history, envisioned by Stoic scholars, redefined
in Enlightenment, promoted by Immanuel Kant for regulating the polis, discussed by
Montesquieu whose thoughts are succeeded and developed by Julia Kristeva,
connected with world literature by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and rejuvenated in a
time of globalization as a social and cultural phenomenon and a better solution to

international conflicts. Cosmopolitanism represents an ideal status of humanity for

philosophers, an unexpected yet genuinely existing mix for anthropologists, a
unilateral assimilating tool for postcolonial scholars, a contradictory yet useful
instrument for political scientists, an alternative of multiculturalism for sociologists,
and more recently, an ever extending theoretical framework for scholars to explore the

interaction and coexistence among different elements. It also, in particular, finds its
impetus in contemporary literary criticism. 6 New Literary History devotes an entire

6
Discussion on cosmopolitanism enjoys a long history, covering fields of anthropology, sociology, philosophy,
politics, arts, cultural studies, and literature studies. I include here some of the representative discussions on
cosmopolitanism that are not covered in this dissertation, but which are equally important in the field of
cosmopolitanism studies. What should be noted is that scholarship on cosmopolitanism is increasing and continues
to flourish, and in 2016, there is a panel in American Comparative Literature Association, organized by Paulo
Horta and Bruce Robbins on the topic “cosmopolitanisms”, which focuses on various presentations of
cosmopolitanism. For a brief review of the cosmopolitanism dating back to ancient times, see Appiah
(Cosmopolitanism xvi). For Stoic discussion on the cosmopolitanism, see Florilegium of Stobaeus 84.23, in
Annas’s The Morality of Happiness (1993). For the famous discussion by Kant on cosmopolitan law, see his
25
issue to Appiah’s thoughts, especially his cosmopolitanism, and allows researchers
mainly in English studies and comparative literature to explore the interaction
between his elucidation of cosmopolitanism and its extending signification in literary

studies. 7 Because the implication of cosmopolitanism varies in different contexts,

Hannerz proposes that cosmopolitanism “in a political face” is full of worry and
concern, whereas cosmopolitanism in its cultural face is delighted with new sights and
new people (“Two Faces” 204); further, Galin Tihanov indicates that the two kinds of
cosmopolitanisms, in culture and politics respectively, “do not always overlap” (Song

10). Though it might be too difficult to draw a clear boundary between the two realms,
this dissertation mainly approaches cosmopolitanism in its cultural dimension. It
argues that cosmopolitanism of efficacy is multifaceted, rooted in the specific without
losing sights of the large picture. Quoting Michal Jan Rozbicki and George O.
Ndege’s judgment on the global and the local: “A global perspective alone is too

broad and too abstract to offer a comprehensive explanation. On the other hand, a
solely local focus can be misleading because each culture tends to disguise its
inherent hybridity and to depict itself as homogeneous and self-contained.” (2)

[note 6 continued]“perpetual peace” in Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and
History (2006). For the discussion on the relation between Kant and stoic cosmopolitanism, see Nussbaum (“Kant
and Stoic Cosmopolitanism”). For the discussion of the dynamic relationship between cosmopolitanism and
politics, see essay collection Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation (1998). For an international
and social contemplation on cosmopolitanism, see essay collection Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context,
and Practice (2002). For the philosophical discussion on cosmopolitanism and globalization, see Ulrich Beck’s
Cosmopolitan Vision (2006). For the reflection on the cosmopolitanism as a solution for global problems, see
David Held’s Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities (2010). For an anthropological discussion on
cosmopolitanism edited by Pnina Werbner, who also proposes a conception of vernacular cosmopolitanism, see
Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism (2008). For the exploration of visual arts and cosmopolitanism, see
M aría Fernández’s Cosmopolitanism in Mexican Visual Culture (2014). For cosmopolitanism in transnational
cultural studies, see Tim Brennan’s At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now (1997). For the cosmopolitan
presentation in literary studies, see Jessica Berman’s Modernist Fiction, Cosmopolitanism, and the Politics of
Community (2001), M alin Pereira’s Rita Dove’s Cosmopolitanism (2003), Bishnupriya Ghosh’s When Borne
Across: Literary Cosmopolitics in the Contemporary Indian Novel (2004), Rebecca L. Walkowitz’s Cosmopolitan
Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation (2006), Berthold Schoene’s The Cosmopolitan Novel (2009), Fiona
M cCulloch’s Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary British Fiction: Imagined Identities (2012), and Cyrus R. K.
Patell’s Cosmopolitanism and the literary imagination (2015). For the Chinese publications on cosmopolitanism,
see Wang Ning’s articles on the pluralistic-oriented cosmopolitanism (2015), and on cosmopolitanism, world
literature and internationalization of Chinese literature (2014). See also Qiao Guoqiang’s 2018 article on
cosmopolitanism and world literature, in which he argues that though these two terms seem to distuguish
themselves from one another, they are actually connected by a utopian imagination of the society and the shared
emotions of humankinds.
7
New Literary History published its 2018 Spring issue entitled “On Kwame Anthony Appiah”, explicating that
Appiah’s philosophical and cosmopolitan models provide fertile grounds for analyzing literature’s themes, and in
particular, Susan Stanford Freeman discusses the cosmopolitan potential within religion and secularis m in M uslim
women’s writing (Friedman 220), and Werner Sollors analyzes Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole’s Open City
(2011) based on the cosmopolitanism elucidated in Appiah’s 2006 monograph Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World
of Strangers.
26
Therefore, in order to embrace the local specificities without losing sights of the
interactions made possible by migration, globalization, and transcultural activities,
introducing cosmopolitanism in literary criticism is a probable and timely response

helping to reflect on and interpret the increasingly dynamic life and society. In other
words, it seems rather important to critically define a cosmopolitanism that serves to
describe Smith’s open, moral, and interrelated themes in her fiction. As Vladimir Biti
convincingly points out, the premises of cosmopolitanism is not a given, perpetually
existing in an established political space, but should be explored beyond the

European- myopic, sovereign-oriented cosmopolitanism (20-21).

Cosmopolitanism in this dissertation signifies a connection with ordinary daily
activities, and therefore, is inseparable from particularities or local features. It is no
longer an overgeneralized concept serving to convey the idea of nationalism, religious
fundamentalism, or cosmopolitan ideal (Delanty 4). An increasing awareness among

scholars shows that approaching cosmopolitanism means to combine the traditionally

paradoxical items together. The once exclusively traumatized groups, such as the
diasporic, the vernacular, and the subaltern, subject to a revisit in a critical sense, all
demonstrate their irreplaceable positions in the context of contemporary fiction and
social reality. Ranajit Guha deconstructs South Asian history by casting a spotlight on

Indian non-elites (“On Some Aspects of the Historiography”); Bhabha reinforces a

vernacular cosmopolitanism by reframing the “subaltern” defined by Gramsci and the
“flayed” raised by Kristeva (“Unsatisfied” 40, 43); Nina Glick Schiller explicates a
diasporic cosmopolitanism enabled by multiple displacements and particular contexts
(“Diasporic Cosmopolitanism” 103-117); Rami Nashashibi presents a ghetto

cosmopolitanism associating Harlem, hip-hop, and Islamic belief with extended

global influence, resonance, and respects (“Ghetto Cosmopolitanism” 253, 261-62);
Appiah develops a rooted cosmopolitanism inspired by his personal experience of
becoming a cosmopolitan (“Cosmopolitan Patriots” 618); Judith Butler discloses a
sense of precarious cosmopolitanism in an increasingly uncertain, turbulent, and

terror-ridden U.S. (Precarious Life); and Tihanov unveils the open-ended nature of
cosmopolitanism by deromanticizing and deliberalizing the traditional narrative of
27
exile (“Narratives of Exile” 142, 150-52). These trends reveal scholar’s increasing
awareness of approaching cosmopolitanism from a decentralized and de-colonized
perspective. This is also proved by Sheldon Pollock’s claim that cosmopolitanism

becomes inseparable from trauma, as “cosmopolitans today are often the victims of
modernity” (6); it has and will always be associated with politics, as “[r]efugees,
peoples of the diaspora, and migrants and exiles represent the spirit of the
cosmopolitical community” (6); and it is not an imagined future but a reality, as
“[c]osmopolitanism is not just — or perhaps not at all — an idea … [but] is infinite

ways of being” (12).

Cosmopolitanism in this regard is not a vision but a phenomenon with realistic
dynamics. This dissertation in particular believes that conceiving cosmopolitanism
calls for an awareness of the contradictory constituents encompassed in this concept,
and for an attitude which confronts rather than sidesteps traumatic matters. Similar to

Hall’s proposal of a double consciousness in approaching contemporary

cosmopolitanism (“Political Belonging” 30), analyzing cosmopolitan novels also
requires a theoretical framework that takes into consideration imperfectability,
indeterminacy, and co-creation, all of which lay the fundamentals of Smith’s fictional
works. Imperfect consciousness refers to being wide awake about an extended range

of diaspora in everyone; indeterminacy indicates an awareness of seeing beyond

stereotypes; and co-creation signifies reconciliation with varied heritages/influential
factors through which people gradually gain a cosmopolitan value and also a
cosmopolitan identity. The labels such as extremists, secularists, and sexists are not
consistently applicable to Smith’s characters. Extremists can become moderate and

understanding, showing respects to diversity and difference. Secularists can be

influenced by religious traditions, and therefore, experience a change in identity and
become neither seriously religious nor admittedly secular, but combined. Similarly,
sexists who were once morally corrupted, indifferent, and biased may find their rescue
in sheer beauty — the universally appreciated harmony and well-balanced tension

presented in artistic pieces.

This dissertation proposes to construct cosmopolitanism through
28
deromanticization. It is through deromanticizing that cosmopolitanism shows the
willingness to outbrave the complicated reality, and advantageously transforms
heterogeneity into an impetus of advancing on a promising future. What needs to be

accentuated at this stage is the inseparable relationship of cosmopolitanism,

particularity, and banality. Particularity points to specific experiences, contexts,
individuals, and communities, underlining the importance of local activities which can
nonetheless arouse cross-boundary resonance. Religious affiliations, inherited culture,
historical memory, and family stories, along with patriotism, are personal roots which

contribute to constructing a cosmopolitanism with particularity. 8 James comments on

the combination of particularity and universality in Smith’s fiction: “Despite its
[Smith’s fiction] reputation for being emblematic of a new wave of multicultural and
migrant fiction, Smith’s work has always been distinctly localized” (206). In the same
tune, the rooted feature of cosmopolitanism forms a “dialectical relationship between

the particular and the universal” (Friedel 145), or in other words, the particular can
have universal values, and the universal is incarnated and implanted in the particular.
Banality points to a departure from the philosophical and political abstractness of
cosmopolitanism, which furthermore, helps to reevaluate the sense of belonging and
displacement and reestablish the relationship between self and other. Moreover,

becoming a cosmopolitan, instead of being a static result, is a process, which may

involve in going through a personal transformation — reestablishing a self and
reaching a new balance, with improved capacity to cope with increasingly hybrid
reality.
Cosmopolitan novels are not necessarily defined solely by discernible facts such

as miscegenation, coexistence of different languages, polyglots, or biracial marriages.

Instead, the cosmopolitan theme as such resists conventional, prejudiced boundaries
but opens space for everyone and even everything to be connected. One excerpt from
White Teeth widely quoted by critics on Smith’s celebration of multiculturalism may
turn out to be inappropriate to exemplify her cosmopolitan theme: “This has been the

century of strangers, brown, yellow, and white. This has been the century of the great
8
I gained the inspiration from Appiah’s discussion on rooted cosmopolitanism in The Ethics of Identity.
29
immigrant experiment.” (271) In other words, such a mosaic multicultural imaginary
is anything but merely a conditional feature of cosmopolitanism defined in this
dissertation. Nor does such co-existence reflect the cosmopolitan vision in Smith’s

fiction. Smith’s cosmopolitanism is not a given, but is dynamic and ever-developing.

It is not only about co-existence, but more importantly, about co-creation. Smith
constantly reflects on the connection between her Willesden girlhood and Cambridge
years, and her fame and the illusion of wealth and fame. As an author who herself had
gone through transformation, she regards changes and new encounters as an addition.

“I thought I was adding Cambridge to Willesden … Adding a new kind of knowledge

to a different kind I already had” (Smith, Changing My Mind 133). The attitude of
embracing the past and engaging with the newness serves as the impetus for her
cosmopolitanism: from White Teeth’s utopian imagination of race, The Autograph
Man’s co-creative relationship between religion and secular life, On Beauty’s

rediscovery of vernacular beauty, NW’s melancholy of universal ghetto, to Swing

Time’s relativity of blackness, a constellation of cosmopolitan imaginations starts to
form, which, to an ever sophisticated degree, is multifaceted. Smith’s construction of
her literary world, like Bhabha’s interpretation of the location of culture characterized
by in-betweenness — a new status that is greater and more complicated than the sum

of two or more cultures — is dynamic and open. The reason for becoming
multifaceted, in Smith’s case, is a natural process rather than a deliberated
manipulation, as in an increasingly complicated world, “it’s the writer’s responsibility
to meet that with a complexity of their own” (Nasta 278).
Approaching Smith’s fiction calls for an open-ended dialogue which considers

identity beyond stereotypes, and requires an acceptance of one’s innate hybridity.

Smith manages to engage with the traumatic past without being framed by it,
questioning overgeneralized impressions. It requires a conscious dissociation with
ingrained stereotypes which influence people’s subconscious minds, for instance,
refraining from relating the African and Asian immigrants merely to diaspora, trauma,

colonization, and low culture. To be specific, the “white” might find it helpful by
neither holding on tight with Englishness, whiteness, or localness, nor defining self
30
and other by referring to skin colors. For people of dark skin, it means embracing
their African, Caribbean, or Asian heritage, while at the same time, being aware of the
fact that they, by moving beyond their land of origin, have been interacting,

unavoidably, with the culture and people, though in many cases they are still
understood as “the other”. Throughout the discussion, it will distinguish, on different
occasions, the extreme attitudes towards other and self, and try to open up a new
realm that is located in the middle which is advantageously counterstereotyped,
developed from and closely related to social facts. In the case of immigrants with

Caribbean, African, or Asian origins, Smith presents two extremes in their behavior
towards identity construction. They may deliberately behave more British than any
English “locals”, or on the other end of the spectrum, they may prioritize inherited
elements in a way by refusing or denouncing anything that is initially English, even
though they live in England and inevitably absorb in, to various degrees, English

cultures. Being mixed, as a phenomenon in the metropolis where most Smith’s stories
take place, is more than a vision but an actuality, and therefore, what seems crucial is
to deal with such a complication rather than restraining its dynamics with acts of
purification. The consciousness of being “black” is generated through comparison, a
result partly caused by migration flux. Fanon argues that “as late as 1940 no Antillean

found it possible to think of himself as a Negro” (153), or as Hall recalls a similar

experience that happened to him and thousands of other Jamaicans:

I’d never called myself black ever in my life, nor did most Jamaican
people. Many, many people in Jamaica, including lots of people who

were black, did not think of themselves in the way in which people
after the late 60s came to think of themselves as black. (Hall and
Back 662)

Hall’s critical reflection on blackness serves as one of the most important

inspirations for the discussion of this dissertation. He breaks the stereotype of seeing
Afro-Caribbean immigrants’ experience as “monolithic, self contained” (“New
31
Ethnicities” 22), and believes that people should embrace their own genetic feature,
and treat each part of their origin with respect. Following such an argument, Hall
proposes what he calls “new ethnicities”, and regards being both a person of color and

a Briton as an encouraging fact — contrary to the belief that the Afro-Caribbeans may
find no sense of belonging in their newly settled homeland.
Moral concerns, which for Max Pensky are “the only effective trump on a
transnational program of genocide” (263), also cast fundamental lights on the
cosmopolitanism framed in the dissertation. It is well documented that the awareness

of being “black” and the association of blackness with diaspora are long rooted in
history, which corresponds to, in Appiah’s argument on identities, the “economic,
political and cultural forces” (In My Father’s House 178). These forces all point to the
slavery history which, for Caryl Phillips, characterizes “the relationship of Britain and
the outside world for two-and-a-half centuries”, and has “deep reverberations still

today” (116). Approaching the literary world of Smith means, on the one hand, to
reach beyond blackness and ask the famous question from Josiah Wedgwood “Am I
not a man and a brother?”, and on the other hand, regards, according to James Walvin,
the Atlantic slavery as “the warp and the weft of British history itself” (169). The
specialty of Caribbean islands such as Jamaica (where Smith’s mother Yvonne comes

from) and Haiti (one of the foci in On Beauty) provides the dynamics of their local
cultures. As an integrated whole composed by a number of diversified elements, each
different culture transforms its outlooks through the movement of its carriers —
people moving across countries and continents. From such an interaction, the
cosmopolitan vitality rooted in diversified individuals while displaying universal

connections begins to form. In a word, regardless of origins or ethnicity, the

interaction of different people will mutually shape one other, and thence, create new
personal identities among contemporary metropolitan residents. The so-called
immigrants’ existence becomes an inseparable part of the locals’ history and identity,
and vice versa. In this regard, color blindness and color consciousness though

seemingly being a pair of opposite terms, actually complement one another. Being
color blind means people no longer struggle to rewrite self, especially all parts of self
32
to fit in the mode of a presumably superior other; and being color conscious points to
the appreciation of uniqueness, ethical or otherwise, associated with — though not
limited to — the ever transcending beauty. Smith’s characters are never “pure” but

“mixed” who often consciously reflect on and reevaluate their identities. Such a
reevaluation is an ongoing process, a “metamorphosis, [and] a polymorphy” (Kristeva,
Strangers to Ourselves 37).
Identity is a term that associates closely with the cosmopolitanism discussed in
this project, because being cosmopolitan means to balance and reconcile more than

one ethnical and cultural affiliation. Identity is not fixed or static because it cannot be
imposed or repudiated; instead, it is continuously changing, and constantly subject to
readjustment so as to fit in various environments. Further, identity is shaped jointly by
ethnicity, religious belief, cultural heritage, nationality, class, gender, and as Smith
believes, friendship. Multiple identities of a single individual will, ideally, form an

integrated whole where differences are respected and preserved. In a broad sense, a
collective identity consisting of cultural heritage and traditional rituals is not likely to
be eliminated. This is because although identity experiences changes and
transformations along the way, individual inheritance still plays an either subtle or
decisive role in people’s perception of their surroundings. As to Smith’s characters, in

order to feel comfortable with self- identity, it calls for a mutual recognition between
individuality and public surroundings. A community can provide a sense of belonging
for its members, but in turn, it also requires individuals’ recognition which signifies
that they care about their shared space and other members living in it. Lastly, identity
is defined by otherness, just as cosmopolitanism is fuelled by one’s perception of

otherness. It is not only “the other” that defines “who we are”. Our treatment of “the
other” also shapes our identity and “who we want to be”.
Smith, as a twenty-first century author, is different from her modern precursors
in terms of their cosmopolitanisms. In Cosmopolitan Style (2006), Rebecca Walkowitz
believes that, for the modern writers she examines, cosmopolitanism finds its impetus

in skepticism and reimagination, which reconstructs a Britishness through mixing- up

and colonized experiences. What seems problematic, along with the cases in Berthold
33
Schoene’s The Cosmopolitan Novel (2009), is that these modern fictionists’
cosmopolitanism is dominated by a sense of Britishness originated in the Victorian
time. In other words, such a cosmopolitanism becomes meaningful and reasonable

because it provides new interpretations which reaffirm — rather than challenge — the
traditional sense of authenticity, patriotism, and moral correctness. Smith in
comparison is unique because as a second generation immigrant writer, she has a
stronger sense of self-consciousness than her first generation counterparts, but at the
same time, she is more acutely aware of the sufferings endured by people of color

than her peers with only European lineage. Her cosmopolitanism is rooted in reality
and vitalized by her understanding about identity, morality, and beauty, which refrains
to be absolute. But nevertheless it possesses a determination for individuals to lead a
better life, and to benefit from a cosmopolitan attitude free from the sole European
scaffoldings .

Further, Smith’s cosmopolitanism distinguishes itself from its romanticized

counterpart. When literary critics argue that cosmopolitanism “opens up spaces for
empathy, connectivity, community and love” (McCulloch 185), provides possibility
for “imagining the world as one community or capturing it inside the vision of a
single narrative” (Schoene 13), and incarnates an “inclusive, egalitarian spirit”

contraposed to modern American materiality (McCluskey 19), they engage with a

sense of cosmopolitanism that is romantic, but in effect conceals “a strong nostalgia
for fixed identities, steady locations” (Braidotti 15) or a “thought experiment” that
distances itself from reality (Lu 30). The word deromanticizing, when used by
Tihanov in his discussion of exile and cosmopolitanism, indicates a contrast to

romanticism. For Tihanov, whereas romanticism “inscribes the exile in a nation-bound

collectivity” (“Narratives of Exile” 150), deromanticizing exile “relax[es] the bond
between language, literature and national culture” (152). The indication of
deromanticizing, in the context of this dissertation, is somehow different from the
connotation given by Tihanov. To deromanticize cosmopolitanism signifies a

cautiousness of not repeating the conventional interpretation of this term, which is

either a rosy imagination, or a Eurocentric-heterogeneous assertion, imperial and
34
totalitarian in nature. In his ground-breaking monograph Cosmopolitan Vision (2006),
Ulrich Beck reconceptualizes cosmopolitanism, contending that it has “left the realm
of philosophical castles in the air and has entered reality” (2), and a cosmopolitan

realism in his political theory preserves the existences of nations, and more
significantly, institutionalizes the toleration of national, ethnic, religious, and cultural
differences (176). In a different yet complementary dimension, the cosmopolitanism
that Smith displays concerns itself more with culture than politics, and lays more
emphasis on attitudes than objective facts. Echoing Beck’s opinion, Smith’s

cosmopolitanism is not a beautiful idea either, though this term in its traditional sense
has long been questioned for its romanticized indications. Heinrich Laube once
contends that the key concern at stake is whether cosmopolitanism can “take on a
concrete individual form” or not (qtd. in Beck 1). Laube’s argument, though dated
back to centuries ago, is still convincing in a certain way. This can be further proved

by scholars’ reactions to Martha C. Nussbaum’s article “Patriotism and

Cosmopolitanism”. Nussbaum’s interpretation of cosmopolitanism which offers “only
reason and the love of humanity” (“Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” 15) has been
questioned because of its “cozy idea of the universal” (Pinsky 88) and its distance
from social and political reality (Barber 31, Falk 57, Glazer 63, Gutmann 70,

McConnel 79). Imagining a world citizen, identity becomes so loose that no longer
possesses the essential attributes of an individual, and thus, cosmopolitanism in this
regard is “nice” and “high- minded” but virtually illusive (Himmelfarb 77).
In contrast, Smith’s cosmopolitanism is freed from the stereotypical
perceptions of this term; and it is a cosmopolitanism that is not ostensibly defined by

travelling worldwide, but indicates a status of mind that develops from but not simply
connects with heterogeneous conditions. Accordingly, the cosmopolitans in Smith’s
fiction may not be those who feel at home in different hotels around the world, but
those who interact with local cultures and communities. Maintaining its moral weight,
Smith in her fiction deromanticizes cosmopolitanism by presenting its close

connections with reality, and its impetus when confronting rather than sidestepping
life’s trauma. In terms of the relationship between trauma and cosmopolitanism, this
35
dissertation’s delineation is more individually-based than that of Biti’s, who
reconceptualizes trauma as an ever-developing phenomenon, corresponding to the
ever-evolving cosmopolitanism against the historical backdrop of imperialism,

colonization, and global democracy, among others (8-20). This dissertation outline’s a
sense of trauma that connects everyone, regardless of their agencies, and explores its
historical inertia, or to be specific, the post-slavery trauma endured by the characters’
in Smith’s fiction. In White Teeth, a traumatic feeling could be caused by migrancy, as
people and their descendents undergo a uprooted or rootless experience when they

encounter a strange self that is neither absolutely original or completely rebuilt. In The
Autograph Man, being traumatic is associated with identity confusion when people
struggle to balance and reconcile their varied traditions and heritage. In On Beauty,
immigrants’ trauma entails regarding blackness as a negative archetype, which is
reinforced time and again by the ghost- like colonial assertions and historically

imprinted prejudice. In NW, every single character seems to be traumatic in one way
or another, including the local and the newly arrived, and the affluent and the
impoverished. In Swing Time, the traumatic nowadays still connects with those of
Afro-Caribbean origins, whose ancestors endured one of the most inhumane
treatments in human history — slavery. Therefore, from multiple roots, various

heritage, vernacular beauty, ghettoized London, to post-slavery trauma, the five

chapters in this dissertation demonstrate Smith’s deromanticization of
cosmopolitanism. It is through the explication of such a cosmopolitanism that Smith
articulates the contemporary contradiction that most city dwellers have to face, and
more importantly, she also provides an acute reflection on how to deal with these

unavoidable conflicts and regain a new balance that is transformative both to

individuals, and probably to the communities that she cares about. The London, New
York, Boston, Caribbean islands, and African countries in Smith’s works are places
smaller than the globe, but, to quote Bhabha, “more complex in their scale, [and]
more densely peopled by liminal lifelines” (Appiah and Bhabha 189). Her fiction, in

this regard, outlines a cosmopolitanism that currently exists in the metropolis and
concerns everyone.
36
Organization
Apart from the introduction and the conclusion, each of the five chapters of this
dissertation explores one aspect of Smith’s cosmopolitanism, with each novel

demonstrating one deromanticized feature of Smith’s cosmopolitanism through the

lenses of varied roots, postsecular return of religion, vernacular beauty, ghettoized
urban space and mentality, and modern “slavery”. What can be construed hereof is an
ever-developing cosmopolitanism that is not norm-oriented or stereotyped, but
dynamic and multifaceted. The significance of Smith’s cosmopolitanism is

continuously deepened and enriched throughout her fictional creation, and is reflected
in her increasingly critical perception of stereotypes.
Chapter one “White Teeth: Attaining a Cosmopolitan Identity” unfolds its
discussion by revealing the three steps of becoming a cosmopolitan, which
commences with extremity, passing through internally contradictory judgment, and

ends with an encouraging indeterminacy. The characters holding various attitudes

towards roots draw different life trajectories, struggling to balance their identity as a
Londoner and a person with African or Asian origins. An extreme attitude towards
roots will make people feel trapped in a dilemma between seeking for an authenticity
and the inability of being re-rooted. The first generation immigrants may find it

difficult to preserve their roots while at the same time accepting the new elements in
an “exotic” social environment. For the second generation immigrants, who are not, to
some extent, uprooted, tend to suffer from a sense of rootlessness if they determine to
seek for a nonnegotiable identity. In order to break this dilemma, regaining a self
which neither feels rootless nor seeks to be authentically rooted, Smith, through the

depiction of the English local Archibald and the transformation of the second
generation immigrant Irie, outlines the intermediate attitude of a cosmopolitan. It is an
attitude which helps people to balance the unchangeable, the inheritable, and the
obtained, to leverage the synthesis between these differences, and to reconstruct the
relationship between static authenticity and an ever-developing self.

Chapter two “The Autograph Man: Postsecular Return of Religion” reveals

Smith’s contemplation on the co-existing and co-creative relationship between the
37
traditionally incompatible elements, including in particular, various religious heritage
in one single identity, and religion’s meaningful return to a secular society. This novel
represents the co-creative feature in Smith’s cosmopolitanism, which continues to

show its impact on her later works. Treating the established Jewish and Zen motifs
with equal attentiveness, this novel combines together Jewish tradition kaddish, the
Kabbalistic Tree of Life in Jewish Mysticism, Zen sayings, Zen stories, and Shi Niu
Tu (The Pictures of Ten Bulls) painted and annotated by Chinese Zen master Kuo-an. 9
If chapter one examines how accepting one’s self, tradition, and cultural heritage will

liberate people from the trap of absolute authenticity, then chapter two is about how
embracing varied religious traditions will bring positive transformation to individuals.
It argues that the secular and the sacred, instead of being mutually exclusive to each
other, exert a joint influence on their inheritors. Being postsecular indicates religion’s
lasting influence on modern identity. Although people nowadays are no longer defined

exclusively by their religious affiliations, they consciously behave accordingly to

certain doctrines while refusing to be completely framed by established rituals. Smith
shows such a co-creative process between the sacred and the profane, depicting
people’s negotiation and their reconciliation with various heritage.
Chapter three “On Beauty: Blackness and the Vernacular” interprets Smith’s

revisit to beauty in light of Bhabha’s explication of the vernacular in its cultural

dimension, which transcends the dialectical relation and refers to cosmopolitan
dynamics from people in-between and across borders. Smith’s cosmopolitanism gains
its impetus by discovering the unexpected connections across the Atlantic, as she
parallels Haitian art, including its painting and music, with the European artistic

treasure. Her cosmopolitanism, influenced by her own background and experience,

starts from blackness — which disturbs African Americans and leaves them with a
mindset of self-discrimination — and ends with blackness, which is sustained and
appreciated with vernacular beauty, coexisting rather than being replaced by its
European counterpart. Accompanied with various struggles caused by the

consciousness of the seemingly “inferior” race and origin, Smith ultimately

9
Hereinafter The Pictures of Ten Bulls is referred to as “Ten Bulls” for short.
38
deconstructs the fixed classification of Black art and European art, as well as the
seemingly beneficial yet actually lifeless education offered by institutionalized
authorities. A continually enriched cosmopolitanism is generated, when Smith’s

characters achieve self-recognition by engaging with the vernacular beauty in their

identity.
Chapter four “NW: Cosmopolitan and Ghettoized London” shows Smith’s return
to her familiar home city, with mixed feelings. On the one hand, she appreciates its
natural beauty, which provides endless inspiration for literati, regardless of their class,

ethnicity, or gender. On the other hand, an urban space, encompassing prosperity and
trauma, expressive wealth and hidden moral corruption, is a ghetto dwelling place for
both the so-called prioritized and the disenfranchised. Smith does not judge nor has a
preference to any of the four protagonists, even though, in the eyes of the public, one
is a wealthy and successful barrister, one is a kind and ordinary social service worker,

one is a slum- raised and freshly reformed ex-addict, and one is a neglected and
precarious hustler. Their changing relationship with others, from intimacy, admiration,
estrangement, avoidance, misunderstanding to reconciliation, reflects their altering
attitudes towards self. Smith, like a guide showing protagonists’ pathways of
self-rediscovery, associates personal attitudes with specific locations, from streets and

stations, to cathedrals and bridges. Being morally realistic means Smith will continue
to blur the established social boundaries, challenging the classifications that restrain
the public from interpreting the identity of immigrants and locals, the successful and
the less successful from an unbiased and non- fixed perspective. Hence, it articulates a
wish for a beyond-stereotype treatment for the council estate children who are

currently disenfranchised and left with limited chance for a better life.
Chapter five “Swing Time: Post-slavery Trauma and Cosmopolitan Prospects”
elucidates, through Smith’s doubling and contrasting, an ostensible cosmopolitanism,
a morally convincing cosmopolitan attitude, the contemporary mental enslavement,
and the ongoing influence of servitude which reinforces the historical trauma of

slavery. As Smith’s latest and most sophisticated novel, it is also the most
deromanticized and humane one. It displays a circle of poverty suffered by African
39
Americans and African Britons, reflects the sense of shadowness endured by people
of color, and critically implies social stereotypes’ responsibility for offering the
“black” people and their offspring with no chance but deterioration. However, more

importantly, Smith, in contemplation of a promising future, revisits blackness in its

original form, and gives an account for a cosmopolitan value blessed by love and
forgiveness, which helps individuals achieve self-salvation. By shedding lights on
characters’ different attitudes towards violence, this chapter presents the dynamic
relationship between cosmopolitanism, cruelty, and forgiveness, and proves that it is

only when people free themselves from stereotyped minds and forgive the
unforgivable can they become cosmopolitan, and advantageously embrace the
uniqueness and otherness of their identities.

40
 Chapter 1 White Teeth: Attaining a Cosmopolitan Identity

Opinions on Smith’s White Teeth still linger under the shadow of the effects of
colonialism and its interrelationship with contemporary multiculturalism (Ciribuco,

Head “Zadie Smith”, Muñoz-Valdivieso, Tew The Contemporary, Upstone “Same

Old”, Watts), but few researches place their emphases on the cosmopolitan attitudes
that are gradually obtained by some of the characters in the novel. This chapter, by
having an insight into the characters in White Teeth, presents a process of becoming a
cosmopolitan, which starts from extremity, passes though the feeling of equivocation,

and finally reaches a status of harmonious indeterminacy. The novel encompasses a

constant negotiation among origin, colonial trauma, and authentic self, includes
subjects of science and humanity, touches on the multi- religious social reality, and
ends with the birth of a girl who has a Jamaican-English mother, a Bangladeshi
London born-and-bred biological father, and a Jewish German-English stepfather.

This novel epitomizes a racial utopia in the young Smith’s mind, who imaged the
world based on her living experience in London’s Indo-Pakistani community and her
undergraduate years in Cambridge. There are comparative studies between Smith and
Sam Salvon, Salman Rushdie, and Kureishi, among others. Their reflection on
immigrants’ identity reveals that part of the British history is made by the Caribbean-,

African-, and Asian-rooted Britons. Different from her twentieth-century predecessors,

Smith, as a second generation immigrant, bears both the inherited historical trauma
and a sense of belonging to Britain, and White Teeth is her initial response to her
varied heritage and hybrid identity.
This chapter starts with a discussion on the relationship between White Teeth and

Smith’s personal impression on race and racism in England. It then addresses the
process of attaining a cosmopolitan identity, beginning from absoluteness and ends
with indeterminacy. Smith suggests that her novels do not directly mirror her
experience as a second generation immigrant. However, her brown skin, her Jamaican
origin, her Cambridge education background, and her growing- up experience in a

41
London borough, do not merely pass through the narrative. Her own experience and
identity, as a source of autobiographical inspiration, shapes her literal depiction of
London and its residents. Although blackness has long been an issue explored by the

twentieth century outstanding scholars such as Fanon, the blackness that Smith’s
generation and later generations faces today is more multilayered. It is associated with
roots and inseparable from self-consciousness, emphasizing the acknowledgement of
the uniqueness and value of self. For immigrants in White Teeth, a lack of
self-consciousness directly leads to a feeling of uprootedness and rootlessness. The

former is a feeling caused by an either voluntary or forced attempt of departing from

their origin, whereas the later is a negative version of in-betweenness. Enduring
rootlessness indicates the incapability of feeling at home in any place, which in turn
hinders the possibility of being multi-rooted, let alone gaining a cosmopolitan sense
of self. By exploring the reasons behind immigrants’ traumatic feelings, this chapter

provides an insight into the characters’ various attitudes towards a multi- identity,
highlighting the value of becoming an intermediate cosmopolitan rather than a
fundamentalist, or racist in reverse. It concludes that for immigrants who are caught
between different cultures, it is only when they start to accept the contingent and
inheritable parts of self, can they benefit from their hybridity and treat others with

equal respect.
1.1 Smith’s Cos mopolitan Novel
White Teeth demonstrates the indeterminacy of Smith’s cosmopolitanism.
Indeterminacy refers to a fluxed inclusivity, which serves as a fundamental argument
of Hall’s identity portrayal, as he proposes that new ethnicities should be approached

with a both/and attitude, reaching beyond the strict categorizations such as

Englishness, Britishness, and Jewishness. “[B]lacks in the British diaspora must, at
this historical moment, refuse the binary Black or British” but rather “Black and
British” (Hall, “What is this ‘black’” 261). Indeterminacy makes it possible for
identity to be “free[d] of constraint” (Sell 39), and therefore, stimulates positivity, and

nurtures a “more humane achievement” in Smith (42). It is an attitude that will help
people to step out of the dilemma of trying to escape the unavoidable environment
42
that one is nonetheless absorbed in, or searching for an authentic self when the static
and hegemonic authenticity has been challenged in every local community where the
once incompatible factors coexist with one another. These social and personal changes

lead to a reconsideration of immigrants and identity, which should be approached

beyond the stereotyped tags, such as diaspora, trauma, and strangeness. The reason is
that firstly, the feeling of diaspora is universal, not merely related to immigrants;
secondly, as Kristeva argues, “the foreigner lives within us” (Strangers to Ourselves
1), and therefore, otherness is ubiquitous in ourselves; and thirdly, as people are

constantly on the move, the act of migration enjoys such a long history that
immigrants, along with the transformations brought by them, have become an integral
part of almost every civilization. Immigrants and locals are defined on a relative basis,
and their interrelationship is dominant in Smith’s fiction. The novel articulates a hope
that as immigrants, people may refrain from the eagerness to completely “erase” the

original self so as to become an “imagined and superior” other. White Teeth, as the
starting point of Smith’s negotiation with contemporary identity, indicates the
significance of treating self as a stranger — an endeavor for each person to value and
appreciate their varied heritage while embracing the new elements in their second
home country.

White Teeth is fueled by border crossing attributes. It contains a transhistorical,

transcontinental, transracial, and transcultural story of three families: a biracial
marriage between a local Englishman Archie (a descendent of a farmer), a Jamaican
immigrant Clara (a granddaughter of a maid), and their brown daughter Irie; a Bengali
couple named Samad, Alsana and their twin sons Magid (elder brother) and Millat,

who, after migrating to England, are often unpleasantly referred to as “Pakis” (so do
many other Bengalis); and a German-origin Jewish family the Chalfens, who possess
an attitude of superiority, feel proud of their “good genes”. The indication of the
book’s title, apart from the more obvious connection with people, especially colored
people’s teeth, might be interpreted from a differentiated perspective: since white is

the opposite color of black, and “teeth” have roots, when placing the two words
together, it stimulates a contemplation of the complex relationship of roots,
43
uprootedness, and rootlessness, and the hegemonic indication between blackness and
whiteness, or between migrancy and identity exclusion. 10 White Teeth, along with
Smith’s other long fictional books, is a cosmopolitan novel, which is neither dedicated

to “protect[ing] minority rights” (Walkowitz, Born Translated 121) nor narrated

“across several continents, regions, or national territories” (125) simply for the sake of
displaying an ostensible mixture. 11
A cosmopolitan novel is not necessarily defined exclusively by trans- and
multicultural factors but also places emphasis on personal value and cultural

engagement, although heterogeneity usually lays the fundamentals for such fiction.
For example, V.S. Naipaul’s sense of being cosmopolitan is merely recognizable in
terms of physical movement. As to Naipaul’s mimic man, for example, he is
cosmopolitan because he is a visitor from a distant place, having roots in a world
beyond the local’s imagination (The Mimic Man 66). However, this dissertation

contends that being cosmopolitan relates to one’s mindset, and a cosmopolitan attitude
is an ever-developing consciousness driven by personal encounters. A cosmopolitan
novel naturalizes the interactions between the exotic and the familiar, delineating a
cosmopolitanism which never lacks of trauma and unpleasantness. Smith follows, if
using Amitav Ghosh’s words, “a logic completely contrary to that which modern

expectations suggest” (260) 12 , reflecting on the reason of being and becoming a

cosmopolitan, and the significance of doing so in fictionally contextualized London,
New York, Boston, and African countries.
10
Identity exclusion here refers to the exclusiveness in Englishness, Britishness, and more broadly, Europeanness
as well as in Americentrism and racial centrism. For another interpretation of the title “White Teeth” see Tew’s
discussion of Karin E. Westman’s opinion, which is about the “dangers of deracination and the equally perilous
pursuit of origins at the expense of the present” (Tew, Zadie Smith 46).
11
For Walkowitz, multistranded novels have “narrative action across several continents, regions, or national
territories … their chapters move back and forth among several points of view. Like an anthology or an atlas, they
gather materials drawn from disparate geographies (121), and she believes that the “doctrine of multiculturalism”
is to seek to protect minority rights (125). Neither of these perceptions can be related to the dominate features of
Smith’s cosmopolitan novels. Smith is a moral realist who sensitively depicts social life in a way that is mixed
with harshness, failure, and confusion, but nonetheless is engaged with a transformation process of individuals,
and is driven by a vision of hope and promising future.
12
Cosmopolitanism seems to be a natural and ordinary phenomenon centuries ago when people’s understanding
was not framed by determined prejudice and stereotyped perceptions. Ghosh’s In an Antique Land (1992), depicts
an actualized cosmopolitanism extending beyond nowadays people’s understanding of cosmopolitans and slavery.
Cosmopolitanism seems to be an integrated part of daily life in the 11th century, when “a Jewish merchant,
originally of Tunisia, who had gone to India by way of Egypt, as a trader, and had spent seventeen years there”
(19). The relationship between a so-called slave Bomma and his master Ben Yiju in the M iddle Ages are different
from the social phenomenon of slavery in sixteen century Europe, and when “Ben Yiju gave Bomma a fairly
generous monthly allowance while he was in Aden— two dinars a month, or about the wage of any artisan” (256).
44
 White Teeth demonstrates a coming-of-age process of becoming a cosmopolitan.
Smith’s cosmopolitan style in White Teeth is characterized by the positivity of the
young prodigy’s eagerness to redefine herself — not as a tragic “mulatto” — but a
13
person with distinguished self- identity. It is noteworthy that Smith’s
cosmopolitanism distances itself from the hysterical realism, the inability of stillness,
and the intertwining, all of which are the comments on White Teeth made by James
Wood. The reason is that being together is a physical fact and can be achieved by
external force, whereas being cosmopolitan is a choice that can only be achieved

through personal transformation. In Smith’s own case, she develops from a usually
“stoned” teenage girl, to a public- funded student in Cambridge, and then to a
successful writer and university professor who constantly travels back and forth
between London and New York. Her role as an immigrant, a writer, a mother, and a
daughter makes the exploration of friendship, kinship, and other relationship a natural

part of her writing, while her life-changing trajectory inspires her to envision a
promising future. In this regard, White Teeth shares the similarity with Iris Murdoch’s
remark on Jerome David Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951): the overwhelming
presence of characters, not necessarily in an autobiographical sense, is made possible
because of the presence of the author (Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful

Revisited” 266).
White Teeth constructs the colonial history and immigrants’ memories in an open
manner, which, quoting Derrida, “can never be saturated or sutured” (9). Smith is a
second generation immigrant who experiences inheritable trauma of racism, and
contemplates through writing the “kaleidoscopic” immigrants’ life in England. Being

neutral and contented with self- identity seems a luxury for Smith’s mother, but a
destination that her daughter intents to reach, both in her writing and in reality. Smith
recalls the unpleasant memory of her parent’s honeymoon and early life:

13
Smith expresses the feeling of being a hybrid girl in lineage, but only a “black” girl in social recognition. “I
suppose it’s possible that subconsciously I am also a tragic mulatto, torn between pride and shame. In my
conscious life, though, I cannot honestly say I feel proud to be white and ashamed to be black or proud to be black
and ashamed to be white. I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in
which I had no active part. I understand how those words got into the racial discourse, but I can’t sign up to them.
I’m not proud to be female either. I am not even proud to be human—I only love to be so. As I love to be female
and I love to be black, and I love that I had a white father.” (Changing My Mind 142)
45
 … my parents went to two places, Morocco and Paris. And in Paris,
they couldn’t get a hotel room—they had to come home.

Everywhere they went, they were turned away. And even in the
early days when they were trying to rent apartments, she said she
would phone and ask for a room and be told it was free, and then
turn up and be told it wasn’t free. She kept experimenting and
making the distance between those two events as short as possible,

so she would phone from the end of the road and turn up two
minutes later and it would never change: she was always told the
room wasn’t free. (qtd. in Wachtel 326)

Almost a decade before Smith was born, Enoch Powell made his “Rivers of

Blood” speech in 1968, conveying the conservative MPs’ and their constituencies’
message that immigrants were intruders, who not only posed a threat to community,
changed England’s landscape, but more severely would turn Britain into a “black”
dominated island. As a consequence, race emerged “in the late 1960s with Powell into
the public arena”, and “the impact of continuing large-scale Asian and black

immigration” was exploited by both parties for their own political benefits (Spencer
147). It is under the circumstance of Powell’s rallying-exclamation of “stopping, or
virtually stopping, further inflow, and … promoting the maximum outflow”, that
immigrants including Smith’s mother suffer the discrimination. After Powell’s speech,
Margaret Thatcher in 1978 also states that British is “swamped” by people with a

different culture. 14 The newness immigrants brought into the community seems to
frighten the entire neighborhood, let alone being tolerated, understood, or accepted.
Regardless of Smith’s saying that she “didn’t grow up in an England that is overly
racist” (Wachtel 326), her mother’s experience arouses a conscious trauma, as she
says:

14
The complete transcript of the interview is available on the website of M argaret Thatcher Foundation,
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103485. Access August 6, 2018.
46
 My mother used to work in social work and she definitely saw that
process of passing on and how desperate and depressing that is when

families pass on their traumas from one generation to the next and I
think you can have historical traumas. (qtd. in O’Grady)

Trauma is inheritable, but it is also open for re- interpretation. When Smith in the
book casts her eyes on the life in Bangladesh, what is equally disastrous to the

country’s natural disaster such as flood and cyclone is its continuing diaspora, as
“people of Bangladesh” are “formerly East Pakistan formerly India, formerly Bengal”
(White Teeth 176). Smith’s Jamaicans are also the diasporic in a traditional sense, who
enjoy a non-ceasing appearance in her fictional world, including the young wife Clara
Jones in White Teeth, and the unnamed narrator’s self-educated and strong-minded

mother in Swing Time. Hall believes that Caribbean immigrants represent “the first,
the original and the purest diaspora” (Hall, “Negotiating Caribbean Identities” 283).
The descendents of slaves bartered in the triangular transatlantic trade who come back
to Britain as new immigrants, as Hall argues, are “twice diasporized” — they not only
have diasporic ancestors but also experience diasporic feeling in the unfamiliar

England. Being conscious about the alienness and trauma that immigrants have to
face, Smith uses this confession as an objection, casting doubt on the easy stereotype
between immigrants and identity crisis. As she writes, it is impossible for them to
“change course at any moment” (384). They are not as presumedly “happy and
willing to leave their difference at the docks and take their chances in this new place,

merging with the oneness of this green and pleasant libertarian land of the free” (384).
Moreover, as for the general reference “black”, it points to groups of people originally
from Asia, Caribbean, and Africa, who are individuals of uniqueness, and carry with
them various blackness that Smith particularly in favor of and wishes to explore.
If there is one thing that is universal in Smith’s immigrants, that is the

intermediary in their identities. Paul Gilroy articulates such indeterminacy in his

introduction to The Autobiography of Malcolm X: “people are not fixed or closed
47
products of their circumstances.” (“Introduction” 8). Being exposed to a new
environment, and accordingly reestablishing the identity that is no longer “pure” but
mixed, one might act with extremity, trying to find an authentic self. However, what

may also emerge from that interaction is an encouraging cosmopolitanism. In White

Teeth, some characters manage to gradually embrace their hybrid identities while
others still struggle in a stereotyped trauma, unable to move forward or backward and
consequently becoming victims of circumstance. Smith’s cosmopolitans share the
virtue with Bhabha’s vernacular cosmopolitans, who are able to “lead lives that are

part of a recognizable and shared sense of civic virtue while maintaining their cultural
differences, their language, food, festivals, religious customs” (Bhabha, “The
Vernacular Cosmopolitan” 139). The quality that Bhabha delineates can only be
gained through continuous struggles and painstaking efforts, as he also recalls: “Every
time I hear, ‘Paki go home!’ I sense deep fear and resentment on the part of the racist

– whether he is White or Black” (ibid). Therefore, when dealing with the issue of
blackness and migrancy in the novel, it is probably appropriate to avoid the
perspective of racism in reverse, but approach the book through the lens of a
cosmopolitanism in the making.
In this regard, it is helpful to approach cosmopolitanism beyond the pre-arranged

understanding or a rosy vision of social utopia. Hall believes that there is an

actualized cosmopolitanism that contributes to defining modern identity, and Rushdie
expresses similar opinions that being cosmopolitan seems to be the only appropriate
response to this increasingly heterogeneous society. 15 Even if Rushdie’s mélange or
Jeremy Waldron’s “limitless diversity of character” (“Minority Cultures” 791) are

proper responses to this multifaceted world, it is essential to be aware of the dilemma

immigrants may face when they confront differences. It means that the limitless

15
See Hall’s 2009 article “Political Belonging in a World of M ultiple Identities”. He praises the 1950s British
immigrants, who are strongly marked by their unique cultural identities, but engage actively and successfully with
the local community. They share the universal values with other local residents while maintaining their diversified
customs passed down for generations from their ancestors. For Hall, this is the cosmopolitan identity that suits best
for this modern cosmopolitan environment. For Rushdie, it is through mélange and hotchpotch that newness comes
to the world. Here newness indicates changes, which can only be achieved by fusion and conjoining (In Good
Faith 4). Both of them suggest that being cosmopolitan is a demanding feature and an unavoidable trend in this
world of mobility.
48
diversity might not create a cosmopolitan vision as rosy as people have imagined. In
White Teeth, characters reflect various reactions towards their forced or voluntarily
made “cosmopolitan” experience which never lacks of extreme feelings and behaviors,

and which simultaneously contains encouraging changes of harmonious coexistence

of different heritage in a single identity.
1.2 Beginning: A Dilemma without Reconciliation
Extremity and indeterminacy are two themed features in the characters’ reaction
towards their identity building. Such indeterminacy, however, does not come

effortlessly but turbulently, a status which is achieved after the characters have gone
through depression and hysteria. An immigrant’s attitudes towards an exotic culture
and the forced changes brought by it might be paradoxical. With their memories of
motherland, and their emerging self in the “new land”, they may develop the double
consciousness in W. E. B. Du Bois’s definition. Some may feel urged to deny the old

self and to develop a new one or vice versa. A more encouraging endeavor, as Bhabha
delineates in “the vernacular cosmopolitan”, is that they could eventually reach a
destination where his/her multiple selves co-exist harmoniously — not as strangers
but as friends. Different types of immigrants, who hold either conservative (extreme)
or open (indeterminate) attitudes towards identity make their appearances in White

Teeth, and what should be avoided is to mark them as fervent extremists,

fundamentalists, or cosmopolitans, because their identity building is a process, the
development of which is influenced by social interactions and personal encounters.
The characters in the book can be roughly categorized into three groups. Some of the
immigrants are more extreme or intermediate than others, and their distinct

dispositions may lead to varied life trajectories. First, some of the immigrants from
Asia do not manage to, as Kristeva argues, “come back constantly to [their] … origins
(biographies, childhood memories, family) in order better to transcend them”
(Kristeva, Nation without Nationalism 4). Equally, for the immigrants whose
ancestors moved from Europe to England, the arrogance of believing in the

superiority of certain roots makes it impossible for them to treat self or others with
openness. Second, there are contradictory characters who are both the supporters and
49
condemners of cultural interaction. Third, there are immigrants and locals who hold
an ever-developing attitude towards differences and inherited cultures; their deeds and
behaviors reflect a cosmopolitanism of indeterminacy which encourages people to

embrace their cross-boundariness.

The self-consciousness entailed in the characters of White Teeth is partly in the
same tune with Hegel’s definition of this concept. Self-consciousness is different from
ego or stubbornness. In Hegel’s sense, ego is characterized by a sense of exclusion, a
solid singleness, and has an essential and absolute nature (Hegel 231-45).

Self-consciousness comes into being through the recognition of and a correlation with
others, as it “exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the fact that it exists for
another self-consciousness” (229). Lacking self-consciousness may result in an
uncertain feeling about self, low confidence in the future, and an intense and
somehow desperate desire to reestablish a “preferable” identity. What is of great

significance in the interaction with others is people’s inclination to and capability of

balancing the contingently contradictory elements, including (multiple) roots and
tradition. In White Teeth, Smith exceeds the hierarchical relationship between self and
other in self-consciousness. Specifically, her immigrants might not be appropriately
defined in a binary sense, as the book questions the opinion that without the white and

the local, the Asian and African Britons’ identity will collapse.
Preserving and respecting roots are different from supporting or advocating
fundamentalism. Instead, it points to a transformation of mind which distances itself
from viewing identity as fixed, but appeals to the idea of identity as performed. It
should not be marked by a split from one’s tradition, but by an emergence of

in-betweenness that neither subject to a pregiven identity nor to a completed rewritten

self. A tentative cosmopolitanism, in a post-ethnic world, “acknowledge that ethnicity
plays a role in individual and communal identity, but identity and community more
generally are founded on voluntary and socially constructed affiliations” (Magid 23).
Shaul Magid draws an outline of a post-ethnic world, which focuses more on the

ethnic as a subject per se, and less on the metaphysical significance of each entity. In
other words, one should “reject the idea that descent is destiny” (24). As David
50
Hollinger reflects, it is impossible to be “cultural clones” of parents or grandparents
(“Communalist and Dispersionist Approaches” 23). To interpret this from a different
perspective, people’s fundamentalist behaviors may consequently force them into

impasse. Therefore, although it is important to embrace the traditional fundamentals

in life, which forms an initial part of people’s sense of existence, what is equally
crucial in this changing environment is to obtain a capability to balance the
multifaceted facets in identity.
Compared to her precursors, Smith’s London is different from Selvon’s London,

and her presentation of blackness is not identical to Fanon’s elucidation of the same
term. When Appiah confesses that “you shouldn’t let my own storytelling convince
you that the prospects for a liberal cosmopolitanism are as rosy as I am making them
out to be” (The Ethics of Identity 271), he happens to cast light on the nature of
Smith’s cosmopolitanism — it constituents part of the ever-changing reality, with no

lack of imperfectability. In the literary context of White Teeth, such imperfectability

points to humiliation, discrimination, and injustice, which go hand in hand with the
characters’ struggle in defining self- identity. Smith believes in the diversity of
blackness, or put it differently, questions the ostensibly natural association between
being black and being the other. In White Teeth, Smith gives a particular close shot of

the harshness of the life of immigrants, but she is never as absolute as Fanon, who
says: “My blackness was there, dark and unarguable. And it tormented me, pursued
me, disturbed me, angered me” (Fanon 117). Considering the severe racism across the
Atlantic during the second half of the twentieth century, it is understandable that in
Fanon’s perception, racial discrimination is largely taken for granted and tortures the

disenfranchised. In Smith’s book, however, there are changes and breakthroughs in

terms of the interpretation of race and blackness. She inherits the traumatic memories
from her Jamaican mother, but always sees something promising in her community.
Otherness, in Smith’s writing, is also extended, including anyone who lacks the sense
of belonging.

Constantly looking back to the self in its imagined original form while ignoring
the present self put individuals at the risk of losing self in a new “homeland”. In White
51
Teeth, seeking for authenticity can lead to extremes — a) a sense of emptiness and
rootlessness, b) a desire to return to an imagined, original self, and c) a determination
to reform self with acculturation. As to the first occasion, the silent Darcus Bowden,

father of Clara, sets an example. Like most Huguenots, Jews, Caribbean people, and
Bangladeshis who came to “golden London” (Kershen 7) with a dream of making a
fortune and then bringing family members to the “mother England”, Darcus was once
ambitious but soon becomes despondent when faces the harshness in life. He then
relies on stillness to escape reality, and avoids advancement or stepping into a new

environment. Living in isolation, his role as a father and husband is minimized, and
what is subsequently emptied is his complex identity as an Afro-Caribbean Briton.
However, if the community and social environment at large is complex, people may
need to face it with equal complication. Darcus represents one extreme in migrancy
identity, a “paralyzed” status.

Smith’s immigrants who determine to find an authentic self are divided into two
categories: they either deny everything that is different from the traditional, or
contrarily, they admire everything (usually) belonging to a dominating culture, while
denying those originating from their traditional heritage. Just as people are not able to
achieve a balance in life by avoiding exterior facts, one cannot presume that the issue

of identity building will be solved by directly pushing children back to the original
homeland, or planting conventional traditions in their ideology. Samad is such an
immigrant who is nostalgic about the past and hostile towards the present. His
understanding of roots forms a contrast with its counterpart in Appiah’s definition. For
Appiah, diversified roots should be celebrated, and being patriotic does not prevents

people from becoming a cosmopolitan. On the contrary, for Samad, roots are defined
in a singular and absolute sense. Enduring the enormous change from a proud
Bangladeshi with belief to a one-hand, London restaurant servant without self-esteem,
Samad has an obsession with roots. He places great emphasis on roots: “I’m a Muslim
and a Man and a Son and a Believer” (101), verifying Bryan S. Turner ’s social

observation that his religion and ideology are fundamentally incompatible with
western values (195). If, as he says “… tradition was culture, and culture led to
52
roots … untainted principles” (161), then the core of his contention is an
unconditional purification, with no traces of western impact.
Moving to a different country marks a new staring point for a person, but also

arouses a feeling of discontinuity in life. This entails conflicts and antegonism

(Friedel 7), pointing to the contradictory nature of modern identity. For Samad, he
sees in his community the cultural mosaic, or physical coexistence of different
ethnicities and languages, which nevertheless has no association with cosmopolitan
harmony. Furthermore, roots which carry the indication of partiality and locality do

not necessarily form a counterforce with cosmopolitanism. Instead, what comes into
being can be a rooted cosmopolitanism, which combines the partial and the universal.
This concept is not static (Appiah, The Ethics of Identity 256) but provides a fertile
ground for exploring inter-ethnic subjectivities and the ever-complicated
contemporary identity. 16 According to Appiah, being patriotic and cosmopolitan, the

two seemingly contradictory elements, actually support each other, echoing the
feature of modern identity whose components also consist of traditionally
incompatible entities. This does not mean that identities back to early times are
uncomplicated, but the background of this research is the era of globalization — a
time when multicultural experiences are taken for granted, lacking a serious reflection

on how to deal with such heterogeneity within and between self and other. If people
deny the other with a motivation of preserving an enclosed self, they tend to feel
incapable of retaining a viable identity without going extreme or becoming
fundamentalists. Since many engagements are forced and many identities are
reestablished involuntarily, “our identities are neither wholly scripted for us nor

wholly scripted by us” (The Ethics of Identity 256). It is against this backdrop that
Appiah articulates: “A cosmopolitanism with prospects must reconcile a kind of
universalism with the legitimacy of at least some forms of partiality” (223). Roots in

16
M ulticulturalism, in my definition, is problematic because of its preconception of an internally clear-cut
boundary between difficult cultures. M ulticulturalism reinforces the different between cultures, emphasizes
parallelization of self-isolated social groups (Bruckner, qtd. in Habermas 25), and consequently, highlights senses
of estrangement and otherness among cultures. Cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, is “not a celebration of the
beauty of a collection of closed boxes (Appiah, The Ethics of Identity 256), which accepts the dynamic
interconnected between cultures, and is aware of the interdeterminated relationship between cultures.
53
Appiah’s mind is related to partiality, which is another way of expressing the mutually
shaping and coexisting relationship between one’s own tradition and the newly
acquired culture (237).

Samad might belong to the classification of “old” immigrants who suffers from
involuntary diaspora (“Cosmopolitan Patriots” 618), and who cannot “live in harmony
without agreeing on underlying values” (Appiah, Cosmopolitanism 78). He is like a
“unidevotionalist” in Michael Cohen’s mind, who legitimates only particularisms that
are usually conceived in their own ways (Cohen 483). Such a patriotism, absolute and

imaginary, exhausts him. Instead of starting a new life in England and becoming a
rooted cosmopolitan loving both his homeland and new country, he determines to find
his authenticity, in the process of which he builds an invisible barricade between him
and his family, friends, and society. Samad’s dilemma is partly caused by his static
attitude towards identity, who “fight[s] against the new, [and] hold[s] on to tradition”

(150). An ancestor ’s anecdote (Mangal Pande in Indian Mutiny), however vague and
uncertain it is, provides a sense of certainty and helps Samad to gain a sense of
self-consciousness. Being a descendent of a man with masculine heroism is the single
source of pride for him. Eager to establish a parallel connection with his ancestors, he
leaves physical marks in the world, an engraved full name on a bench at Trafalgar

Square which is as static as his much obsessed traditions and conventions. Holding
them dearly, he traps himself in an imagined identity that is too absolute to be held. As
a Bangladeshi young man, he is “erudite, handsome, light-skinned” (94), “a student, a
scientist, [and] a soldier” (49); as an Asian-Britain servant, he exclaims in silence that
“I should be soaring with the Royal Airborne Force … I am an officer! … My

great-grandfather Mangal Pande … was the great hero of the Indian Mutiny!” (74-75).
Samad’s memory is a continuum of traumatization, or quoting Bhabha’s comment’s
on Fanon: “Remembering is never a quiet act of introspection or retrospection. It is a
painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of
the trauma of the present” (The Location of Culture 63). Such a mindset further

reinforces the barricades between the imaginarily old and the presently new.
Samad’s misfortune is typical among immigrants, a paralyzed feeling of not
54
being able to enter the new “home” or go back to the old one. He confesses that he
has no sense of belonging in anywhere. “Go back to Bengal? Or to Delhi? Who would
have such an Englishman there? To England? Who would have such an Indian?” (95).

A similar expression is found in Samad’s restaurant colleague Shiva, who asks:

“[w]ho … can pull the West out of ‘em [them] once it’s in?” (121). It is in this regard
that Samad is labeled as colonized, and his frustration is produced by the historical
conditions of British imperialism, racism, and colonization (Gustar 334). However,
apart from the impression of a traumatic immigrant, Samad is not without attractive

qualities. He is blessed with two sons, valued by his English friend Archibald, attracts
his sons’ music teacher, and manages to lead a better life through hard work.
Therefore, his diaspora and hysteria are not simply caused by displacement, but more
overwhelmingly, by an eagerness to reinforce an imagined self- identity. Such
reinforcement is largely achieved through conducting religious rituals and customs.

Contending that being irreligious is shameful (207), and regarding England as a land
of corruption, Samad seems like a “fervent” believer. He requests his children to be
extremely “pure”, or to be the upholders of traditions. What follows is an even
stronger determination to prove self-authenticity, completed through extreme yet
invalid means. His sense of in-betweenness leads to rootlessness, and his

understanding of blackness casts a shadow over his relationships.

It is notable that, living in life’s dilemma, Samad is too secular to be marked as a
devoted Muslim, and too religious to communicate with his non-religious friends. As
Millat not unfairly condemns, “he prays five times a day but he still drinks and he
doesn’t have any Muslim friends, then he has a go at me for fucking a white girl …

he’s pissed off about Magid” (277). Although Samad highlights the interconnection
between morality and tradition, and condemns the “corruptive” behavior of his wife
and children, he nevertheless begins and then unilaterally end an affair with his sons’
music teacher Poppy. 17 The uncertain legend of Mangal Pande, who Samad believes

17
Samad condemns that “No sense of tradition, no fucking morality, is the problem” (160). I need to clarify here
that his understanding of trandtion and morality is different from Appiah’s. For Appiah, people have moral
obligations to those who are remote but connect to them, but Samad’s morality is not about a moral choice, but an
insistence on absolute traditions.
55
to be a decisive figure in this historical event, becomes a daily emphasis of his
conversation, a fact which he repeats so many times that it bores Archie (“If I were
you, I’d start playing down the family connection, rather than bending everybody’s

ear twenty- four hours a bloody day (209)), and irritates Irie (“They’re not constantly
making the same old mistakes. They’re not always hearing the same old shit” (426)).
Relying on the authentic self and seeking for purification has reversely passed on
the historical trauma to their younger generations. Samad and his two sons are
consequently victimized by a constant motion of searching for authenticity. Even

though as a veteran who arrived in England as a capable, middle-aged man, living in

the capital city, and having a close friend who is an English local, he experiences an
“original trauma” which “repeats and repeats … [and which] is the tragedy of the
Iqbals that they can’t help” (136). Smith here somehow predicts and summarizes the
life trajectories of Samad, Magid, and Millat. Samad neither regards coming to

England as his “decision” but as an “accident”, nor viewing his children’s hybrid
identity as an advantage but as a fate. Therefore, he becomes an immigrant of
stubbiness, who, as Smith interprets, “[e]ven when you arrive, you’re still going back
and forth; your children are going round and round” (135-36).
Rather than agreeing with the comments given by Wood that Samad “has really,

only one dimension, his angry defense of Islam” (The Irresponsible Self 191), this
dissertation believes that he is the victim of extremism, who cannot simply be defined
as a violent, inconsiderate husband, or a ridiculous and irresponsible father. Samda
works diligently to move from South London to the North in order to provide a better
living environment for the upcoming babies; he is a genius one-hand waiter with

experience and professionalism; he articulates sympathetic words to the devastated

Mad Mary; and he strives for shaping his children in the way that he believes to be the
best. However, he feels divided and split (149-50) and his insistence on absolute
inheritance of tradition turns out to be unhelpful and even destructive. As Smith
writes:

If religion is the opium of the people, tradition is an even more

56
 sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If
religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein and a needle, tradition is a
far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa

drink laced with cocaine … (161)

Samad’s two sons, Magid and Millat are influenced by their father’s “dogma”,
and they represent two extremes of the spectrum of identity reconstruction. When
creating these characters, Smith seems to have in mind that they are the opposite of

indeterminacy. As she writes, the twin boys have“[o]ne leg in the present, one in the
past. No talking will change this. Their roots will always be tangled. And roots get
dug up” (68). Uprootedness as such is connected with trauma. As Joyce Chalfen
detects through her interaction with Millat, he appears to be damaged with “a deeper
sadness, a terrible loss, [and] a gaping wound” (270); and for Magid, he is abruptly

thrown back to live with his grandparents when he believes that his father has
promised to buy him a chemistry set. These two boys, despite the facts that Millat
becomes fundamentally Islamic and Magid becomes fundamentally “English”, are
similar to one another in that they are influenced by the cultural elements that their
father tries hard to avoid and eliminate. Millat is influenced by digital and commercial

capitalism, who indulges in video game, wears everything produced by Nike, listens
to Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen, and dates white Protestants from
northwest London. Millat believes (somehow similar to his father) that he has “one
foot in Bengal and one in Willesden. In his mind he was as much there as he was
here” (183). Moreover, although he states that “[a]s far back as I can remember, I

always wanted to be a Muslim” (368), his mentality is paradoxical. Intermingling with

globalized cultural elements, his identity is partly defined by them; but in order to
achieve stronger self-recognition, he attempts to fiercely cut off his “old” connections
so as to gain a new self. While being determined to purging himself out of the West,
he desperately tries to resist anything that feels natural to him. By the end of the novel,

after conducting abstinence for a while, he initiatively has intercourse with Irie on a
prayer mat. As Alsana’s niece Neena justly comments, “Look how confused he is.
57
One day he’s Allah this, Allah that. Next minute it’s big busty blondes, Russian
gymnasts and a smoke of the sinsemilla” (237). He has a vague idea about Muslim
and Islamic culture, and the reason behind his rebellion, along with his motivation to

join KEVIN (Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation), is his lack of
self-consciousness, and the desire to establish an authentic identity. Therefore, even
without reading Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, watching other similar- looking
Asian people protest on television motivates Millat to go to Bradford to demonstrate
and burn the book. 18 Rushdie has a critical reflection on his opponents against The

Satanic Verses:

Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the
opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably
weaken and ruin their own. I am of the opposite opinion. The

Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the

transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of
human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in
mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange,
hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the

world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world,
and I have tried to embrace it. The Satanic Verses is for
change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love-song to our
mongrel selves. (Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands 394)

Those who are the witnesses and/or participants in the movement of global
interactions, mass migration flux, and interfaith, intercultural, and interracial
marriages, contribute to the contemporary narrative of the changing landscape of
urban space. It is a natural process for people on the move to reframe their tradition,

18
Rushdie admits in his short monograph In Good Faith, that : “It has been bewildering to learn that people,
millions upon millions of people, have been willing to judge The Satanic Verses and its author, without reading
it…” (6, emphasis added).

58
and revitalize it with the support of new resources available. Millat, however,
presumes that what is best for him is a declaration of purified independence, without
noticing that true independence is interdependently based, and is connected to

otherness. Indeterminacy is an ideological awareness helping people to integrate

different elements with serenity and openness, so as to face the world that is mixed in
nature. As a result, Millat’s thoughtless assertion only leaves an elusive feeling of
self-consciousness.
Millet is not alone. Those who suffer from discrimination in the novel choose to

convert to KEVIN Muslim to regain their voices. Most of them are first and second
generation immigrants, belonging to an Asian community. They find it impossible to
receive any help in an island of racism. Their hope for assistance and justice fade after
they innocently report mistreatment to the police, but are responded with “a late-night
visit from five policemen who gave him a thorough kicking” (391). In Millet’s

teenage years when Madam Thatcher serves for more than a decade as the U.K. Prime
Minister, and when Britain is “torn with racial tension” (Hall, “What is this ‘black’”
258), people like Millet “was a Paki no matter where he came from”, and “he knew he
had no face in this country, no voice in the country” (194). Their extremity is
understandable but not recommendable. If Millat is a neofundamentalist, with his

“thin abstractions of the rootless [and] individualistic zealots of neo” (Appiah,

Cosmopolitanism 151), then this dissertation argues that turning to fundamentalism
and extremity do not equal to becoming resilient and stronger. It is only when one is
freed from an arrogant predetermination of regarding pure as favorable, that he/she
can become more capable of dealing with life’s unpleasantness, and can manage to

have “a richer, [and] more sustaining faith” (151) that has naturally be interwoven
with other customs and practices.
Millat and Magid both suffer from self-discrimination. As for Millat, he has a
prejudiced attitude towards color, including his own. When Irie comments that their
children will look nice, he objects: “Browny-black. Blacky-brown. Afro, flat nose,

rabbit teeth and freckles. They’d be freaks!” (190). In other words, he does not
recognize his own identity, and regards his hybridity as a symbol of disability. He
59
turns diversity into a disadvantage with violence and disrespectfulness, and his
representation as a creole language speaker is dominated by humilination and
humiliating others. When facing life’s inequality, he turns to his girlfriend, cursed her

rudely and “dumped her unceremoniously” (310). Magid, in this regard, seems to be
more agreeable than Millat, and is always regarded by others as the better one.
However, in terms of self-consciousness, his sense of displacement is no less intense
than Millat’s. Even as a school boy, he imagines to be someone else, who raises pets,
plays music, spends time in his family’s own gardens, travels to another city to meet

well-established relatives, and has a father who is a professional doctor (126). The
preference of a bourgeois life stimulates him to become increasingly “English”, who
tries to eliminate everything that is related to his Bangladeshi roots. Samad presumes
that somehow his elder son will be shaped by surroundings at large, but Magid is
practically immune to the Bangladeshi culture. Magid denies everything that is innate

to him: wearing in white, preferring bacon than Muslim food, and acting politely with
hypercritical articulations and gestures, all beautifully displayed with hollowness.
Despite his father’s abrupt intention of sending him home, he has the opportunity of
becoming a cosmopolitan, as he has lived his first ten years in London, and the next
ten years in Dhaka. Nevertheless, a deliberately arranged root rediscovering trip does

not transform him into an appreciator of original aura. 19 He becomes more absolute
and inflexible with an ideology against randomness. For Magid, there are “no missed
opportunities, no parallel possibilities. No second- guessing, no what- ifs, no
might- have-beens. Just certainty. Just certainty in its purest form” (405). It is in such a
belief of authenticity that he strictly shapes his identity based on the most authentic

Englishness in his understanding. Millat and Magid, both bounding themselves to

absolute standards, endure a diluted kinship, and can hardly found neutrality between
them.
Many parts of people’s identity, such as relatives, society, community, and
culture, are “allocated” to them in an irrational way. Choices can be made on friends,
19
Appiah uses the term “aura” in the discussion of contemporary people’s preference to origin: “In this age of
mechanical reproduction … where we can make good facsimiles of anything, the original has only increased in
value … only the original has the aura” (Cosmopolitanism 134).
60
but personal preferences are not applicable to parents, siblings, and initial living
environments. Cosmopolitanism takes into consideration the contingent elements, and
encourages an attitude of transforming (if you can), accepting (if not possible to

change), and transcending (understanding others, being attentive, and forgiving).

Magid believes in the absoluteness of law, supports the elimination of random, and
believes in the power of rational science, which means he cannot manage to reconcile
the differentiated parts in his identity. He is uprooted voluntarily, becomes
undoubtedly rootless, and tries to replant his roots in the imagined “pure” Western

culture. What is ironic might be that, his mother Alsana, after she traces generations
back, discovers that “it looks like I am Western after all!” (196) This echoes Du Bois’s
reflection on roots: “There are white people who call themselves Negroes because of
an invisible drop of Negro blood. There are Negroes who call themselves white,
ignoring or not knowing the fact that they had a great grandfather who was a black

slave.” (“Black America” 103) Reviewing and discovering roots can be illuminating
and surprising as one may be able to discover some unexpected connections between
the seemingly unrelated classifications, just as Malcolm X remarks on Harlem, which
has been a gathering place for Dutch, Irish, German, Italian, and Jews before it
becomes a iconic site of African-American culture. Magid, however, refuses to look at

his roots. Along with Mr. Marcus Chalfen, he fixes his eyes on the Western- framed
definition of self.
Corresponding with Iqbals’ self-discrimination, the Chalfens’ self-obsession also
leads to a “dogmatic” lifestyle. Believers of good genes, Marcus and Joyce Chalfen
lead a life that at first sight is perfect. Nevertheless, perfection implies fixity and

non-development, pointing to a contention of a closed self and a refusal/ignorance of

newness of the exterior. In Chalfens’ predetermined mind, people of color are timid
and interior, so they are surprised when the “colored” boy Millat behaves so
vigorously, fearlessly, and offensively. Their “kindness” is discriminative in essence:
“[the black people are] usually so silent … terribly meek but [Millat is] so full of …

spunk” (266). Despite her identity as a descendent of immigrants, Joyce disconnects

herself with her German and Jewish heritage, and develops an arrogant and prejudiced
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mindset. Meeting with Alsana’s niece, who has a girlfriend, her greeting questions
expressively indicate an offensive judgment of regarding the former as strange or
even abnormal; when talking about daily life with Alsana, she cares about the

inconveniences that their custom may bring when they do housework. She has a
binary understanding of everything, divided into right and wrong, and those who do
not manage to behave in a Chalfenist way, would appear to be unusual and
unacceptable. Marcus regards himself as a creator, who can prearrange everything
scientifically, but “[h]is Chalfenist confidence was always less evident when he

strayed abroad, away from the bosom of his family” (344). It is an illusion of
perfectness which may consequently lead to dysfunctional communication and a fear
to encounter with (let alone coexist with) otherness. Appiah says that“[w]e do not
need, have never needed, settled community, a homogeneous system of values”, and
“[c]ultural purity is an oxymoron” that is imaginable but largely invalid

(Cosmopolitanism 113). Contamination, the opposite of purity, seems to be the

universal truth for Appiah. The contamination of literature, art, and film that come
from other places adds fresh impetus to their domestic counterparts, and therefore,
contamination nowadays is not only ubiquitous, but also points to a significance of
improvement.

Poppy, Samad’s ex- lover, represents another type of people whose respect for
another culture is discriminative in essence. She has an over- generalized imagination
of the East, and simplified British Asian culture as Indian culture. The attractiveness
of Samad does not directly relate to his personality per se, but to a sense of
foreignness that is exotic and mysterious. Although Poppy seems to be interested in

Samad’s and his sons’ culture, she presumes them to be Indians without even
noticing their Bangladeshi origin. Her ostensible cosmopolitan attitude is further
proved by her behavior after breaking up with Samad. She deliberately takes a
revenge of humiliation by requesting him to be the waiter for her and her sister in the
restaurant where Samad works. By underlining the difference between a standing- up

waiter and a to-be-served customer, her behavior is a reflection of her predetermined

opinion between the West and the East (among which the former is superior to the
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 latter).
Mixed backgrounds, grudging respects, and superficial prosperity do not
necessarily associate with a cosmopolitan attitude of acceptance, tolerance, and

openness. The characters whose multiple selves find no way to reconcile with one
another reaffirm the typical imagination of immigrants, who are displaced and
disenfranchised. This, however, is the beginning but not the ultimate aim of Smith’s
characterization. The following analysis unfolds the next two stages of becoming a
cosmopolitan, which changes from extremity to equivocation and finally to

harmonious indeterminacy.
1.3 Middle: Double Standards towards Cos mopolitan Expe rience
Different from the characters discussed above that have strongly prejudiced
mindsets, Alsana and Clara hold contradictory attitudes towards the identity as an
immigrant. Such attitudes switch between resistance and acceptance on various

occasions, revealing their mixed feelings about England as first generation

immigrants. The uniqueness of these two characters is their roles as women, mothers,
and wives. Neither of them is depicted as a traditional woman who revolves around
husband, children, and home. Alsana is hot-tempered, and has a strong and
independent mind. Facing domestic violence, she will fight with her husband;

knowing that Millat joints a protest involving burning books, she reacts with equal
powerfulness by burning everything that her younger son values; and confronting
with life’s hardship, she works as an efficient professional tailor who constantly sits
by a sewing machine. Clara receives a higher education of sorts in a university; her
husband Archie respects her feeling as a wife, and unlike Samad, never acts violently.

Their distinctive womanhood indicates that they will have their particular
understanding about identity, but nonetheless, their understanding is contradictory in
nature. On the one hand, they understand and to some extent value the significance of
boundary-crossing; on the other hand, they feel threatened and uneasy about the
corresponding changes happening on their teenage offspring.

Alsana has a clear idea that “the real difference between people was not colour”,
but something “far more fundamental” (175). She disagrees with her husband’s view,
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which regards England as a place of corruption, but prioritizes the importance of
survival, and correlates betterment with cultural interaction, believing that Millat as
the second generation immigrant “was born here naturally” and “will do things

differently” (240). After Samad arranges the resettlement of Magid to Bangladesh, she
responds with a protest against her husband’s absoluteness, using an ambiguous
expression of “Maybe, Samad Miah, maybe not” (178) in her daily communication
with him. Her uniqueness also lies in her cosmopolitan empathy. When Mrs. Gandhi,
the prime minister of India, was assassinated, she worries about the safety of ordinary

people as “[t]here will be riots knives, guns. Public death …” (165). Such a reaction is
referred to as an “electronic empathy” by Ulf Hannerz as news in television with its
images and sounds immediately transcend barriers of understanding, turning the
world into a differentiated imagined community (“Two Faces of Cosmopolitanism”
207). In other words, cosmopolitan empathy can not only be intrigued by face-to- face

encounter but also by imagining the death of the innocent, just as Clara weeps as a
young Jehovah Witness when thinking about only “144,000 men could join Christ in
heaven” (32). As for Clara, her choice of becoming an atheist does not lead to an
absolute attitude towards roots and origins. Whenever she feels relaxed and excited,
she will switch back to her vernacular with a Jamaican accent; and when she is

terrified during the England’s Great Storm of 1987, she takes comfort from recalling
the past, especially words from her grandmother.
Therefore, both Alsana and Clara manage to reestablish an inclusive attitude
towards their heterogeneous life. Such inclusiveness, nonetheless, is not universally
applicable. Alsana is hysterical about Millat’s connection with the Chalfens, behaving

like a mother that has a great eagerness to “protect” her children from “harm”,
accusing that “people are taking my son away from me! Birds with teeth! They’re
Englishifying him completely! They’re deliberately leading him away from his culture
and his family and his religion” (286, emphasis added). She has regular nightmares
about her children and grandchildren marrying white girls, and result in “all- white”

great-grandchildren who have minimized Bangladeshi genes. Clara also worries that
the tide in “an ocean of pink skins surrounding her daughter … would take her away”
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(272). Their genuine concern is not about their children’s life, but about a determined
yet unconscious tendency to preserve their own roots as people with certain genes,
races, and ethnicity. Even though it is understandable for Alsana and Clara to be

self-contradictory in a sense that they are somehow not able to comfortably live in an
environment that is different from their original counterparts, they cannot find a way
to totally accept what is best and most helpful for them to reconcile with a society that
only ranks second in terms of intimacy. They have all the good intentions to be
respectable to a society that brings them benefits, but on the other hand, they still

subconsciously prefer to maintain as much conventional as possible, and hope their

children will do the same.
One of the essential elements in cosmopolitanism is that what goes hand- in-hand
with indeterminacy is reconciliation. Alsana and Clara’s self-contradictory results
from the fact that they refuse to reconcile their preferences with reality. Reconciliation

indicates a mutually shaping process, during which both the individual and the social
environment they absorb in will be reformed. The shadow of darkness in Smith’s
characters are inheritable, just as Samad’s extremity and his two son’s
fundamentalism as well as Irie’s Jamaican family members who “could feel both
abandoned and hungry even when in the bosom of their families in front of a mighty

feast” (255). If in reality, it is impossible for immigrants to diminish the “shadow”,

then what is possible is to reinterpret their memories by valuing and appreciating their
innate uniqueness and the obtained multiple identity. Thus, even under the condition
that immigrants were coerced into a negotiating settlement, their cosmopolitan
attributes “can be celebrated when it flows from the free decisions of individuals or of

groups” (Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots” 618). This entails an eagerness to initiate a

conversation, keeping an “engagement with the experience and the ideas of others”
(Appiah, Cosmopolitanism 85); and it does not lead to a consensus about values,
beliefs, and opinions (it is not possible to reach common consent on everything), but
represents an effort to understand, accept, and tolerant one another. More positively, it

will intrigue a “cosmopolitan curiosity”, which encourages people to learn from and
influence each other, exploring the feasibility of “alternative ways of thinking, feeling,
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and acting” (Cosmopolitanism 97).
1.4 End: Cos mopolitan Indeterminacy
The last section focuses on the final stage of becoming a cosmopolitan. This

dissertation agrees with Jason Hill’s argument that a cosmopolitan ceases attaching
metaphysical importance to the contingency of identity (101); whereas it has to
disagree with Hill on the point that a cosmopolitan identity is a weaned identity which
erases the set of cultures, traditions, and origins that form one’s initial sense of being
(98). The cosmopolitans identified below are negotiators of their hybridity, and

celebrators of their varied heritage and connections, including Swedish gynecologist

Horst Ibelgaufts, Samad’s nephew Rajnu, Archie, Irie, and Joshua. Such a diversified
range of characters reveal different aspects of a cosmopolitan. What they share in
common is that they proactively engage with the past and the present, and take efforts
to celebrate their diversity in uniformity — a diversity that points to their various

backgrounds and associations, and a uniformity that refers to their shared openness,
and unbiased attitudes towards self and other. The extremists in the book may not
understand the behavior of the cosmopolitans. Samad denounces Archie as a coward
without masculinity; Joyce and Marcus probably find it difficult to perceive their son
Joshua’s decision of joining an animal protection organization, or his relationship with

Irie, who is “colored” and “big-breast”; and it is even harder for Archie’s colleagues
who are shocked at his marriage with a Jamaican girl to understanding the friendly
letters sent by Ibelgaufts to Archie. Archie is the real hero in the novel, who has saved
strangers’ lives twice, establishes a respectable friendship with Samad, caring about
his wife, and at the most crucial moments, risks his life to save others, reflecting the

most precious characteristic in him: understanding, respecting, caring, and forgiving.

“Archie: don’t be a stranger!” (14). This is a sentence from Ibelgaufts who
consistently writes to his English competitor for decades after their brief meeting at
the 1948 Olympics in London. On Archie’s second wedding, he only has Samad and
Alsana as his witnesses, as others are either avoiding them or simply do not care.

Contrast to these avoiders who live in the same country and have connections with
Archie either in life or at work, Ibelgaufts, who lives in another country, and who
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never again meets Archie after the Olympics, is “the only well- wisher … who had
neither been invited” (44). His seemingly minor role makes his letters like the novel’s
background music containing meaningful lyrics. For years, Ibelgaulfts insists on

writing to Archie, and each letter is thoughtful and full of friendliness. It shows an
attachment, and an attentiveness that is expressive in cosmopolitanism. Smith also
uses Ibelgausfts’ letters to express her own concern about roots. In one letter,
Ibelgaulfts mentions the removal of an old tree in his garden, which makes it possible
for other plants to receive more sunshine, and the whole garden looks more healthy

and revitalized. Such metaphor between traditions/roots and present/liveliness takes a

significance that lifelessness is caused by a static attachment to fixed tradition which
fails to readjust accordingly in response to the changing environment.
Another character symbolizing an encouraging cosmopolitan affection is
Samad’s nephew Rajnu, a college student in Cambridge. Rajnu understands how

important Mangal Pande is to his uncle and respects his uncle’s personal opinion.
When he finds an eloquent defense of Pande in his college library, he writes to his
uncle and mentions this discovery; and managing to look at the positive side, he also
believes that if Samad is interested in having a look at the book, this will also serve as
“a pleasant excuse to see his uncle again” (214). In the library café, he listens to

Samad’s repetitive statement of how excited this discovery is, despite the fact that he
holds the opinion that the book was an inferior, insignificant, forgotten piece of
scholarship. He does not find it distasteful to be the single audience of his uncle for
three hours. In addition to having an admirable attitude to Samad, he is also
thoughtful enough to leave a generous tip to the waiter who, as he figures out, does

not enjoy the presence of Samad. Rajnu represents a cosmopolitan who understands,
respects, and refrains from forcing personal opinions on others. That is one of the core
values of cosmopolitanism, at least in this dissertation’s context. Being cosmopolitan
entails a consciousness of recognizing other people’s qualities, even if one disagrees
partly or wholly with their ideas. Appiah says that “facts aren’t quite so solid … Not

because I’m a skeptic about truth … But because finding the truth isn’t just a matter
of having open eyes and a level head” (Cosmopolitanism 36). In other words, truth is
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also multifaceted in different people’s judgments, and it is never possible to force
someone to behave in a way that in your belief is appropriate or right. Such forced
and predetermined actions can be found in Samad’s treatment to his sons, and in

Joyce and Marcus’s pride when they talk about “good genes” and “Chalfen heads”.
In the novel, there is one character who, unexpectedly, stimulates a thought about
what it means to be a man, to treat others as people, and to respect individuality as it
is. That is Archie. Seemingly, Archie’s banality is inevitable: he is a forgotten cyclist
in Olympic Games, a soldier in Second World War without achievements, and a dull

man with “[n]o aims, no hopes, no ambitions” (49). In other words, he is “just there to
make up the numbers” (19). Growing in a poor family with parents as farmers, he is
not unfamiliar with traumatic feelings, as he loses the opportunity to go to a grammar
school because of financial difficulties. A victim of a flash marriage, he falls into
depression feeling “tiny and rootless” (10) after divorce, and consequently, tries to

commit suicide. Banal and simple as he appears to be, his goodness “might not
amount to much … might not light up a life, but it is something” (41). It is incarnated
in his everyday behavior which seems natural and ordinary but in effect carries great
significance. He is able to discover meaningfulness and gains contentment in banality,
as he gives a personalized job description of a paper folder: “[it is] not much of an

achievement, maybe, but you’ll find things need folds, they need to overlap, otherwise
life would be like a broadsheet: flapping in the wind and down the street so you lose
the important sections” (12). He is connected with everyman of diversified identities.
His life is saved by a good-will Muslim, his best life- long friend is a Bangladeshi, and
his second young wife is from Jamaica. In sharp contrast to his white colleagues who

are racially prejudged though pretending that they are not, Archie is “color blind” and
treats everyone beyond race, and only as human beings. His colleague Maureen
cannot understand why he talks to “Pakistanis and Caribbeans like he didn’t notice”
(59), and why he does not even think of mentioning the “color” of his new wife. His
superior, Mr. Hero sophisticatedly cuts him out of the company dinner because of his

wife’s race and ethnicity. Archie, however, seems to be carefree from these
misunderstandings and discriminations. For Archie, “love is not such a hard thing to
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forfeit” (40).
One of the biggest celebrations in White Teeth is the friendship between Archie
and Samad, which “crosses class and color … and survives” (87). The young Samad

in the war praises Archie as a rare kind of English person, whose agreeable
personality helps to secure a transethnical friendship. Archie’s rarity does not
associate with the fact that he is English, but with his cosmopolitan attitude towards
others. He is not predetermined, as he comments humorously on his biracial marriage:
“you shouldn’t judge before you’ve tried it. Being married to a Jamaican has done

wonders for my arthritis.” (159). He appreciates the companion of Samad: “Always

Sammy. Through thick and thin. Even if the world were ending. Never made a
decision without him in forty years. Good old Sam. Sam the man” (440). His
friendship with Samad extends to Alsana and Millat, as he treats them with the same
friendliness. The most unexpected and extraordinary deeds of Archie is his intuitive

endeavor to save a genetic scientist Dr. Perret who is captured in the Second World
War. Instead of killing the doctor, Archie lets the doctor survive even after the latter
shuts a bullet to him that causes a permanent injury in his leg. Archie keeps this secret
for third years, before once again, during a news conference of transgenetic mouse
organized by Marcus, he takes a flying leap in front of the bullet shut by Millat, and

saves Dr. Perret’s life for a second time. As Smith writes:

So Archie is there, there in the trajectory of the bullet, about to do

something unusual, even for TV: save the same man twice and with
no more reason or rhyme than the first time. (447)

Guiding by intuitions, a true self will be revealed without disguise. Archie’s

endeavor which is made with no more reason or rhyme is immediate, intuitive, and
touching, with a cosmopolitan spirit that transcends every predetermined and
stereotyped boundaries and preconceptions. Hopefully, Archie’s particular yet

universal, rooted yet bondless cosmopolitanism will be carried on by his daughter Irie
and his new born granddaughter whose father is either Magid or Millat. This chapter
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will end with an analysis on Irie’s developing self-recognition, from one who sinks in
the “quagmire of the past” (271) to a woman who understands the intermediate
relationship between her Jamaican and British parts of her identity.

Irie witnesses a process of coming-of-age, and becomes increasingly

cosmopolitan. Her self-denial struggles are stimulated by the change of her hairstyle.
As a teenager, she wants her hair to be “dead straight” (234) even with the cost of
money, burning pain, and bleeding of scalp, which corresponds to Raphael Dalleo’s
argument that “attempts to prescribe, mandate, or control [cultural mixing] often

prove disastrous” (101). Just as any forced imitation and change will lead to
deformation, Neena is shocked after seeing the “restyled” Irie, exclaiming “You look
like a freak!” (236). Assimilation is often related to a blind belief that “the other” is
superior. When Irie is at the hairdresser’s, a girl says to her: “That’s half-caste hair for
you. I wish mine were like that. That’ll relax beautiful” (231). However, despite that

girl’s compliment, and instead of discovering the innate beauty in herself, Irie replies:
“I hate it.” (231) When Irie meets Joyce and Marcus, she is immediately obsessed
with their static Englishness, or Chalfishness, as well as their purity, even though she
may be ignorant of the fact that the Chalfens, originally, are not English but third
generation immigrates. Self-denial and purification, unfortunately, only traps her in a

vicious circle of further interiority and self-contempt.

If the Chalfens ever have any positive influence on Irie, it is that they encourage
their children to have one year off before college, and Irie strives to ask for the same
opportunity. “I don’t just want to have a year off, I need one. It’s essential I’m young,
I want some experiences … I want to go and see the people of the world” (313). It is

at the time when she wants to know other people and to “see the world” that Smith
believes Irie is ready to be “return[ed] to the sender” (314), pointing to her short
staying in her Jamaican grandmother Hortense’s house. Jamaican culture at first sight
seems fictional and fascinating to Irie, but profoundly, the rediscovery of it brought a
new Irie into existence. As she comes into adulthood physically and mentally, she

forms in mind her own desired relationship between young and old generations:
healthy, natural, and happy. Therefore, she publicly objects Samad’s preaching about
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the conventions, saying that “They don’t mind what their kids do in life as long as
they’re reasonably … healthy. Happy … And every single … day is not this huge
battle between who they are and who they should be, what they were and what they

will be.” (426) At last, she realizes the dream of going back to Jamaica, with both
Hortense and Joshua, the eldest son of the Chalfens. The specialty of Joshua is his
kindness and tolerance. When the teenage Irie rudely says that “I don’t want to play
with you … I don’t even know you”, Joshua, instead of responding with equal
offensiveness, says that “[my name is] Joshua Chalfen. I was in Manor Primary. And

we’re in English together. And we’re in orchestra together” (247, italics in original).
As Irie’s understanding about otherness and the world is continuously developing, and
after she realizes that the superficial emphasis or elimination of roots are not
necessary or meaningful, she and Joshua are coming closer than ever. The fatherless
little girl, by the end of the novel, writes “affectionate postcards” (448) to both Millat

and Magid, symbolizing an ever mixed, but also an ever reconciling and attentive
relationship between one another.

This chapter outlines the cosmopolitan attributes of Smith’s fiction, and explores
the significance of becoming a cosmopolitan. It has an insight into the emotional and

life trajectories of the characters in White Teeth holding either extreme, contradictory,
or ever-developing intermediate attitude towards an inevitably mongrel social reality.
In the novel, there are fervent emigrating fundamentalists, hypercritical elite
immigrants, and humane English locals. It is important both for immigrants and locals
in the contemporary society to develop an indeterminate attitude, and not to be

restrained by preconditioned facts and assumptions. The process of becoming a

cosmopolitan starts from resistance, goes through equivocation, and finally reaches a
status of harmony. Being cosmopolitan is a valued quality, an encouraging attitude,
and a promising vision, especially for modern residents living in metropolises. The
novel articulates a hope for modern people, be they the so-called locals, immigrants,

or their children, to face life’s otherness with reconciliation. They could maintain their
roots and personal particularities, but simultaneously, they also enjoy the freedom of
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benefiting from various elements that also shape their identities.
It is worth noting that White Teeth contains topics which have been further
developed in Smith’s later works. The novel touches upon the idea of “secular and

religious views of life” (194), which is one of the main focus of her second novel The
Autograph Man; it briefly depicts a female character Mad Mary who is a “voodoo
woman, with voodoo stick” (148), while the image of Haitian Voodoo goddess gains a
much detailed description and possesses a significant indication in her third novel On
Beauty; it also explores the relationship between city and people, with an articulation

that “the children knew the city. And they knew the city breeds the Mad” (145), and
such bleakness is more prevailing in NW; and its Caribbean and African elements
have been more fully depicted in Swing Time.

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 Chapter 2 The Autograph Man: Postsecular Return of
Religion

Most critical remarks on The Autograph Man indicate that the novel’s
engagement with religious elements is superfluous (Cheyette, Mączyńska “Toward a
Postsecular”, Meinig, Sell “Chance and Gesture” 34). However, what is largely
underread is the substantial role that religion plays both in shaping contemporary

identity and in constructing the narrative. This chapter tries to fill in this chasm by
paying particular attention to the meaningful return of religion in The Autograph Man.
Smith’s description of multicultural reality is juxtaposed with a depiction of religion’s
lasting impact on a multi- faith society, and her fiction has been praised for offering
“one of the most compelling fictional portrayals of religion’s persistent hold on the

contemporary imagination” (Mączyńska, “That God Chip” 127).

The Autograph Man (2002) meditates on the struggle for a twenty- first century
identity which is complex, multivalent, and paradoxical (Mączyńska, “Toward a
Postsecular” 77; Parker 77; Childs and Green 50). In particular, it demonstrates
religion’s shaping influence both on people’s deeds and behavior and on the plot

development. The book’s Jewish and Zen elements, as the protagonist Alex- Li
Tandem’s heritage, appear in a broad array of forms, such as religious ancient images,
texts, and philosophical sayings. On the one hand, they exert an equally important
influence on this modern Londoner, and on the other hand, their meaning and
significance are preserved and expanded in Smith’s literary context. Alex’s personal

identity, as an “embodiment of hybridised, multiple, postmodern subjectivity” (Gilbert

279) and a product of “multilayered negotiations with race, ethnicity, and religion
within a contemporary landscape” (Kim and Leavitt 106), is shaped by a combination
of different religious beliefs. He experiences a return to religion with a growing
consciousness of his closeness to Jewish and Zen traditions: while explicitly resisting

any religious dogma, he implicitly believes in God’s power and grandeur; although
born and bred in London, he is so familiar with some Zen sayings and stories that he
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can use them freely in his writing and comments; despite being reluctant to say
Kaddish, he eventually realizes the eternity of death and comes closer to his father ’s
soul. As for the religious images, the ten sefirot of Kabbalah in Judaism and the Zen

classic The Picture of Ten Bulls 20 are integrated, contextually and meaningfully, into
the narrative. Embedded in the novel’s plot without losing their essential implications,
these images help with the depiction of the complexity of Alex’s identity and his
enlightenment journey of sorts like a Zen (or Chan) practitioner.
This chapter focuses on the novel’s postsecular style. Preconditioned by an

unbiased and non- fixed understanding of the traditionally stereotyped, Smith portrays
modern postsecular identities and the postsecular adaptations of religions classics.
The postsecular features as demonstrated in The Autograph Man shed light on such
issues as the influence of religious traditions on modern identity, and the meaningful
interaction of religion with the contemporary literary discourse. If the co-existence of

the traditionally contradictory elements may cause misunderstanding and resistance,

Smith realizes in The Autograph Man an attainability of understanding and
reconciliation among such elements in a co-creative process.
Smith’s cosmopolitanism is embodied in her manifestation of how the
traditionally contradictory properties such as the sacred and the secular can coexist

with one another. The characters who once have various separated selves rooted in
different cultures go through a negotiation process during which their antithetical
selves become compatible and mutually supportive. Though born with hybrid
identities, Smith’s immigrants have to take painstaking efforts to achieve
reconciliation with their multiple selves. It is co-creation rather than solely

co-existence that plays the vital role in providing the impetus for a cosmopolitanism
of efficacy, especially in a society that is noticeably multicultural, multiethnic, and
multireligious.
2.1 Smith’s Neutral Space
Neutralizing the stereotyped means to estrange oneself from the established

impressions of the diasporic. The Autograph Man depicts Jews, Chinese, and the
20
Hereinafter referred to as “Ten Bulls” for short.
74
African Americans, the ethnical groups which in a western context have traditionally
been treated as stereotypes of trauma and exile. However, instead of prioritizing
Holocausts, displacement, or identity crisis, this novel focuses on how young people,

living in a secular community, engage with various religious heritage. The

London-born-and-London-bred young generation immigrants, as they interact with
the complex social reality, gradually realize that their varied traditions benefit them
beyond their imagination. Through neutralization, Smith provides an alternative in the
book that no longer generalizes immigrants’ identity in traumatic or exilic frames but

facilitates a negotiation as reconciliation in their identity construction. The seemingly

incompatible combination of Jewish, Asian, and Zen elements find their coexistence
in Alex. More importantly, their coexistence forms a co-creative impetus which helps
to justify his existence.
Such neutralization cannot be easily gained, as there is the deep-rooted historical

trauma reserved for the Jews and the people of color. As Fanon says to his colonized
fellows: “Whenever you hear anyone abuse the Jews, pay attention, because he is
talking about you” (122), a statement that is confirmed by James Baldwin’s argument
that “[w]hen we speak of the Jewish tradition we are speaking of centuries of exile
and persecution” (28). Rushdie even explicates a more dramatic life of the Jews than

their “black” counterparts, as he writes: “Try being Jewish, female and ugly sometime.
You’ll beg to be black” (Imaginary Homelands 261). Fanon, Baldwin, and Rushdie
have emphasized the commonality between racism and anti-Semitism, specifically,
the trauma of being discriminated and displaced. However, as Michael Walzer
comments on Sartre’s authenticity-dominated interpretation of anti-Semitism, there is

a tendency for those who are marked by Jewishness to not only resist the persecution
from outside, but to renew themselves from inside: “ … these people were not only
trying to escape anti-Semitism and the anti-Semite’s construction of Jewishness, they
were also escaping the closed communities and orthodox traditionalism” (Walzer xiv).
The cosmopolitanism of Jews is not overwhelmingly determined by their statelessness,

as Nachman Syrkin argues, “the construction of a universal vision of redemption

steeped in reality, with all its particularistic elements, yet transcending this while
75
always remaining aware of its concrete, historical background” (qtd. in Avineri 133).
Likewise, the creativity of the exilic might otherwise be approached beyond the nexus
of language and national culture, and it is in the realm with relaxed boundary between

language, literature, and national culture that a new cosmopolitanism in a diverse

historical settings starts to emerge (Tihanov, “Narratives of Exile” 150, 152, 155)
Echoing with Walzer ’s interpretation of Jews and Jewish identity, and Tihanov’s
deromanticizing and deliberalizing exile, Smith also explores her Asian-Jewish figure
in an open and value- free manner, which in turn extends the significance and

references of trauma and exile.

What prevails in Smith’s novelistic context is a process of self- redefinition
experienced by second generation immigrants. Historical trauma while continuing to
be part of their memories and identities ceases to be dominate in terms of its
determination of individuality, but finds companions with popular culture, religious

heritage, exotic experiences, and hybrid ethnicity, all of which collaborate with one
another in identity shaping. The impetus of such a negotiation, at least in The
Autograph Man, mainly lies in the reconciliation between the spiritual and the secular.
Alex receives unexpected support from their seemingly distant heritage. He is
subconsciously influenced by his religious heritage and consciously goes on a journey

of being spiritually enlightened, despite the fact that he cannot be exclusively defined
by any religious affiliations.
2.2 Postsecular Style: Co-creation and Cosmopolitan Attributes
It is possible for the seemingly contradictory elements to co-exist with one
another, and eventually through respect and understanding, co-create a new status of

cultural- or self- identity that is open, inclusive, and dynamic. When commenting on
the relationship between different cultures, Tang Yijie believes that
“‘misunderstanding’ is the precondition for the possibility of intercultural dialogues
fuelled by different opinions … [whereas] ‘understanding’ creates a common ground
for discussion …” (263). Similarly, in Smith’s cosmopolitanism, co-creation plays a

key role in depicting modern hybrid identity, which accordingly is reflected in the
postsecular writing of The Autograph Man.
76
 Smith’s cosmopolitanism, as demonstrated throughout her fictional works,
entails an effective correlation, a merge that is mutually beneficial, and a process of
gradually coming to terms with rather than fiercely resisting hybrid identity. As for

The Autograph Man, the story happens in a society which is marked by David A.
Hollinger as post-ethnic, and in David T. Goldberg’s belief contains a postracial
illusion. 21 The starting point of their contemplation, if any, is an observation of an
ever heterogeneous urban ethnography. For Schott Malcomson, cosmopolitanism of
efficacy is historically and geographically based. It is from specific contexts that

cosmopolitanism of various forms emerges. Smith’s cosmopolitanism which is also

historically sensitive pays attention to individuals. Along with Hollinger’s awareness
of the multi-ethnic social reality and Goldberg’s concern of the enduring racialized
inequality, Smith in her postsecular writing, reflects the multifaceted identity while
avoiding the extremes of being much too pessimistic (condemning the doomed

identity crisis among immigrants) or idealistic (offering a rosy, celebrative

multicultural imagination). Instead, she conveys the idea that cosmopolitanism entails
a turbulent reconciliation that begins with confusion and resistance and end with
harmonious coexistence and meaningful co-creation. Being faithful is different from
being religious. Whereas a religious belief is associated with a formal, ritual, and

regular behavior that is requested by certain creeds, faith has a broader significance,
which serves as a guideline for individuals, and exerts an influence on their behaviors
and decision- making. Similarly, postsecularism is different from blasphemy, as the
former negotiates, and tries to find a way to reconcile the conventional and the new,
without trying to misinterpret, downgrade, or deform either religious or non-religious

components. Therefore, being postsecular does not mean being offensive to religion
and belief, but points to an evident and unavoidable trend for modern people to
preserve the inheritable tradition that is valuable to them, while at the same time, to
interact with the modern life which is mobile, dynamic, and cosmopolitan.

21
Hollinger’s postethnicity shares a similarity with postsecularism in that both concepts emphasize an
indeterminate boundary between the formerly conventional and stereotyped categories: for postethnicity, it points
to race and color, whereas for postsecularism, it indicates the complex relation between secularism and religion.
For Hollinger’s discussion on postethnicity, see Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism.
77
 It is a critical consensus that the term postsecularism sheds new lights on the
co-existing and co-creative relationship between the religious and the secular. For
Jürgen Habermas, the major scholar popularizing the term postsecularism, the

“description of modern societies as ‘postsecular’ refers to shifts in consciousness” —

a tendency that affirms religion’s maintaining influence on public life, promotes
tolerance, and thus supports the co-existence of religion and the secular (20).
Specifically, in a modern democratically constituted society, religious citizens should
not “absolutize their one-sided (moral) judgement” (Reder and Schmidt 5), and

likewise, in a liberal state, secular citizens should be open to religious influence

(Habermas 16). Religion & Literature published a special issue on the postsecular turn
in literary criticism, in the introduction to which Michael Kaufmann summarizes that
the concept of postsecularism allows one to have a comprehensive interpretation of
both religion and the secular from an “ideological, cultural, and historical”

perspective (Kaufmann 68). It points to the transcendence of the binary opposition

between the religious and the secular, and shows a new developing trend of their
relationship towards “co-existence and co-creation” (69). Such co-creative
relationship indicates that religion gives modern people the freedom to interact with it
in a personal way. “Without affirming a single system of religious thought”, they may

still engage with religious practices and experiences (Ludwig 84). Manav Ratti also
points out that postsecularism provides possible solutions to deal with the complex
relationship between religion and secularism. By promoting the idea of co-existence
and co-creation, postsecularism can help to “tackle the hard questions of the political
while acknowledging the dimensions of religion” (Ratti xxi).

Co-creation is likewise crucial to Smith’s perception of self identity as a writer

with both English and Jamaican origins. She affirms the influence of a variety of
traditions on her identity, with an “audacious hope that a man born and raised between
opposing dogmas … could not help but be aware of the extreme contingency of
culture” (Smith, Changing My Mind 149). Therefore, she finds it impossible to

“experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics” in which she had no
active part (142), and she embraces her different traditions without being judgmental
78
about their components. Like her character Alex, Smith represents a complex identity
that is “too myriad and adventitious to be reduced to a single cultural essence” (Sell,
“Chance and Gesture” 34). Correspondingly, she portrays in the book a collision

between ancient religious values and a miscegenized reality. While downplaying

deterministic identities, she highlights “new ways of speaking about and embodying
hybrid subject positions” (Parker 81) in order to contemplate how to claim “a viable
identity in our increasingly multi-ethnic, multiracial, and transnational world”
(Furman 7). In Smith’s conscious mind, she hopes that her protagonist could benefit

from his religious traditions, but at the same time, she prefers not to mark him as
either a Jewish believer or a Zen Buddhist. As a result, we find in the book an Alex
who gradually reconciles himself with his mixed Jewish and Zen heritage, attains a
stronger sense of self, and achieves personal intimacy with his traditions. He is a
postsecular figure living in a secular world, who embraces the religious syncretism

developing from his engagement with various religious heritage.

The novel’s postsecular style reflects a vital feature of Smith’s cosmopolitanism,
signifying a reconciliation that emerges as a social trend out of the phenomenon of
boundary crossing and interculturality. It unfolds how people of hybrid and mobile
background transform themselves, while at the same time, bringing transformation to

the society. Postsecularism is not a deliberate exaggeration caricature, which uproots

religious people’s identity and reframes it in, using Gramling’s words, “pathologizing
ways” (94). Postsecularism is neither about counterbalance, nor triumphing over one
another, but an ability to balance the seemingly contradictory elements. It points to a
learning process that leads to a change in people’s perception about the sacred and the

secular. “The description of modern societies as ‘postsecular’ refers to a change in

consciousness”, Habermas argues (20), which affirms, as he observes, a revised
attitude towards secularism in society. Habermas believes that “religion maintains a
public influence and relevance”, and “secularistic certainty” will not be repressed in
the “course of modernization” (21). Rather, what will be changed is people’s general

attitudes towards religion and religious elements. Postsecularism concerns a revisit of

the mutual shaping relationship between religion and popular culture, a personalized
79
and proactive interaction between the inheritable or acquired religious beliefs and a
secular living environment, and a relocation of performative religious rituals in an
unconventional manner. This does not mean that postsecularism should be simplified

as a tool for playful presentations of religion in literature, but contrarily, it is a concept

as well as a phenomenon that reflect the hybrid nature of modern identity.
Some of Smith’s precursors and contemporaries have pioneered in presenting
postsecularism in literature. In John A. McClure’s book- length discussion on
postsecular fiction, he explores how modern writers reframe religious elements in

their novels and how through the lenses of “partial faith”, they manage to sidestep the
limitations of the conventional and adopt religious contents for literary purposes. As
McClure observes in postsecular fiction and postsecular narratives, those authors
demonstrate a reconciliation between “important secular and religious intuitions”
(Partial Faith 6). According to McClure, postsecularism signifies the religious revival

in literature as we may find in the canonical postmodern works “the untidy resurgence
of magical, sacred, pre- modern and non-western constructions of reality” (McClure,
“Postmodern/post-secular”143, 148). In order to make life more bearable, people
living in a modern society “must learn to reconcile important secular and religious
intuitions” (McClure, Partial Faith 6). Thus, McClure contends that postsecular

fiction does not justify its existence with “ostensibly divine pronunciations”, and
postsecular themes in fiction “do not invite the religious subject to define himself in
any unqualified way” (Partial Faith 16). Postsecular fiction engages with religious
elements, but is not restrained by the comprehensive doctrines of religious system(s).
It establish an impression of “weak religion”, which avoids “absolute assertions and

totalizing schemes” (12), frees itself from the restriction of defined dogmatic theology,
and embraces the imperfectability in terms of personal belief; it explores the dynamic
relations of various secular elements’ engagement and interaction with the scared and
metaphysical truth; and it indicates a reconciliation that transcends the secular and the
scared, and offers a possibility to create “a meaningful identity through religious

belief in a contemporary context” (Parker 77).

The Autograph Man’s engagement with Jewish elements resembles Harold
80
Bloom’s description of American Jewish culture, which is “confusedly, ambivalently,
ambiguously and partly” mixed with its dogmatic tradition (qtd. in Partial Faith 9).
Smith is proactive about the novel’s engagement with religious classics in a modern

context. The postsecular theme explored here signifies the unconventional drawing of
a return trajectory from a dogmatic authenticity to a secular reality which “summons
humans back to their historicity, their finitude and their fallibility” (McClure, Partial
Faith 13). Instead of being dominated by fixity, Smith’s postsecular style embraces
multiplicity and changes, displaying inauthentic and non-static cosmopolitan

attributes that facilitate coexistence and promote reconciliation. In The Autograph

Man, being postsecular does not mean being virtually irrelevant or offensive towards
religion but points to the creation of a new realm, which brings more possibilities for
a mobile and hybrid society. Those postsecular features as being underlined above
provide meaningful insights into Smith’s novelistic adaptation of religion which is not

motivated by supernatural, hyperreal, or explicitly biblical figures. Rather, it is

positioned mainly in the urban space across the Atlantic, with a concern about the
multi-religious truth in modern London and New York. It is also a portrayal as well as
a contemplation of how varied heritage may complement one another, showing their
co-impact on a single identity.

Smith’s exploration of social hodgepodge, in this novel, has expanded its scale to
the discursive and personalized adaptation of religious beliefs, which in turn, reflects
the relationship between religion and city dwellers in contemporary metropolises.
Such an adaptation also facilitates the formation of a postsecular consciousness which
advocates mutual respect between religious believers and secularists. Smith frames

her story by referring to and endowing contemporary significance on the Jewish

mystical doctrine “kabbalah”, the Jewish ritual “Kaddish”, and the Chinese Zen
classic Ten Bulls. She portrays an Alex who negotiates history, memory, and tradition,
and eventually reestablishes his individuality and identity through such a negotiation.
With the depiction of immigrants of Jewish ethnicity, this novel combines several

preconceived diasporic imaginations into a single character. Yet once again, it is

through the presentation of Alex’s confusion and misunderstanding of his heritage that
81
a process of transformation in his deeds and behaviors is presented.
In The Autograph Man, Smith re-establishes the ancient-cum- modern and
religious-cum-secular elements, which integrate canonical concepts with

contemporary features, and therefore, makes it possible for the religious images to
retain its significance in the twenty-first century context. It means that religion, as a
necessary medium for Smith’s literary imagination, ceases to take a dogmatic and
fundamentalist path to produce an essentialism-oriented articulation, but shows its
potential and vitality to be an integral part of everyday life. The process of

reconciliation between the religious and the secular, which is defined by McClure as
“weakened religiosity” (Partial Faith 3), also connotes the ability to be flexible and
adaptive. Beyond the conventional impression of the religious elements as being
grand, mysterious, and magical, the postsecular return of religion, retaining its
significance and influence, can further interact with “new, complexly hybridized

forms of thoughts and life” (10). The creation of postsecularism in literature, which
reflects the “complex entanglements of belief and practice in a contemporary global
world” (Mączyńska, “Toward a Postsecular Literary Criticism” 81), is largely
subjective, and varies in form depending on writers’ preferences to “develop their
own religiously inflected alternative to secularism” (McClure, Partial Faith 7). It is a

renegotiation between individuals and their religious heritage, memory, and belief as
well as a reflection on the clear-cut boundary between the sacred and the profane.
Smith, as a negotiator, establishes an indeterminate zone where hybridization of
religion and popular culture will lead to a new status of existence, which neither
distances itself from tradition nor finds itself being over-determined by dogma or

preconception.
Postsecularism, therefore, possesses cosmopolitan attributes, and contributes to
forming part of the elucidation of Smith’s cosmopolitanism. Smith creates a literary
realm that interacts with people who are initially born with forced hybridity, and who,
though cannot be defined as conventional believers, eventually discover the

inseparability of their religious roots with their identity building. Religion, along with
the inheritably defining features such as skin color and ethnicity, shapes immigrant’s
82
identity. With its essential significance, religion also positively influences the mental
well-being of individuals. If as Furman confirms, The Autograph Man is a freshly new
representation of Jewish fiction, then it is appropriate to add that this novel changes

the interpretation of how to deal with, on many occasions, the traditionally dogmatic
and authentic impression of religious beliefs, rituals, and conducts in a postsecular
society.
2.3 Varied Religious Heritage in a Contemporary Postsecular Context
It is helpful at the beginning to make a comparison between two relationships:

the Buddhism in India and Zen Buddhism in China, as well as the secularism and
religion in The Autograph Man. They may appear to be an incomparable pair at first
glance, but what they share in common is the co-creative interaction between the
metaphysical and the secular. As Zen thoughts travel across the borders of continents
and cultures, the significance of Zen is renewed and transmuted both by the importing

environment and by the receivers. The emergence of Chinese Zen Buddhism

witnesses a transformation trajectory, which originally derives from Indian Buddhism
— a religion that was transmitted to China during the fourth to sixth centuries (Tang
260). The Chinese Zen Buddhism gradually distinguishes itself from its original
counterpart, and witnesses a progression towards secularization. If Buddhism guides

people to realize an ultimate aim of transcendence, or a supreme purified perfection,

then Zen Buddhism regards its enlightenment as “becoming Buddha in the secular
world”, with a belief that daily activities can serve as the impetus of such
transcendence. Moreover, if Buddhism witnesses a developing trend of becoming
increasingly complicated with numerous terminologies, hierarchies, branches, objects

of worships, indicating its continuous distancing status from real life, then Zen
Buddhism finds its creeds continually drawing close to ordinariness, actuality, and
individuality. 22 Amidst such interactions, Zen Buddhism frees itself from some of the
prominent rituals in Buddhism, such as reciting the Buddhist scriptures, and becomes
a member of religious affiliations characterized by secularized features. The vitality of

22
See the discussion in the two Chinese essays by Tang, “Culture’s Double Selection” and “On the Innerness and
Interior Transcendence in the Thoughts of Zen Buddhism” (my translation).
83
Zen Buddhism comes from its acceptance and transformation of the conventions in
Buddhism. In the same tune, postsecularism gains its impetus by associating closely
with banality, particularly with the ordinary people, casting light on the influential

effect of religious heritage on them.

The Autograph Man contains adaptations of religious classics, and presents a
postsecularized embodiment of Zen thoughts, Zen sayings, and Ten Bulls. Such a
reconstruction contributes to presenting the postsecular feature of the characters’
identity, which gives credit to indeterminacy, resists essentialism, appreciates

openness, and values the inherited tradition. The coexistence of tradition, religion, and
individuality in the novel indicates that being postsecular does not mean to be
offensive towards religion and belief. It points to an evident and unavoidable trend for
modern people to preserve the inheritable tradition that is most valuable to them,
while at the same time, interacting with modern life which is mobile, dynamic, and

cosmopolitan. The Autograph Man offers a representation of Jews in twenty- first

century British society, and thus is regarded by Furman as a welcoming breakthrough
in the repertoire of Jewish novels. Through the combination of being Jewish and
Britain, Smith shows a negotiating as reconciling process between multiple heritage
and identity, and creates possibilities for individuals living in a hybrid, mobile, and

globalized society to gain an identity that is neither absolutely religious nor secular.
Smith’s postsecular endeavor of presenting the importance of religion in daily
life has been downgraded to an arbitrarily literary experiment. When referring back to
the voices of critics of The Autograph Man, it is not uncommon to find reluctant
admissions implying the failure of discovering the religious significance presented in

the novel. However, a revisit of Smith’s religious presentation shows that the book’s
Jewishness should not be simplified as “an empty signifier” (Cheyette 263). Rather, it
enjoys its authenticity without creating an overwhelming impression of being simply
remote and superior. Instead of interpreting Smith’s novel as indifference to Jewish or
Chinese inherited culture (Itakura 70), it might be more appreciate to remark that

Smith demonstrates a unique yet commonly existing phenomenon “in our increasingly
multiethnic, multiracial, and transnational” society (Furman 7). Various religious
84
heritage, along with other influential factors such as class, gender, and ethnicity,
continues to shape the characters’ hybrid identity. This also confirms Taylor ’s
observation that although “belief in God isn’t quite the same thing in 1500 and 2000”,

it seems “virtually impossible not to believe in God” (Taylor 3). For Smith’s
metropolitan residents, identity is both inheritable and adjustable. Tradition, in tune
with identity, cannot be replicated either since “it is never transmitted exactly as it
was received” (Wieseltier 269). Therefore, a perception of Alex’s identity should be
distanced from the judgment made by Wood (“Fundamentally Goyish”), who regards

him as a plain character obsessed with the film star Kitty Alexander and a young
good- for-nothing with inner emptiness. Rather than interpreting Alex’s identity as
plain and unilateral, it might be more appropriate to say that his self- identity is shaped
by tradition, religion, and society as well as by his family and friends, the influence of
which is beyond one’s capability to erase. 23

Moreover, few have paid attention to the Zen elements in The Autograph
Man, but by referring to Zen Flesh and Zen Bones, a book that Smith quoted in her
writing of this novel, and to the Zen classic Ten Bulls, a subtle yet strong relation can
be traced between Zen Buddhism and Smith’s characterization and plot development.
The existing voices, albeit they mention the Zen contents, hardly take a step further to

discover the significance of those elements in the novel. Despite Sell’s correct
arguments that identity is multiplied, may vary on different occasions, has different
implications, and can be interpreted differently based on individuals’ personal
understandings, his viewpoints on The Autograph Man may be problematic
nevertheless. Identity is not a gesture, and the relationship of Jewish and Zen elements

in the book has far more meanings than merely, as Sell clarifies, a fortuitous
arrangement, a mismatching, or a paradox (34). Moreover, the pictures and titles of
Book Two in the novel have been understood as exemplifying “the arbitrariness of the
relationship between the signifier and the signified” (Terentowicz-Fotyga 69). What

23
Here I am indebted to the inspiration of Anthony Appiah’s articulation on identity development. “ … developing
an identity (means being) enmeshed in larger, collective narratives but not exhausted by them”; “To create a
life…is to create a life out of the materials that history has give you. An identity is always articulated through
concepts (and practices) made available to you by religion, society, school, and state, mediated by family, peers,
friends” (The Ethics of Identity, 231).
85
has to be underlined is that Zen sayings obtains contemporary significance with their
original meanings being preserved, and the adaptation of the Zen classic Ten Bulls
indicates Alex’s self-advancement route — an enlightenment journey of sorts towards

a compassionate giver.
Alex has diversified heritage, both of which play an equally important role in
shaping his identity. Roots and origins, passed down from parents to children, retain
their own value and influence or, as Wieseltier says, although “origin is only an
empirical fact … [it has] spiritual significance” (293). Living in London and growing

up with friends of Jewish and African origins, Alex is exposed to and influenced by
various cultural elements. This probably throw light on Furman’s statement that
Smith’s The Autograph Man is a remarkable breakthrough in the history of Jewish
literature which “actively engaged with the pressing cultural crises of our day” (7).
Smith gives her characters the freedom to develop their individuality, which is “an

essential element to human good” (Appiah, The Ethics of Identity 5). Alex was born a
Jew, grew up in his father’s surgery, and becomes a professional autograph man with a
sensational devotion to obtaining a signed poster from his adored actress Kitty.
Descendents of Jews and immigrants like Alex, his girlfriend Esther, and his friend
Adam will unavoidably be partially incarnated as the reproduction of their parents. In

particular, the religious traditions, being freed from the static and rigorous
requirements of formal conventions, continuingly exert a decisive influence on the
characters’ mental development. These physical and spiritual heritage not only exist in
their life, but along with other shaping elements such as ethnicity and gender, make
them postsecular modern citizens with secular habits and religious virtues.

In the book, the ten sefirot of Kabbalah and Ten Bulls support the narrative, the
modernization of which opens a portal to approach and comprehend postsecularism
and its significance. Firstly, Smith uses religious classics as the scaffolding of the
novel. The Autograph Man has four parts: a prologue, books one and two, and an
epilogue, and the chapters in books one and two are named after the components of

ten sefirot and Ten Bulls respectively. If the original ten sefirot open the gates for the
ordinary to know God, their personalized counterparts in the novel transcend the
86
exclusivity of religious images and inform us of some of the most significant
connections between the characters and their memory, tradition and experience.
Regardless of these changes, the significances of the original ten sefirot and their

personalized counterpart interlink with each other in terms of their formation and
structure. Most importantly, they share a sense of interconnectedness combining the
secular and the ordinary with the sacred and the magnified. Ten Bulls drawn by the
twelfth century Chinese Zen master Kuo-an illustrate the circuitous route for human
beings to discover their true nature and attain enlightenment. In ten round pictures,

Kuo-an draws a shepherd boy and his experience from seeking, discovering, and
catching the bull to taming it before showing how, after riding the bull home, the boy
discovers his true self, attains enlightenment and lives comfortably and contentedly in
a secular world. The bull, along with the goat and the deer, is one of the most
welcomed images for Zen masters to articulate their thoughts and attainments (Wang,

Zou Ru Shi Niu Tu xvi), and in the pictures, it symbolizes the boy’s hidden but innate
“nature”. Secondly, elements in kabbalah and Ten Bulls form a harmonious whole in
the novel’s plot development. After nine components in the ten sefirot of Alex’s
kabbalah, including the widely acclaimed celebrities in arts, literature, music, and
philosophy, have been revealed, the highest one, “Keter”, (the crown) remains a

mystery. It is not until Alex has gone through a self-discovery and self-awareness
journey — bringing fundamental changes to the life of his most beloved film star,
recognizing the significance of life and death, and practically understanding the deeds
of kindness — that he eventually completes his ten sefirot, and puts the signature of
his father at the “Keter”. Ten sefirot and Ten Bulls, both mysterious and classical, have

been adapted in the book throughout which their values have been revitalized and
reinforced. By integrating “the ancient guidelines into the modem confusion”
(Willens 125), Smith makes these religious and oriental philosophical images more
accessible in her fictional world, and in turn enables the mysterious and holy tradition
to become the necessary fabric of popular culture.

87
2.4 Postsecular Identity and Postsecular Presentation
Alex is influenced by both his Jewish and his Zen heritage. Outwardly, he shows
no interest in his mother’s religion and is confused about the Jewish part of his

identity. However, subconsciously, he is convinced of God’s existence, and feels

24
dependent on His glory and grandeur. The repeated appearances of
Tetragrammaton YHWH, God’s divine name in Hebrew, along with its equivalent in
Hebrew script ‫יהוה‬, show his personal connection to God who in Alex’s mind will
help him solve life’s problems. While working on his manuscript Jewishness and

Goyishness, he uses the handwritten version of the Tetragrammaton whenever he

meets deadlocks or has to deal with contentious elements. This is a reflection of
Alex’s belief that the Hebrew incarnation ‫ הוהי‬is more potent, and “the invocation of
the holy name would protect his heresy” (89, emphasis added). Moreover, feeling
reluctant to agree on the rules drafted by his strident neighbor Anita Chang, Alex

signs on the contract “a table, two long-haired sprites, another table on its side, a
broken twig” (145). In other words, he writes down ‫יהוה‬, a signature that in Alex’s
mind contains the mysterious power to defuse potentially difficult situations. On a
different occasion, the wounded, semi- conscious Alex, when making his payment to
Dr. Huang, a practitioner of Chinese medicine, signs the check with “a shaky table, a

catcher’s mitt, the bottom half of a chair” (190), another description of ‫יהוה‬. At that
time, Alex is suffering from the pain of family bereavement, rejecting his friends’
suggestion for honoring his departed father by reciting Kaddish. He is “glum and
muddled” (180), extremely drunk with alcohol and drugs. Enduring such an emotional
crisis, he writes down the four- letter divine name of God, as if with God’s supreme

power, he could find a way out of life’s muddle. The Hebrew inscription of YHWH,
therefore, is more than a signature to Alex. It is his lifesaver when he reaches an
impasse, and his secret source of power that is beyond other people’s perception.
In Smith’s writing, being Zen denotes calm, beauty, and a peaceful mood with no

24
Alex’s state of mind also corresponds to the spirituality of modern Americans analyzed by Robert Wuthnow,
who argues that, “M any people remain convinced of God’s existence but realize increasingly that the reality of
their world is secular” (10).
88
fear of death. 25 For her protagonist Alex, whose heritage partly consists of Zen spirits,
these implications also appear in his mind and writing. In his letter to Kitty, Alex
comments on her decision of “no acting” with an old Zen joke: “Don’t just do

something! Sit there!” (152). A similar indication can be found in the first line of a
Zen poem written by Su Shi, one of the most famous ancient Chinese poets in history.
The general idea of the poem is that if we sit quietly, enjoying the peace and
tranquility, our life span will be doubled, as is signified in the lines: “Nothing bothers
me and I sit quietly, one day equals to two days. If we live for seventy years, it is in

effect one hundred and forty.” 26 Even though in Alex’s imagination this Zen
quotation is a joke, its original meaning is preserved in the specific discourse:
sometimes staying still might bring more benefits than acting impulsively.
Apart from the verses that appear in the letter to Kitty, Alex consciously uses the
significance of Zen sayings to articulate his perception of a multi-cultural and

multi-ethnic community. Sitting in a park, he sees a miniature cosmopolitan world in

New York where there is a Soviet-style church and “a mixture of Hipsters and Poles”
(311). Letting his mind wander, he experiences an epiphany about the “perfect circle”
(311) or an interdependent relationship between the Hipsters and the Poles:

1. Poles need Hipsters because Hipsters bring new money to the

area.
Spring comes, grass grows by itself.
2. Hipsters need Poles because Poles are proof that Hipsters –
despite their increasing financial stability – are still bohemian.

Living near Poles is a Hipster’s sole remaining mark of authenticity.

The blue mountain does not move.
3. Hipsters are Poles. Poles are Hipsters. Poles sell 1950s retro

25
In The Autograph Man, Adam praises Alex’s mother with the words, “ … she’s so relaxing to speak to. Very
Zen, always” (131). Alex recalls a story of “True prosperity” in the book, highlighting the importance of following
a natural course—grandfather dies, father dies, and son dies. M oreover, in Smith’s short story “M artha, M artha”,
she also writes: “He is a Zen Buddhist, death for him is just an idea” (12).
26
My translation. In this poem, Su emphasizes the importance of relaxing and sitting in tranquility. M editation
brings contentment, and if one could enjoy genuine peace and tranquility of mind every day, his/her spiritual life
span will be doubled. See Su Shi shi ji (Su Shi poetry collection, vol. 43, 2352).
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 gas-station t-shirts. Hipsters eat pickled herring.
White clouds float back and forth. (312)27

Under each comment on Poles and Hipsters, there is a Zen saying. As for
“Spring comes, grass grows by itself”, the previous verse is “The source has no
relation with Buddha” (Pu, vol. 6 351). Together, these lines indicate that external
factors are not decisive in the process toward enlightenment, and each individual has
the possibility of becoming Buddha at the right time and under proper circumstances,

just as the grass will grow when spring comes. This verse, positioned here by Alex,
conveys the idea that the co-existence of Poles and Hipsters comes not deliberately,
but naturally — a social trend that emerges out of mobility. The second and the third
lines “The blue mountain does not move, white clouds float back and forth” come
from Zen Master Zi-Chin of Ning-Yuen Monastery (Pu, vol. 4 240). After thirty years

of practicing Zen Buddhism, he finally reaches enlightenment and suggests to monks

that they accept gracefully the cycle of life. More broadly speaking, just like the
mountain and the clouds floating above it, which are boundless and tranquil, people
should possess the serenity to accept reality, including both its advantages and limits.
When these Zen sayings and Alex’s observations are combined together, what is

emphasized is Hipsters’ and Poles’ mutually shaping relationship, indicating that such
a status of co-existence, although it has gone through resistance and turbulence,
eventually helps to vitalize both of its components. The sky, mountain, and clouds are
the truth, and could only be discovered by a “clear and empty mind” (Sahn 310). Zen
Master Sahn compares a clear mind to a mirror, which reflects things only as they are.

“As clouds come, the clouds and you become one”, “[w]hen spring comes and the
grass grows, the spring and you become one”, and “[w]hen you see the mountain, the
mountain and you become one” (311). Alex’s thoughts respond with Sahn’s, as the
former concludes, “[Eventually] Hipsters are Poles. Poles are Hipsters” (312) —

27
An English-Chinese version of Smith’s quotation “Spring comes, grass grows by itself,” “The blue mountain
does not move,” and “White clouds float back and forth” can be found in Zen M aster Seung Sahn’s The compass
of Zen (310). The corresponding Chinese lines appear in Wu deng hui yuan (1984): “Spring comes, grass grows by
itself” comes from volume six of the collection (351), and “The blue mountain does not move, and white clouds
float back and forth” come from volume four of the collection (240).
90
Poles and Hipsters also become one. Under the given context, Alex is consciously
aware of the significance of these Zen sayings and is capable of using them properly
to reflect a social truth: Poles and Hipsters, after years of co-existence and interaction,

have been changed by each other and manage to live together in a re-defined way.
Alex questions the formality of religious rituals but like a theist, he believes in
God’s glorious power; he is born and bred in London, but like a Zen master, he has a
sophisticated understanding of Zen stories and Zen sayings. In other words, he makes
efforts to “write his own self” through a negotiation with his traditions (Sell, “Pleased

to Meet You” 63). Hence, it is appropriate to define Alex as a postsecular modern man
who is not in absolute subjection to any exact dogma but, nonetheless, associates
closely with the heritage passed down from his parents. For Smith as a writer,
religious traditions, be they Christian values, Jewish rituals, or Zen spirits, exist for
the sake of the person, not the other way around. Her characters, in turn, have a

“personal grandeur” (Smith, Changing My Mind 197), and enjoy the freedom of
engaging with their innate variability.
As to the Jewish elements, Smith uses a personalized ten sefirot of Kabbalah to
represent Alex’s identity. The ten sefirot have been interpreted as “the ten spheres of
divine manifestation … the ten names most common to God … the inner, intrinsic or

mystical Face of God” (Scholem 213-216.). Therefore, “[p]rior to the emanation of

the sefirot, God is unmanifest, referred to as Ein Sof, Infinite” (Matt 33). The original
ten sefirot open the gates for the ordinary to know God, and “Ein Sof and the sefirot
formed a unity … ‘It is they, and they are It’” (Matt 33). Looking back at the
reformed Kabblistic tree of life for Alex, it also creates a path for readers to

understand the protagonist; and the chosen sefirot form a unity in representing his
identity both as an autograph collector and a Jewish son. In choosing eight out of the
“ten sefirot” for Alex’s Kabbalistic tree of life, Smith borrows the Lenny Bruce’s
style of humor. Bruce divides the world, categorizing everything as being either
Jewish or Goyish. Such categorizations, however, are intuitive with no relation to

ethnicity. Correspondingly, the eight chosen sefirot — except Alex himself and his
father Li-Jin — in his Kabbalistic tree of life “feel Jewish” to Smith, even though
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some of the celebrities do not have a Jewish identity. The seemingly random choices
of “sefirot” in effect represent Alex’s professional identity, in which his most
important job is to collect autographs of celebrities from all fields, including literature,

philosophy, arts, music, film, and sports. Furthermore, just as “[s]efirotic imagery is
intended to convey something of the beyond; worshiping its literalness prevents
profound communication” (Matt 34), beyond those signatures, there is hidden
similarity between some “sefirot” and Alex. Woolf and Wittgenstein, who are among
the highest sefirot, represent the complexity of Alex’s identity as a second generation

immigrant with varied heritage. Woolf marries a Jew, but a happy marriage is not
reflected in her writing as she controversially depicts Jews as stereotypes; and
Wittgenstein is ethnically Jewish, but his hybrid ethnical and cultural background also
causes identity confusion. Waller and Kafka, the “right and left arms” of Alex
represent the two sides of his personality. Waller, the influential jazz pianist, may

epitomize Alex’s free- flowing joyfulness as he is loved by all, including his parents,
his friend Adam and girlfriend Esther. Kafka, who Smith believes is a “Jewish
anti-Semite, a self- hating Jew” (Smith, Changing My Mind 68), reflects Alex’s
rootless feeling of being born between different cultures. As a son of a Jewish mother,
Alex often doubts about his Jewish belief; with a deep love and respect for his father,

he initially refuses to accept this fact, let alone saying Kaddish; as a modern Londoner,
he smokes marijuana, but only accepts Chinese traditional treatment; and as a
profit-driving businessman, he becomes increasingly kind and compassionate. Smith
combines popular culture with the religious images and uses a personalized tree of life
to demonstrate the multifactedness of Alex’s identity.

However, identity crisis is not the ultimate aim of Smith’s characterization of

Alex. Instead, she intends to show the process of Alex’s development, his ever
sophisticated understanding of religious significance and his engagement with
traditions. Smith accordingly sets Alex on a “pilgrimage journey”, during which both
his Jewish and Zen heritage exert a positive influence on shaping his identity.

Coinciding with the adaptation of ten sefirots in Book One of the novel, in Book Two
Smith draws Alex’s personalized path to enlightenment based on Ten Bulls created by
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the twelfth century Chinese Zen master Kuo-an. 28 In the ten pictures, Kuo-an
illustrates a person’s journey of discovering his/her hidden Buddha nature, attaining
enlightenment, re-entering the secular world, and starting a new journey of helping

others to get out of physical and mental pain. According to Zen Master Sheng Yen,
the bull represents the hidden Buddha- nature while the boy epitomizes an individual’s
self-cultivating devotion. 29 In the ten chapters on Alex’s enlightenment journey, the
boy is represented by Alex and the bull finds its human incarnation in Kitty. Smith
depicts Alex’s change from a soulless autograph dealer to an affectionate son and

admirer, whose consciousness, like that of the boy’s, begins in incapability and
weakness and ends in accomplishment and transcendence. It is by helping Kitty to
restart her life that Alex experiences the enlightenment of sorts, becoming a person
who loses himself in nothingness and treats others with compassion.
The images and significance of Ten Bulls are embedded in the novel’s narrative.

After having a close reading of the original pictures, what can be discovered when
re-reading Book Two is the substantial influence of the original Ten Bulls on Smith’s
writing. The original images find their fictional equivalents in the novel and the
original significance of those pictures also corresponds with Alex’s deeds and
changes in consciousness. In the first stage “Searching for the Bull”, a feeling of

bewilderment takes over. At the beginning of the journey, the boy runs to the
countryside and stares at his surroundings, wondering how to find the bull. Alex, with
the eagerness to find Kitty, flies from London to New York. Staring at the city’s map,
he is as clueless as the boy in the first picture and does not know how to start his
journey of searching for Kitty. Beams of lights then brighten the darkness of

28
The original pictures and the English translation of The Pictures of Ten Bulls are included in Paul Reps’s Zen
Flesh, Zen Bones, a book that Smith quotes in The Autograph Man.
29
Among the two monographs on Ten Bulls, Xiaolin Wang and Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) give extended
discussions on this Zen classic. Osho uses personal experience to support his understanding while Wang elucidates
its significance with Chinese Zen stories, and both of them refer to the thoughts of ancient and modern
philosophers in their interpretations. The original pictures remain the same, but the explanations of them may vary
in different contexts. Similarly, in The Autograph Man, Alex re-adapts Zen stories, Zen quotes and Zen classic Ten
Bulls in a modern context, and shows a personal interaction with and interpretation of those religious elements.
Zen M aster Sheng-Yen’s elucidation of Ten Bulls is included in his monograph Zen Experience (Chan De Ti Yan).
Different from Wang and Osho, Sheng-Yen is more focused, explaining the original meaning of each picture and
the corresponding poems and commentaries. The interpretations of those philosophers are valuable references.
This article mainly relies on the original version of the ten pictures included in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (the version
adapted by Smith) and the philosophers’ focused discussions on the significance of the pictures and poems.
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disoriented searches after his encounter with Honey, who is familiar with Robeling
Heights, Brooklyn where Kitty lives. The eulogistic poems of Picture Two,
“Discovering the Footprints”, say that “bull seekers are many, bull discoverers are

few’ (Wang, Zou Ru Shi Niu Tu 19) 30 , which accordingly reverberates in the book’s
context where it is almost impossible to find Kitty’s signed photos or letters. What
seems even more difficult is to meet her in person. Nevertheless, the appearance of
Honey indicates that Kitty is not far away; just as the boy, by discovering the existing
footprints, is fully aware of his nearness to the bull. By following Max, Alex finds

Kitty’s house without difficulty and meets her in person — a scene which can be
found in Chapter Three “Perceiving the Bull”. He cannot manage to control his
emotions when thinking of his thirteen years’ efforts of trying to get in touch with her.
It is a feeling of ecstasy within himself, a sense of accomplishment indicating the
“discovery of self after going through spiritual and physical hardship” (Wang, Zou Ru

Shi Niu Tu 31). The re-discovery of one’s Buddha nature does not lead to the
attainment of enlightenment, however, as the body might again lose the bull at any
time. When depicting Alex’s consciousness at this stage, Smith writes after Alex’s
meet with Kitty: “Not yet! He didn’t want her caught, not yet!” (271) Alex’s intention
then gradually changes from searching for Kitty to helping her start a new life, as he

realizes that Max is not simply “overprotective” (285) but practically arrests her and
prevents her from contacting or being reached by anyone. The original notes of
Picture Four “Catching the Bull” says: “human habits are hard to change, the bull’s
wide nature is difficult to tame” (Wang, Zou Ru Shi Niu Tu 52). Challenges lie ahead.
Although Kitty passionately praises Alex’s writing talents and imagination, she is not

impressed by the young man who is too nervous to speak. She is psychologically
closer to Max than to Alex, as she prefers to believe in Max’s lie that her autographs
are worthless. In order to persuade Kitty to start an independent life, extricating
herself from the control of Max, Alex has to “tame” her. The original picture “Taming
the Bull” shows the boy’s deeds to harness the bull’s wildness, maintain his

rediscovered nature, and eliminate obstacles on the route to enlightenment. Alex also
30
Subsequent references to Zou Ru Shi Niu Tu (Stepping into The Pictures of Ten Bulls) are my translation.
94
wants to “keep” Kitty at his side. His sudden visit to Kitty’s apartment after midnight
surprises the lady and his familiarity with her films impresses her who, feeling
delighted and moved, says “you are a library of me” (308). “In a passionate, dramatic

gesture”, Alex “tells her that she must come with him and leave this place” (310).
While assisting Kitty to regain a sense of self, Alex’s admiration for her again
sublimates, turning into a selfless wish of making a real difference to her life.
Naturally, Alex takes one step closer to the mental status of a compassionate Zen
master. His efforts are paid back with Kitty’s departure from New York to London. In

the original version of Picture Six “Rides the Bull Home”, the boy plays his flute
contentedly on the bull’s back, and the bull cheerfully enjoys the music and holds its
head up to the sky: a sense of comfort and relaxation permeates between them. Taking
a flight back home, Alex experiences a similar sense of contentment — the concern
about Kitty being trapped by Max has vanished, and joyfully and calmly, he expects

Kitty’s arrival in London.

In Picture Seven, “The Bull Transcended”, the boy sits alone on the hilltop under
the moonlight, meditating in tranquility. The Bull will appear no more as the boy who
safely keeps his rediscovered nature, has “no worries, no disputes, and no secular
desire” (Sheng Yen 70). This also reflects Alex’s mentality after Kitty arrives in his

apartment in London. Alex’s girlfriend Esther is confused by his exceptional calmness,

as she says: “I don’t understand – you should be over the moon. What’s wrong with
you?” (344, italics in original). At that moment, Alex has no desire for himself, and
what concerns him most is how to use his professional advantage to end Kitty’s
misery. He has almost realized the dream of achieving the career success desired by

most autograph dealers, but rather than feeling proud and gleeful, he experiences an
epiphany of selflessness: “It was not money that excites him. Not entirely the
money … it was the joy of giving a gift, a gift back to Kitty, for what she had given
him” (347-48). He is dedicated to giving and paying back, and hence trading
autographs becomes a means for helping Kitty rather than a way of gaining profits.

In the original version of Picture Eight, there is only an empty circle. When a
Zen practitioner steps into the eighth stage “Both Bull and Self Transcended”, he
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reaches perfection with no self or devotion, no subjectivity or objectivity —
everything blends into a harmonious whole. If “a full circle represents perfection, and
a true perfection points to self- forgetting” (Wang, Zou Ru Shi Niu Tu 120), then in

Chapter Eight, Alex also forgets himself in helping Kitty sell the autographs. The
novel accordingly comes to “perfection” as it moves on to its climax: when the fake
news of Kitty’s death makes the price of Alex’s lots soar, he makes a historical
success in the auction house. Hearing the prices climb, Alex advances further in
reaching enlightenment. He suddenly understands his father’s empathic feeling

towards the Chinese who died in an earthquake and realizes that “luck is a sort of
insult to the world” (359). Like a real Zen master depicted in Picture Eight, who
regards pretentiousness and euphuism as unnecessary and redundant, Alex is
embarrassed by others’ compliments after the tremendous auction success and does
not expect recognition for his “altruistic acts” (Wang, Zou Ru Shi Niu Tu 122).31

Regardless of the misunderstanding of his peers, Alex does something that a

profit-seeking old self would never do — giving the entire share he earns from the
auction to Brian Duchamp, who once asked him to sell two fake autographs of Kitty.
Alex does not mention to Brian that those signed photos suddenly disappeared
because, as Smith reveals to us, they are secretly destroyed by his friend Rubinfine.

Instead, he praises Brian’s talents for imitating handwriting: “[they never doubt] not
for a second. You are too good” (371), providing the dying man with a sense of
achievement. To save the living from misery and to honor the dying — the deeds of
Alex reflects his transformation from a soulless tradesman to an empathic person and
then to a compassionate giver. His fullness is gained by helping Kitty to earn the

life-changing amount of money and his contentment is achieved with the white lie and
selfless behavior to Brian. Eventually, Alex attains emptiness by giving out
everything he obtains.

31
Each ink painting in Ten Bulls is accompanied with commentaries and poems. The commentary of picture eight
conveys an idea that nothingness will free those practicing Zen from vanity. It says: “no longer feeling bewildered,
and no need for enlightenment. A world with Buddha is not necessarily a place to stay and a world without Buddha
is a place to pass by…Hundreds of birds as worshippers once came with flowers in their mouths, [but after
realizing the essence of nothingness], a feeling of shame arise!” Alex has a similar feeling after his unprecedented
success as an autograph man.
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 Picture Nine, “Reaching the Source”, shows a natural scene of flowers and a
stream with no trace of human beings. The surroundings and the environment might
be the same, but the mind of the person who appreciates it is different. Accordingly,

Alex might still get drunk, but he is different from his “old self” who dreads of death.
Thinking of his father and staring at all the autographs which are the “dead” ones on
the wall, Alex realizes the eternity of death: “They were not [dead]. But they would
be. All his people, all his love” (391). He is respectful to the dead, and even in
drunkenness, “[h]e had control, still” (392). “Without gesture or formality” (392), he

says his Kaddish and takes a step closer to his father’s soul. Compared to Picture Nine,
the last picture “In the World” maintains its sacredness while showing the enlightened
person’s engagement with rather than resistance to the secular world. It indicates that
after achieving enlightenment, the influence of external factors including formality
and rituals are minimized, as an enlightened person has recognized the essence of

“great mercy, great wisdom and great supernatural power” (Sheng Yen 71). After the
Zen practitioner becomes Buddha, he/she is capable of saving others from misery. As
Kitty says to Alex, “I am very glad we meet … You kill me, but then you resurrect
me. And so you are forgiven” (397, emphasis added). When Alex’s awakening
process comes to the final stage, he gains a sophisticated understanding of death and

reconciles with his identity as a Jewish son and a Londoner of Chinese descent. He
decides to put his father’s signature on the topmost of his ten sefirot and accepts to
read Kaddish for his deceased father. Alex at that moment may feel the same as
Wieseltier does “I will never be a man without a father. He will not die until I die”
(Wieseltier 368). Spiritually, Alex moves closer to his father’s soul and honors him in

a way that corresponds with the significance and meanings of Kaddish. 32

The images and significance of ten sefirot and Ten Bulls contribute to

32
Smith, while writing The Autograph Man, refers to Leon Wieseltier’s Kaddish which is prompted by his one
year of mourning for his deceased father. Reciting Kaddish is a son’s duty to his father, and a way of accepting the
eternal truth and honoring God’s judgment. As Wieseltier writes “I have no way of knowing about the fate of my
father’s soul, but I know what the death of my father has done to my heart. I have been slapped by the nature of
things. I have a choice between anger and acceptance; and I would like to be angry. But I would not like to be
stupid. So I must begin the labors of acceptance. M y kaddish is one of those labors; or so I will have it be. When I
rise to recite the kaddish, I will justify the judgment: not the disposition of his soul, but the disposition of his life;
not because I know it to be right, but because I know it to be true” (54-55).
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constructing the novel’s narrative and to shaping Alex’s identity. They fit into the
modern context through productive weakening without being deformed by their
postsecular presentations. Alex becomes an enlightened person of sorts who is

compassionate and who can forget himself in helping others. His identity extends
beyond a genuine believer or a committed atheist and his journey of enlightenment
overlaps but does not entirely coincide with a traditional pilgrimage. The religious
heritage continues to positively shape Alex identity; and the established religious
motifs preserve their significance and appear in the novel in a postsecular rather than

a traditionally sacred manner.

The postsecular featured co-creation represents Smith’s reflection on multi- faith

identities and multi- religious social realities. Postsecularism promotes new
possibilities for the co-existence and co-creation of the contradictory elements, and

makes it possible for contemporary authors like Smith to fully engage with religion in
a contemporary context. The Autograph Man demonstrates the meaningful return of
religion in a secular society. The mutually inclusive relationship between the holy and
the secular not only co-exists in modern identity, but co-creatively shapes self- identity
as individuals who consciously move towards spiritual perfection without being

exhausted by static conventions. Alex transforms himself into an enlightened person

of sorts who is compassionate and who forgets himself in helping others. His identity
extends beyond a genuine believer or a committed atheist, and his journey of
enlightenment overlaps, but does not entirely coincide with, a traditional pilgrimage.
As to the presentation of religious elements against the backdrop of secularization,

mobility, and migrancy, postsecularism characterizes these established traditions’

interrelationship with the contemporary literary discourse. The ten sefirot, undergoing
personalization, open a pathway for readers to understand Alex’s multi-dimensional
identity; Ten Bulls, in which the two essential images, the boy and the bull, find their
embodiment in Alex and Kitty respectively, shapes the narrative with its original

significance. The images and significance of the ten sefirot and Ten Bulls fit into the
modern context through productive weakening, maintain their substance and
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positively shape the protagonist’s identity. The postsecular style in The Autograph
Man signifies a co-creative relationship between the once incompatible, specifically
presenting an pivotal attribute of Smith’s cosmopolitanism.

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 Chapter 3 On Beauty: Blackness and the Vernacular

Although having a personal reluctance to travel (interviewed by O’Grady), Smith,

after the publication of her first two novels, moved across the Atlantic and stayed in

Harvard from 2002 to 2003. Critics have acknowledged that this experience, as well
as the Edwardian novel Howards End (1910) and the philosophical book On Beauty
and Being Just (1999), provides inspiration for Smith’s creation of On Beauty (Adams,
Fischer “A Glance from God”, Grmelová, Jackson, Kermonde, King “Creolisation”,
33
Lanone, Tolan “Zadie Smith’s Forsterian Ethics”, Tynan). What seems

unsatisfactory is that few articles elucidate the differentiated vernacular and its
cosmopolitan attributes presented in the novel. The vernacular as dialect resists lingua
franca, and the vernacular in its cultural dimension, as illustrated below, is rooted in
the specific but maintains its global significance by rediscovering beauty free from its
Euro-American scaffolding. In a political sense, vernacular cosmopolitanism — a

term proposed by Bhabha in literary criticism — is “a cosmopolitanism of necessity,

rather than free choice” (Appiah and Bhabha 189). Whereas in a cultural sense, the
vernacular, as it is indicated in On Beauty, signifies a reappreciation of the “Black”
and “Black” art that have long been undervalued and misinterpreted.
Smith prefers not to be constrained by her generic blackness, and writing

becomes a safe harbor where she enjoys the freedom of exploring the multiplicity of
being “black”. On Beauty mirrors the life of modern American people with African
and Caribbean origins. It places blackness in a dialogical position with other aesthetic
elements, and reconstructs the interpretation of the vernacular. The vernacular herein
is associated with the marginalized (Bhabha, “Unsatisfied” 48) and with a

border-crossing zone featuring a bottom-up cosmopolitanism (Werbner, “Vernacular

Cosmopolitanism” 497; see also Pollock, “The Cosmopolitan Vernacular” 7-8); it
entails a cultural interaction, in which the domestic and the local bring about

33
Smith spent a year as a Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard. As Dorothy J. Hale points out, the novel’s title
“gains a biographical layer, alluding to Smith’s personal experience” (816).
100
unexpected transformation in a larger environment. The book is glowed with music
and arts, including in particular rap, Haitian music, classical music, Rembrandt
paintings, Hyppolite’s voodoo goddess portrait, and poems. Smith acknowledges her

debts to her brother Doc Brown for his imagination on rap lyrics, to her husband Nick
Laird from whom she borrows a poem, and to Simon Schama whose book
Rembrandt’s Eyes helps her to “see paintings properly for the first time” (On Beauty,
acknowledgements).
Like its title, On Beauty shows varied kinds of beauty, including physical

attractiveness, artistic beauty of Haitian and Rembrandt’s paintings, and interpersonal

beauty of love, respect, and benevolence. These aesthetically pleasing elements in this
book are developed and enriched by the vernacular. Smith emphasizes on blackness
without losing sight of the themes that exist beyond black face and the culture of the
people conventionally being marginalized, and she places weight on the

transformative function of art. This novel is not created for the sake of diversity, but
rather, it articulates a hope that African Americans can recognize their uniqueness and
feel the sense of belonging in the “sea of white” (Smith, On Beauty 206). On Beauty
does not avoid the unpleasantness in life, nor does it try to underline separation,
multiculturalism, or creolization so as to deliberately increase the attractiveness and

the complexity of the novel. Rather, it demonstrates a cosmopolitanism, driving by the

vernacular, which changes the city’s ethnographical landscape and questions what
university humanities really does; and it distinguishes academic rigor with an intuitive
appreciation of beauty, questioning both institutionalization and established
classification. In terms of the personality of characters, different reactions towards

beauty (between academics and non-academics, the privileged and the

underprivileged, and the bourgeois and the untraditional) signify a distinction between
openness and a stereotyped mind.
This chapter will first have an insight into Smith’s ever-deepening presentation
of blackness, which is realistically displayed in the book. It is through such a

depiction that Smith expresses her concern about the ingrained imagination of African
American people — as if inferiority and misery are stamped on their consciousness
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and identity. Following the discussion of blackness, especially that of Haitians, it then
demonstrates the connection between the vernacular and extraordinariness, aiming to
construct an extended conception of the vernacular developed from and reaches

beyond its linguistic dimension.

3.1 Various Blackness
On Beauty unfolds a story of friendship, interaction, rivalry, and conflict between
two families, the Kipps and the Belseys. The England-born American immigrant
Howard Belseys and the Trinidadian-American Monty Kipps work in the same

university, share the same research interests on Rembrandt, but represent two ends of
the opinion spectrum — the former is radical and deconstructive both in his research
and life, and the latter is prejudiced and conservative. Kiki Belsey, who has married
Howard for thirty years, is a descendent of an African-American servant, and the
owner of the house that her family live in, which is bequeathed from a “white” doctor

to Kiki’s mother Lily. Carlene Kipps, who epitomizes love, friendship, and the spirit
of beauty and independence, is Monty’s wife who passes away in the middle of the
story, and bestows her most valuable possession, a Haitian painting, to Kiki. Howard
and Kiki’s three children are distinctive, varying in their dispositions. The elder son
Jerome is kind, understanding, and faithful, and even somehow old- fashioned in terms

of his attitude towards relationship; the only daughter Zora is pragmatic, unemotional,
and expects payback and rewards of everything she does; and the youngest child Levi
is sensible and empathetic, and is a great fun of rap music, who later on develops a
close relationship with Haitian Americans, including Choo, the former Haitian French
literature teacher. Between Monty and Carlene’s two children Michael and Victoria,

only the girl gains specific attention from the author, who is depicted as a young adult
with gorgeous appearance but unattractive personality.
On Beauty reconstructs blackness, not in an extreme sense of postracialism or
colorblindness, but in an endeavor of exceeding stereotyped association between skin
color and the long-lasting self-consciousness of mediocrity and deterioration. In the

novel, Smith “eludes all classifications”, be they political, ideological, racial, and
ethical (Głąb 492), and there is a palpable sense of trauma among the U.S. immigrants,
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especially those migrating from the island located in the continent of the Caribbean —
Haiti. The book somehow confirms the saying that “Africa, blackness and minority
status … are constantly pigeon holed into easy stereotypes” (Dawes 22), which

indicates that stereotypes and binary divisions still haunt the novel’s characters
(Fischer, “Gimme Shelter” 108). 34 However, regardless of race and ethnicity, the
novel entails a negotiation of blackness that lies beyond the traditional understanding
of this term in its Euro-American discourse. On the one hand, On Beauty is not
stylized as an utterly deconstructive narrative of stereotypes, because stereotypes are

parts of the reality, which Smith is aware of and does not have any intention to
avoid. 35 It is about the portrayals of “the other” who are more often than not referred
to as the “inferior”. Nevertheless, the distinctions between self and other, and between
the superior and the inferior are not clear-cut but ambiguous. On the other hand,
Smith consciously destabilizes the ideal imagination of the university and revisits the

vernacular. Monty seems to be a professedly respectful elite, but retains in effect an

aspect that is racist, sexist, and elitist. Howard is crushed by “an institutionalized
knowledge” (Brickley 90), the characterization of which reflects a problematic
relationship between the institution’s aesthetic regime and individuals’ aesthetic
quality. Moreover, the ostensibly weak and inauthentic imaginaries of vernacular

culture, which is distinct from the so-called elitist “high” culture, eventually proves to
be transformative and influential. What comes into formation through such a
depiction of the vernacular is the author ’s inclination of a changed understanding of
race, and her preference to appreciate beauty beyond established preconceptions. Such
a negotiation contains struggling and can be unpleasant and painful, yet it is a mild,

moderate, and nonetheless determined and firm appeal contributing to the identity and
self re-imagination of African and Caribbean Americans.
The unpleasant images in On Beauty are not rhetorically presented, but possess
an impetus of imperfectness. When commenting on Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland,

34
In Fischer’s article, she believes that Howard cannot “see beyond the binary of black and white” (108), and thus
the Belseys cannot embrace the reality of the family’s multiraciality.
35
See Rowe’s discussion in which she articulates that On Beauty “deconstructs Western mythologies of racial
stereotypes” (76).
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Smith defines a lyrical realism, which refers to a feature of literary texts that is
aesthetical, beautifully presenting any scene and any event in whichever context. She
comments that Netherland displays a realism that looks so fantastic and dreamy, in

which even the depictions of the cruel and the traumatic are lyrically presented.36
Perfection, in this regard, signifies the simplification of reality. The “coherent, lyrical
reveries” (Changing My Mind 82), as Smith believes, might appear to be too perfect
to reflect real mentalities. Such a stance is appropriately maintained in On Beauty, as
the book also questions the pure lyrical function of literature. The realism in On

Beauty, as well as in Smith’s other writings reflects the multifaceted nature of

personality that cannot be defined by simple binary categorizations such as the
dominated or the dominating, major or minor, privileged or marginalized. In other
words, Smith depicts human beings, exploring their existence in the original as well
as stereotyped forms. Born with different traditions and in the country where racial

problems still arouse feeling of uneasiness, her sensitivity to the needs of a unbiased
blackness is perceptible. When she praises Barack Obama’s ability of speaking in
tongues, and acclaims Zora Neale Huston’s neutralization of blackness, she also
articulates the subjectivity that is ontologically equal to her own (Hale 834).
Correspondingly, in On Beauty, confronting with the misery in Haiti, there is a

traceable emotion of concern and anger:

…a country real close to America that you never hear about, where
thousands of black people have been enslaved, have struggled and
died in the streets for their freedom, have had their eyes gouged out

and their testicles burned off, have been macheted and lynched,
raped and tortured, oppressed and suppressed and every other kind
of pressed … and all so some guy can live in the only
decent- looking house in the whole country, a big white house on a
hill. (355, italics in original)

36
See “Two Directions of the Novel”, in Smith’s Changing My Mind, pp. 72-96.
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 Deromantization signifies a confrontation with such imperfect even unpalatable
reality, manifesting Smith’s style of creating characters who to various extents are
border crossers. 37 In Smith’s regard, the self-conscious awareness about the paradox

between a multicultural happy land and the stereotyped tragic fate of African and
Caribbean immigrants is unavoidable. Amid the growing trends of mobility, what is
on display is a negotiation among the paradoxical elements in identity. Such a paradox
echoes with Anne Elizabeth Carroll’s comment on the sensibility of artists and writers
in Harlem Renaissance: “Participants in the movement were not naïve; they did not

expect racism to disappear overnight. Instead, they launched an ongoing,

ever-changing exploration of how texts might most effectively be used to undermine
it” (3). Similarly, in On Beauty, Smith develops an understanding as well as an
appreciation of the vernacular, which contributes to undermining the disenfranchised
and marginalized imagination of this concept. What is worth noticing is that On

Beauty does not share its twenty-first century theme with the literary works of Harlem
Renaissance back in 1920s. Its focus quite exceeds the scale of racism in its narrow
sense, or how to regain and rebuild the dignity and respect for African American
people. Rather, it is a negotiation of self and other, which indicates that firstly, there is
no absolute connection between the vernacular and the “needy” immigrants; secondly,

it simultaneously confirms and reverses the enslaved mindsets dominated by the

division of authenticity and inauthenticity. 38 The issue of blackness is the cornerstone
of Smith’s identity construction, thus also expressive in On Beauty. It is about the
unfair treatment, the feeling of uneasiness and helplessness after moving to an
imaginarily “better” continent, the subconsciousness of self-pity, and the implicit

ingrained biases of racial superiority. These depressed imaginations, nevertheless,

coexist with the profound charm of vernacular culture and has been integrated into

37
See Smith’s discussion in “Love, Actually”, published on The Guardian, 1 Nov. 2003. Smith contends that
comparing to Jane Austen’s neat and clear ethical depiction, E.M . Foster’s muddled style is more ethic. Foster’s
characters are not ethically flat or morally consistent. Instead, he “widened the net of his empathy”, articulating the
fearsome, the imperfect, and the faulty.
38
Both the “white” Americans and the “black” Americans are enslaved in their stereotyped understanding of their
identities and mutual relationships, mainly because of the long-lasting effects of slave trade and enslavement.
Consequently, on most occasions, the “white” elements are marked as authentic, whereas their black counterparts
are interpreted, even subconsciously, as inauthentic. Smith consciously challenges such fixed mindsets, and
reminds her readers the importance of real appreciation.
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American culture. Both traumatic and compelling, the Haitian images in the novel
evoke binary consciousness, which means that a unitary apprehension “cannot unify
its message nor … identify its subjects” (Bhabha, Location of Culture 62). On

Beauty’s depiction of immigrants’ life and thoughts, to quote Lester’s comments of

Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God, is “real and unimagined” (“Find out if
They’s White or Black” 91). Similar to Hurston’s literary presentation, On Beauty
“affirms” the traumatic imaginations of black culture in America (Washington xii),
but different from it, Smith’s does not embody “a more or less harmonious but

nevertheless problematic unity of opposites” (Gates 196). Rather, she weakens the
conception of opposites, delineates how distinct qualities coexist productively in one
identity, and specifically rediscovers the largely suppressed or ignored features which
are once undervalued and unappreciated. Throughout the narrative, it articulates a
conscious awareness of the shadowiness imprinted by the historical trauma of

enslavement and colonization, but simultaneously a view of perceiving blackness in

its most original form, rediscovering its untainted beauty. Moraru believes that the
cosmopolitanism as presented in the novel is featured by the interdependence of the
self and the other, and by the sameness of all virtue — a vision of harmony in
difference. On top of that, following Smith’s contemplation of ethics, “the writer, the

artist, has to be acutely aware of the history that has brought him or her here” (Dawes
24), thus indicating a traceable sense of deromanticization in her cosmopolitanism.
While being longed for an unbiased world, she nonetheless has to face the stereotypes
— not to be trapped by it but to rediscover the precious in it, and to transcend the
traumatic imagination that is stereotypically marked on U.S. and U.K. immigrants’

identity.
To better unfold Smith’s neutralizing and naturalizing process of the vernacular,
what needs to be displayed in the first place is the unpleasantness in the novel — a
necessary precondition for demonstrating a Smithian portrayal style of the changes in
her characters who ultimately transcend the traumatic version of the vernacular. Cab

drivers, servants, maids, and cleaners, occupations taken by people of color find their

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reflections in Smith’s Wellington. 39 As Kiki says, “I don’t see any black folk unless
they be cleaning under my feet in the … café … [o]r pushing a … hospital bed
through a corridor” (206). Smith displays their struggles, poverties, and

disenfranchisement in an explicit and detailed way, enriched the significance of their

suffering by inserting unexpected connections. Howard’s cab driver Pierre who comes
from the “difficult island” Haiti, and who manages to find an “occupation in New
England”(25) speaks with an intense Haitian Creole, a French-based creole language,
which makes Howard mistake the word “terminal” to “germinal”. The latter is a title

of a French novel by Émile Zola that is themed at the exploitation and destitution
endured by French coal miners. Smith plants an association between the
disenfranchisement of nineteenth century and twenty- first century, bridged by the
color “black” (coal dust and skin color) and hardship (unfair treatments, poverty, and
anxiety). Haitian immigrants are also deficient of life’s necessities. A Haitian

stallholder from whom Kiki buys a silver anklet at a festival market, is “exceptionally
skinny… [and wears no] shoes at all” (47). Langston Hughes, decades ago, depicts a
similar scene, in which Haiti is “a land of people without shoes” (288), “[t]axes are
high, jobs are scarce, wages are low” (289), and “[a]ll the work that keeps Hayti alive,
pays for the American occupation, and enriches foreign traders … is done by Negroes

without shoes” (288). For the Haitian immigrant in the novel, his situation is hardly
any better compared to his counterparts at the home island. To Kiki’s disappointment,
he does not call her “sister” (48), nor act “liberally” as scholars have argued, but
concerns nothing other than prices and money. Even Kiki, who is usually seen by
critics as an incarnation of beauty, love, and benevolence — which is correct — is

associated with an impression of exploitation. The similar dark skin, which seems
ostensibly connects Kiki and her house cleaner Monique, only manages to make the
unbridgeable chasm between them more prominent. Paying her cleaner only four
dollars an hour, a wage considerably lower than that earned by a “white” counterpart,
Kiki is accused by her son Levi of becoming a racist, taking advantage of the people

39
Looking back at the occupational landscape in Smith’s home nation, England, more African, Asian, and
Caribbean immigrants are doing similar types of jobs comparing to their light-skinned counterparts.
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who are vulnerably powerless. This confirms Barbara J. Fields’s opinion that long
after the issue of Emancipation Proclamation, the different treatment for U.S.
minorities still exists at present, and in Kiki’s case, even among African Americans

themselves.
Apart from physical deprivation, in social terms, communication difficulties are
profound and obvious among those Haitian people living in the U.S., who appear to
be fearful and nervous in daily interactions. If Monique in Kiki’s house can speak
broken English, then Clotilde, the domestic worker in Monty’s house, has “no English

words to convey her news” (363) of Carlene’s death when Kiki pays a visit to the
Kipps’. And if Clotilde is still treated with certain cordiality by her employer, then the
Haitian cleaning lady working in a hotel has to withstand the impertinent interrogation
from Victoria. Unable to understand Victoria’s question, she then replies “My English
– sorry, can you – repeat, please?” (381), and believing that she has irritated the

customer, she bows and apologizes for no reason. Therefore, Smith in the novel
catches a glimpse of Haitian people’s life in the U.S., who work hard, and wish to
have a better life, but who still live in poverty, lacking of dignity and respect. As for
Haitians with sufficient language abilities, life does not turn out the way as they
envision it to be. Choo is fluent in English but is not freed from the feeling of shame

and helplessness. Used to teach French language and literature in Haiti, Choo has his
own talents and expertise, but after moving to America, his identity as a Haitain and
his dark skin, seems to bridge him automatically with the position of servants. It is
through Choo, who feels irritated and humiliated, that Smith expresses her own
concern of the imagination of African and Caribbean Americans. It is not a golden and

bright nation as “America has ghettos! And Haiti is the ghetto of America!” (360),
and it is far from being liberal as what still exists is “the same old slavery” (361).
There is a contrast in this novel between the intriguing “disadvantaged” African
and Caribbean Americans, and their “affluent” counterparts, who in Baldwin’s sense
when stepping into the “white” society at once diminish everything original. A

similarity is shared between Monty in On Beauty and Magid in White Teeth, of which
the former, an academically acclaimed Trinidadian professor is enslaved in his
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white-elite-dominated and self-constricted consciousness. Through the portrayal of
Monty, Smith creates a serious contrast between professional achievements and moral
deterioration. Monty is not only a fluent English speaker but enjoys an academic

reputation that Howard desires, and lives a bourgeois life. However, despite his
Trinidadian origin, Monty has an artificial personality, marked by his conservatism
that is in effect a deeply-rooted discrimination towards self and others. He wears
“absurd nineteenth-century three-piece suits” (264), and has a preferences of luxury as
his office is furnished with “Nice chair. Nice table. Nice painting. Thick carpet” (405).

Against his deceased wife’s wish to bestow the priceless Haitian painting
Maitresse Erzulie to Kiki, Monty claims it as his own and removes it to his office. The
sudden stolen of the painting reveals a hysterical Monty whose discrimination against
people of color is completely unmasked. He intuitively asserts that Carl who works in
the department “without references, without qualifications” (421) is responsible for

the stealing. Presumably associating being “black” with being violent and criminal, he
asks her daughter Zora, who happens to know Carl, “could you tell me what kind of
young man … is this Carl Thomas? Did he strike you, for example, as a thief?”(422,
emphasis added) He is not only racially prejudiced but morally corrupted, torturing
the vulnerable with his abuse of power. As a man who can speak eloquently of

“[s]tate of Britain, state of the Caribbean, states of blackness, state of art, state of
women, [and] state of the States” (121), Monty begins and then terminates an affair
with the disenfranchised Chantelle who is an auditor and a talented student at
Professor Clair Malclom’s poem class, driving her out of Wellington college so as to
cover his own misbehavior. He manipulates the power attained through professional

success, and behaves hypocritically without empathy. His appreciation of art is largely
disconnected with emotional love, but serves as an impetus for gaining wealth and
fame. Chantelle in his regard does not deserve any help, as any humanized action
towards those “poor and black” is defined as “demoralizing” (365). Smith uses
Monty’s academic accomplishment as sarcasm to highlight his estrangement from his

roots, and his discrimination to others, even though he may not want to be treated in
the same discriminatory way. Wealth makes him a collector of Caribbean arts, but not
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a care taker of beauty. Choo, similar to Chantelle, who lives in a disenfranchised
condition, condemns Monty for taking advantage of the needy:

…that man [Monty] is a liar and a thief. We know all about him, in
our community, we follow his progress – writing his lies, claiming
his glories. You rob the peasants of their art and it makes you a rich
man! A rich man! Those artists died poor and hungry. They sold
what they had for a few dollars out of desperation – they didn’t

know! Poor and hungry! (362, italics in original)

There is a fundamental difference between owning and appreciating. According

to Appiah, we should live with art and “that interest is not limited to the art of our
own ‘people’” (Cosmopolitanism 127). Having the largest collection of Haitian art in

private hands outside of that island does not mean Monty would be able to appreciate,
care, love, and eventually be transformed by the beauty of Haitian art. That partly
explains why his wife Carlene decides to give her most valuable painting to Kiki, as it
needs to be loved unconditionally, instead of being treated as a symbol of wealth and
position. What is typically noticeable in regard to the educated and seemingly

superior immigrants like Monty is that they are constantly at a loss of their own
identity, and pursue for an extreme Europeanization. Or in Carl’s words: “You people
aren’t even black any more … You think you’re too good for your own people. You
got your college degrees, but you don’t even live right” (Smith, On Beauty 418-19). It
becomes largely self-evident that Monty is a racist with no compassion or empathy.

Consciously he believes that blackness is marked by poverty and inability, and he

regards himself as identical to those with “white skin”. The reference of “you” in
Carl’s mind, should point to Zora, or anyone who erases anything associated with
their origin, and becomes morally collapsed with no identity of their own, but loses in
mimicry and assimilation.

In the novel, among the immigrants of upper middle class, Levi is an exception.
He consciously values the blackness in his identity, and desires to maintain his
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uniqueness in an abrupt yet affectionate way. His eagerness of seeking for a genuine
rather than an imaginary self- identity motivates him to join the group of Haitian
people trading on streets. With the empathy remarkably traceable in his mother Kiki,

he realizes that “not far from him, people were suffering greatly” (356). He becomes
intimate with Choo, and enthusiastically engages with the social activities of
protecting the Haitian people’s rights in the U.S. Young, impulsive, and premature as
he may appear to be, Levi is sensible and morally responsible. Having a cosmopolitan
empathy, Levi feels his connection with Haiti, as he integrates his mother:

“People in Haiti, they got NOTHING, RIGHT? … We sucking their

blood – we’re like vampires! You OK, married to your white man in
the land of plenty – you OK. You doing fine. You’re living off these
people, man!”(428)

Unlike his sister Zora, Levi is not self- righteous or feels privileged because he
happens to be born in a middle class family with a father who teaches in the university.
He is more than willing to make a difference to social communities in his personally
defined way. Deliberately, he disguises himself as a young man like Choo, with an

eagerness of defining himself with his own deeds and behaviors (rather than the
inherited identity from parents). He vicariously understands the feeling of being
victims of race and color, and laments the hardship caused by discrimination and
injustice that is deemed to be destructive. After reading an inclusive and welcoming
recruiting advertisement, Levi decides to join a Mega-store: “Our companies are part

of a family rather than a hierarchy … In a sense we are a community, with shared

ideas, values, interests and goals. The proof of our success is real and tangible. Be a
part of it” (180). That is an attractive piece of writing leaving people the impression of
harmony and inclusiveness. However, the reality is not as dreamy as it seems. The
words used by the mega-store’s black manager Bailey to insult Levi when the boy

tries to fight for a Christmas holiday are extremely humiliating: “Don’t – act – like – a
– nigger – with – me – Levi” … you don’t see me acting like a nigger. You better
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watch yourself, boy” (191-92, italics in original). There is an acute sense of
discrimination and reversed-discrimination at that moment, 40 as Smith writes:

He [Levi] was a kid and this was a man [Bailey], speaking to him in
a manner, Levi felt sure, he would not use when speaking to the
other kids who worked here. This was not the world of the
mega-store any more, where everyone was family and ‘Respect’ was
one of the five daily ‘personal conduct’ reminders written on the

board in the coffee room. (192)

Such an unfair treatment stimulates Levi to resign from his part-time job, and to
start to rebuild and then reinforce his identity through personal interaction with the
Haitians. Gradually, he is attracted by Haitian art, especially its music, and eventually

feels responsible to take actions to protect the rights of those Caribbean immigrants.
He embodies the “Golden rule” of developing a cosmopolitan attitude, which is about,
in Appiah’s words, to take “other people’s interests seriously” and to “use our
imaginations to walk a while in their moccasins” (Cosmopolitanism 63). For Levi,
life’s vitality is empowered by sentimental, determined, and defined actions. It is him

and Choo (not Carl as Monty asserts) who takes the painting from Monty’s office,
wishing that it could be returned to its original home, Haiti. That is, however, beyond
his capacity, and has to be completed with the help of his mother Kiki.
The traumatic imagination of blackness is also traceable in Kiki, although largely
she should be understood as an incarnation of beauty and love. The feeling of

isolation and uneasiness overwhelms her, and makes her want to ingratiate with “this
sea of white” (206): she wishes to be “more compelling, more artistic or funny or
smart” (56) to retain people’s attention, and she would move “her head from side to
side in a manner she understood white people enjoyed” (52). Because she appears to

40
Reversed-discrimination refers to the behavior of those who have no empathy to the people that have suffered
from similar mistreatments and discriminations as they do. Furthermore, as victims of discrimination themselves,
they prefer to victimize the vulnerable with the same cruelty and disrespect. In the end, they become racists in
reverse.
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be overweight and dark-skinned, she presumes that “white” boys would regard her as
no one other than a cook or a helper, and “white” men may flirt with her
lightheartedly since they never appreciate her seriously as a charming woman. 41 The

clichéd notions of “black” femininity originated in the nineteenth century imperialism

all incorporate into Kiki’s self- image (Nunius 115). Even at the party of her thirtieth
wedding anniversary, she thinks of herself as “a maid in an old movie” wearing a
headwrap, “a bottle in one hand and a plate of food in the other” (98). Such a feeling
of self-pity leaves her an illusion that Howard who used to be her best friend is the

only person that she can rely on. Throughout the novel, Kiki expresses to Howard
several times her heartfelt affection to him, as if he is the only possession she truly
owned, only with whom she feels proud and secure. Because of her conscious
inferiority, she chooses, more than once, to forgive Howard’s infidelity to marriage,
confessing to him that “All I know is that loving you is what I did with my life. And

I’m terrified by what’s happened to us. This wasn’t meant to happen to us” (395).
Although the time of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Tom has long gone, and over a century
has passed since the publication of The Souls of Black Folk, the double consciousness
initiated by Du Bois is still traceable in Kiki, who is “an American, a Negro”, has
“two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, [and] two warring ideals in one

dark body” (Du Bois xiii). As a descendent of house-slave, the imagination of slavery
in America still has an influence on her, a historical fact of the extremely inhumane
deeds that Smith uses as a fabric to construct the traumatic imaginaries of the
marginalized.
However, dissimilar to the imaginations and arguments made by Du Bois and

Fanon, the essence of On Beauty is not subverting, nor about the binaries of identity.
Rather, it transcends reality so as to appreciate, and thereafter to redefine the role of
the vernacular in cultural interaction. Smith tries to depart from the established

41
See in On Beauty, when Kiki thinks about herself: “I’m Aunt Jemima on the cookie boxes, the pair of thick
ankles Tom and Jerry played around…And this is another thing they [the white] do. They flirt with you violently
because there is no possibility of it being taken seriously” (51). “Aunt Jemima” is a food brand. On the package of
its products, there is a portrait of a kind, middle-aged, heavy-set African American woman. In the cartoon Tom and
Jerry, there is an image of the lower body part of a black maid around which the cat and the mouse play the fool
with each other.
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impression of the “socially marginalized and [the] politically disenfranchised”
(Harper 3) population in the U.S. and the U.K. Such a departure might be preferably
defined as an effort of opening up a neutral space, justifying the identity of the groups

who are torn by a stereotyped perception of blackness. What Smith tries to highlight
is the beauty that long exists but is downgraded artificially by the so-called dominated
culture, thus gaining little opportunity to be valued or appreciated. On Beauty,
therefore, opens up a new ground on this subject of paralleling the beauty of every
one, regardless of their race and ethnicities, thus blurring the boundaries between the

so-called high and low culture, and showing a cosmopolitanism from both aesthetic
and everyday perspectives.
3.2 The Vernacular Reimagined
Smith’s cosmopolitanism in On Beauty is neither an extreme “overturn” of the
minority against the majority, nor a rosy Bildungsroman depicting the multicultural

life of immigrants. It tentatively presents the interaction between different cultural

types, and explores how they reshape each other and then bring transformations to the
“other” in aspects of mentality and behavior. For Rowe, On Beauty is a morally
serious novel, with the author’s “affiliated interest in aesthetics” and her belief in “the
redemptive power of art to work toward the greater of humanity” (88). However, it is

not only the subjects of redemption and morality that make On Beauty a humane
novel. The engagement with the elements that have long been marginalized, or been
historically stereotyped also accumulates its momentum in the novel. If an
individual’s Afro-Caribbean origin is a symbolic signifier — a predetermined fact and
an identity of contingency, then what interests Smith, using Roland Barthes’s words,

is to foresee it “in its extension” and to extend its bridges to “other signs” (217).
Smith’s interpretation of the vernacular shares similarities with Barthes’s
understanding of literature. The latter appreciates literary works beyond the binary
division of mainstream and marginalized literature: “Considering something as a
‘text’ means for Barthes precisely to suspend conventional evaluations (the difference

between major and minor literature), and to subvert established classifications (the
separation of genres, the distinctions among the arts)” (Sontag xi). The depiction of
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the vernacular here is not a given, or the consciousness of viewing people of color as
the diasporic group. In fact, Smith does not allow blackness to pass through her text,
but prefers to revisits it in its most original form. She focuses on ethical, aesthetic, and

humanistic themes rather than ethnical and contingent facts the latter of which
individuals have no active part to play. As Smith tells Jessica M. Moo in an interview,
it is difference, not exclusively racial difference that is intriguing:

I know it seems improbable, but it really isn’t the race thing that I’m

interested in. I’m just interested in the difference thing. It wouldn’t

really matter if the difference were a completely other thing — if
one of them was very rich and the other was very poor, for
example … I think the color thing is slightly further down in the
problem pile. (Moo)

Her refusal of focusing on conventional categorizations partly lays the

foundation for the development of her cosmopolitanism. The “yeast- like” effect
which “enable[s] people to rise up, as opposed to a belief in fixed class lines” (Friedel
56), appropriately reflects the line-breaking nature of the vernacular in On Beauty.

Smith goes the extra mile on cultivating in the book an acute sense of
anti-stereotypical appreciation, creating for example Claire, a professor and a poet,
who provides opportunities of studying for talented intellectuals “who can’t afford
college” or summer school (160, italics in original). To comprehend her
cosmopolitanism means to realize that people can be partly engaged with and shape

one another while retaining their individualities, although they may not agree with
each other all the time. Looking back at the relationship between Levi and Choo, Roy
Sommer seems to make a fair conclusion that there will be a gap between Levi and
“his Haitian men”, and “it is a social or educational, rather than an ethnic, gap that
will always separate Levi from LaShonda, Bailey, or Choo” (104). If Sommer draws

attention to the unlikeness among individuals that one might find it incapable to
reconcile with, the focus here is to discover the vernacular elements that connect
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people together, and transform them in a way through which a new perception of self
identity can be gained.
The vernacular plays a pivotal role in building up Smith’s cosmopolitanism, and

specifically On Beauty celebrates the charm and beauty of the vernacular. The
conception of the vernacular in the book embeds in the significance of beauty
(especially music and painting), and in the characterization of Carl, Kiki, Levi, Claire,
and Carlene. Choosing the word “vernacular” instead of vernacularism symbolizes an
intention of avoiding another extreme — creating an impression of normalizing an

exclusive vernacular. To borrow Bhabha’s words, what needs to be avoided is

“narcissistic myths of negritude or white cultural supremacy” (The Location of
Culture 40). The elements that are different, or appear to be an “other”,
simultaneously shape and are shaped by the environment in which they absorb.
Therefore, the references and scales of the vernacular are extended, which include not

only the exotic, the minority, or local arts and languages but also thoughts and
behaviors that seem to be different from the so-called majority. The following part
will explore the vernacular in a cultural rather than a linguistic sense, with an
emphasis on its multifaceted and intermediary nature.
The term vernacular should be distinguished from its historically restrained

definitions given by King (“Creolisation and On Beauty”) and Amine. In their

discussion of creolization, the vernacular is specifically connected with Caribbean
culture and with a multiculturalism exclusively applicable to people of color. The
term vernacular is originally connected with the indication of “slave”, and is
associated closely with diaspora, displacement, translationality, and subalternity. It

comes with no surprise, therefore, for Bhabha to found his vernacular

cosmopolitanism within the framework of postcolonialism on the basis of hybrid
identities rooted in the margin. However, what is also noticeable is that the diaspora
forms a historical and universal phenomenon that is traceable throughout the entire
human race (Nayar 48). Moreover, displacement, despite its rather negative indication,

points to a celebration of an individual’s acquirement of a new and hybrid identity

(52), and thence associates the marginalized with the creation of newness.
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 Therefore, the vernacular and the perception of it call for an expanding
awareness of its coverage and references. The embodiment of the vernacular is partly
related with, in Pollock’s words, the “unpriviledged mode of social identity” (20).

Such a stereotyped impression mainly points to arts, cultures, and people with dark
skin. Apart from expanding beyond the partly presumed assumption of relating the
vernacular with African and Caribbean elements, the vernacular discussed here also
exceeds the taken-for- granted status of mindset of being “black”. The vernacular in
On Beauty incorporates with a sense of cultural celebration originated in Harlem

Renaissance, when “black visual arts, black music, black intellectual thought, black
performing arts, and black identity” are redefined “beyond the prescribed boundaries
of stereotype and caricature, sentimentality, and social assimilation” (Lester,
“Introduction” xii). For writers and artists in Harlem Renaissance, culture is their
battlefield where they fight to resist and reverse the harshness that African Americans

endure. On Beauty does not act as a defense of African American culture alone but
rather as a depicter of what has happened throughout mixing, be it in race, culture, or
art. It explores the contemporary intermingling that cannot turn out to be otherwise,
and a real world that we live in today, and will continue to live in the future. Smith
makes reality an impulse of defining the precious, and naturalizes the role and

existence of the vernacular by elucidating beauty through the depiction of families,

university campus, and urban space. The novel establishes a connection between
African’s past and present with racism- free articulation of empathy and aesthetics, and
casts lights on the subtle and invisible relativity of blackness. The ubiquity of African
American identity as Du Bois points out is weaved in “every conceivable hue and

shade, and white America is by no means ‘lily- white’ … the dominant fact is that the
intermingling began two centuries ago and has not stopped, and will not stop” (103).
Immigrants, whether being forced or voluntary to move, open up new cultural space
and redraw borderlines of ethnicity and identity. In other words, transformation will
be brought in not only by the “dominated” locals but by “dominating” minorities.

Subaltern, which initially points to “the oppressed, minority groups whose presence
was crucial to the self-definition of the majority group” (Bhabha, “Unsatisfied” 50),
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gains new meaning in Smith’s fiction — the traditionally defined “majority” cannot
exist without the so-called “minority”, and therefore, is influenced and reformed
accordingly by the “oppressed”. The presence of Haitian imagination in On Beauty

brings about a new interpretation of the vernacular, and a differentiated presentation

of American culture, and manages to convey a transformative impression of aesthetic
beauty. Haitian culture, in this regard, which although seems to be dislocated in the
U.S., actually revitalizes and reshapes the interpersonal relationship and individuals’
understanding of self and other. In On Beauty, the mainstream culture is not reversely

marginalized so as to win attention for minority culture; nor does the book prove the
worth of vernacular culture by assimilating to the so-called “standard” culture. It is
instead about a consciousness of ceasing to look at “one’s self through the eyes of
others” (Brundage 2) or through inflexible academic theorization.
The beauty incarnated by Kiki is appreciated almost by every main character in

the novel, except her husband, Howard, who has lived with her for thirty years and
regards being thin and tinny as more preferable and attractive. Carlene, the owner of
the priceless painting Maitresse Erzulie, who passes away at an early stage of the
story, is nonetheless like a prophet of the novel. Before Carlene meets the Belseys,
she praises Kiki when Levi happens to pass in front of her new house in Wellington,

saying “I don’t know why it is that I always imagine her [Kiki] to be very busy and
glamours” (81). Levi, however, objectively replies that “My mom’s big like this”,
stretching his hands wide across the length of the fence (82). If part of being
vernacular relates to the feeling of being marginalized, then Smith redefines beauty
through Kiki by neutralizing the quality of being overweight. Such neutralization is

illustrated in a conversation between Kiki and Carlene:

[Kiki:] Uh-uh. Ain’t nothing small on me. Not a thing. Got bosoms,
got back.
[Carlene:] ‘I see. And you don’t mind it at all?’

[Kiki:] ‘It’s just me – I’m used to it.’

[Carlene:] ‘It looks very well on you. You carry it well.’ (90-91)
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 What Kiki “carries” actually is not a physical appearance, but the personality
which develops and enriches over the years. At the age of fifty-two, Kiki still has a

“beautiful tough-girl’s face” (15). Her beauty, transcending time and age, is paralleled
by Claire, Wellington College’s professor in poetry, with the goddesses engraved on
fountains in Rome. In their first meeting, Claire is more than impressed, as Kiki
“radiated an essential female nature Claire had already imagined in her poetry —
natural, honest, powerful, unmediated, full of something like genuine desire” (227).

Even though that is dated back to the years of girl Kiki who had not put on weight,
this “natural, honest, powerful, and unmediated” woman continues to blossom after
she becomes mother Kiki, sister Kiki, and eventually beauty- incarnated Kiki in whom
Howard sees “his life” (442). Friendliness and kindness bridge her with every person,
and makes her a cosmopolitan character in the novel. “It was just Kiki being Kiki”

who offers the “simple empathy” which makes Chantelle burst into tears (290).
Motivated by friendliness and understanding, she visits Carlene to apologize for a late
reply of her note, saying: “There’s no reason at all why we can’t be friends now. I’d
like to be. If you’d still like to.”(168) If the married, African American Kiki was once
marked by a feeling of inferiority, then her nature to be kind and unbiased eventually

helps her to gradually step out of self-contempt and begins to construct a self with its
unique glamour, not a self in the eyes of others. This also echoes Kiki’s recognition of
beauty, which has no direct connection with form or price, but rather is treasured by
intuition, out of love. She tells Carlene how she values the sense of meaningfulness as
a young child: “My daddy was a minister and he made Christmas meaningful to

me … hope for the best things. That was his way of putting it. It was a kind of
reminder of what we might be.” (265). That is why, Victoria, Carlene and Monty’s
daughter who had a short affair with Howard, comments on her mother’s
selectiveness in friendship: “She [Carlene] was particular about people. She was hard
to get to know … They had to be real people. Not like you and me. Real, special. So

Kiki must be special.” (314, italics in original). Being real means that Kiki refrains
from applying a unilateral judgment on anyone or anything, and is away from a
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“should-be” mindset which relies primarily on one single standard. She accepts her
appearance and encourages others to do the same. It is more than just a way of
thinking, but an attitude to life, which is of special significance when it comes to be

related with the vernacular.

The vernacular, for Kiki, regains its charm and is revitalized in a new land
(America), in an ever-changing body (instead of an aging one), and in an increasingly
developing cognition between self and other. It is through such a Kiki, with her
overweight, her blackness, and her femininity, that Smith creates an incarnation of

beauty, and reveals a spirit of real appreciation. As Kiki says, “ … I’m not going to be
getting any thinner or any younger … and I want to be with somebody who can still
see me in here. I’m still in here. And I don’t want to be resented or despised for
changing” (398, italics in original). That also explains why Kiki does not hold an
affirmative attitude towards her husband’s academic research, which is dogmatic,

static, ridiculously deconstructive, and emotionless. Smith also admits that it is

through Kiki that she expresses her uncertain opinion on the university and the
intellectuals: “Kiki’s point of view is partly the way I feel. I used to think of myself as
an intellectual, but having now met real intellectuals I know what I am and it’s not
quite that. Sometimes it makes me sad and sometimes I feel relief” (Moo). To treat

the vernacular with an open heart means to treat self and other in a distance, or in an
estranged matter departing from a framed judgment about bodily figure and
blackness.
3.3 Vernacular Art and Culture: Deconstructing the High and the Low
On Beauty not only reconstructs the images of the vernacular, but in the

meantime, pays attention to arts and cultures of different origins with same
attentiveness. It presents a special contrast between appreciating beauty in
“theoretical” rigor and in “vernacular” sensitivities. Whereas the former refers to a
rigidity which is jargon-ridden, incomprehensibly metaphysical, and inflexible, the
latter indicates a vigorous, flexible, and open approach to beauty. Warren, Claire’s

husband, discovers Rembrandt’s repealing technique in making portraits: “We saw

The Shipbuilder and His Wife in London … It’s almost anti-portraiture: he doesn’t
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want you to look at the faces; he wants you to look at the souls. The faces are just a
way in. It’s the purest kind of genius” (54, italics in original). “To see souls beyond
faces” can be regarded as a motto which largely reflects Smith’s understanding of

Rembrandt — almost being antithetical to Howard’s rendering of this Dutch artistic

giant. For Howard, Rembrandt is “neither a rule breaker nor an original but rather a
conformist” (155). When he sets the theme of his new book on “against Rembrandt”,
he consequently places himself in a dead end where rational interpretations could
hardly prevent him from ending up with hollow arguments supported by established

theories. This is because he is somehow obsessed with the authenticity established by

his abstruse comprehension of art and aesthetics. In this way, artistic works are
deconstructed, thus being disconnected with appreciation. To be restrained by theory
is different from making use of theory to discover new possibilities. This is also
pertinent to the conceptualization of cosmopolitanism. It is axiomatic that as

cosmopolitanism is norm-oriented, its interpretation can be abstract and theoretical,

which to a large extent, is significant and meaningful. However, this dissertation also
argues that by deromanticizing cosmopolitanism, Smith roots this term in reality
while at the same time strengthens its significance with the core concern of theorists
in cosmopolitanism: building an equal and unbiased world. Cosmopolitanism herein

also distinguishes understanding from agreement — it is an effort taken to put aside

prejudice so as to accept and respect other people’s opinions, which, as being
mentions before, “doesn’t require that we come to agreement” (Appiah,
Cosmopolitanism 78).
When looking at The Sampling Officials of the Drapers’ Guild, Howard

scrutinizes each character and discovers a self- centered materialism: “All we really
see there are six rich men sitting for their portrait … The painting is an exercise in the
depiction of economic power – in Howard’s opinion a particularly malign and
oppressive depiction” (384). On the other hand, Schama in his Rembrandt’s Eyes
discovers the diversified, vivacious, and compositional dynamics in the same picture,

which connects the appreciators outside with the portraits inside the painting (649).
Even if no right or wrong could be concluded in terms of academic researches and
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opinions, Howard’s extreme repugnance which rarely coexists with beauty changes
him. Looking at the Staalmeesters, Howard feels lost. A change in perception and
cognition also shapes his understanding. He is no longer the young man who enjoys

American films with Kiki, or the schoolboy who is “uncultured, fiercely bright,
dirty-kneed, enraged, beautiful, inspired, bloody- minded” (385). As Claire remarks,
“…he did love, and intensely”, but “[s]omething about his academic life had changed
love for him, changed its nature” (225).
Therefore, academic life gives Howard a rigorous scientific character, but fails to

help him retain his potential to love and to appreciate. Gazing at Dr Nicolaes Tulp
Demonstrating the Anatomy of the Arm, a painting that he “had seen it so many times
he could no longer see it at all” (144), Howard only detects a significance of “Know
thyself” in the dictum. Contrarily, Schama find it shocking and rehumanized, as
Rembrandt makes the dead man a companion of the alive customers, and that body

forces “the beholder into an uncomfortable kinship with the dead as well as with the
living” (Rembrandt’s Eyes 92), presenting an coexistence between the immediate and
the eternal (Rembrandt’s Eyes 94). The contrast reaches its peak in Smith’s depiction
of the mental status of a student called Katherine (Katie) Armstrong, whose talents
prove themselves in her interpretation of Jacob Wrestling with the Angel — “a loving

embrace” in the struggle, and “earthly soul” and human faith in Jacob (250). However,
her excitement and determination to be an outstanding student in Howards’ class
deteriorate dramatically after hearing the lecturer’s abstract and profound questions.
Even though Smith does not explicate Katie’s reaction after that class, it is predictable
that she might fall deeper into a self- hatred of her “stupidity and youth” (250). That,

unfortunately, might be an opposite effect that a university could possibly offer to its
students. It is noticeable that Smith refers to the corresponding discussions from
Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes to develop Katie’s interpretation of Jacob Wrestling with
the Angel. Schama argues that the painting ceases to be framed by or merely exist for
reflecting its subject matter, but becomes a subject of its own. In other words, the

significance of this picture is simultaneously independent from and interdependent to

the religious subject that stimulates its creation. This also relates to Smith’s depiction
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of the vernacular. Instead of making vernacular the background of a racially white
society, she treats it as the subject and attaches the significance of the vernacular to
various artistic and beautiful elements. This also echoes Schama’s comments on

Hendrickje bathing: “Rembrandt paints Hendrickje not looking at him. He admires

her evidently not as a possession but for her self-possession.” (554)
What coexists with Rembrandt in the narrative is Hector Hyppolite, a figure
developed from one of Haiti’s foremost painters in the 1940s. In general, Haitian
painting is praised for its dynamics, which is “vibrant with colour, a combination of

naturalistic and fantastic elements” (Ndebele 155), and interlinks life, death and the
eternal. Maitresse Erzulie, Hyppolite’s portrait of a Black Virgin in Haitian spiritual
culture, seems to be Smith’s favorite. Smith mentions her love of portraits in the first
place: “I love people’s faces, thinking about them. I can get started quite quickly if I
have a good face in front of me”. 42 In this regard, Maitresse Erzulie, a vernacular

counterpart to Venus, might also provide inspiration for Smith’s writing of On Beauty.
Coincidently, Carlene in the novel expresses a similar feeling as Smith does: “I just
love portraits … They’re my company – they’re the greater part of my joy … But
she’s [Erzulie] my favourite” (175). According to Carlene, Erzulie represents a
collective quality, which is not only dominated by “love, beauty, purity, the ideal

female and the moon … perpetual help, goodwill, health, beauty and fortune”, but
also “the mystère of jealousy, vengeance and discord” (175). In other words, it is a
goddess of complexity, a multifaceted image. It is worth mentioning that Hyppolite
also prefers to treat Christian and voodoo persona in the same manner, and to
transfigure the exotic, unschooled, and mystical into something powerful and eternal.

The spirits of voodoo goddess, the compelling multifactedness that Maitresse Erzulie
presents, and Hyppolite’s endeavor to free his creations from favoritism all interact
with one another, endowing the vernacular art with both local and universal
significance.
Along with voodoo goddess the painting, this spiritual figure also finds its

42
Smith, “Zadie Smith by Jackie Nickerson”, a video posted on The New York Times Style Magazine,
00:00:51-00:00:58.
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incarnation in Carlene who notably demonstrates the quality of a cosmopolitan
defined in this dissertation. Carlene is particular about her choice of friends, the
selection of which is determined by their virtue as human beings. At her funeral in

London, there are people of “every age, every colour and several faiths”, making
Jerome ask: “Can you imagine a funeral – any event – this mixed, back home?” (282)
Cultivating her friendship freed from the classifications of religion, race, and ethnicity,
Carlene’s qualities virtually epitomize Smith’s cosmopolitan imagination. Smith once
borrows her husband Nick Laird’s poem “New York Elasticity”, praising the line

“This city’s brute capacity for gathering” as expressive of the city’s vitality (“Under
the Banner of New York”). New York, which is so elastic that it can be stretched in
many directions, has the capacity to “gather without precise definition”, unattached to
the dogmatic European pedigree. “Under the banner New York”, the citizens are
bonded at specific time and at certain places. That bond, transcending ethnicity, class,

gender, and nationality, is impossible to be defined or grasped physically. Such

flexibility is gained through openness, when people, who go through life’s muddle,
are connected by mutual support and mutual appreciation. Looking back at Carlene,
she also believes that “there is such a shelter in each other”, which coincidentally is a
line from a poem that she believes is “wonderful” (93). She gives her unconditional

love to Jerome; she is not influenced by the exterior hatred that she has no control of,
believing that “whatever problems our husbands may have, it’s no quarrel of ours (91);
and she has a habit of holding people’s hands tightly — a gesture of love and
connection, which makes people feel relaxed and valued. Her cosmopolitan attitudes
are rooted in her understanding that people get “their own way of doing things … it’s

not always our way, but it’s a way” (41). She builds a personal cosmopolitan world
vitalized by people of diversity, who touch, feel, and experience beauty through love
and caring for others.
Such consciousness is also traceable in Hurston the writer, who in Smith’s eyes
“grows up a fully human being, unaware that she is meant to consider herself a

minority, an other, an exotic or something depleted in rights, talents, desires and

expectations” (Smith, Changing My Mind 11), and therefore “the whole of humanity
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was going to be her province, not just the black part of it” (Wachtel 327). Hurston’s
cosmopolitan spirit is coextensive with Smith’s own paean of Rembrandt and Haitian
culture in On Beauty, which, accordingly, helps to construct in the book an optimal

condition for dealing with multi- identity that many people have to face, either
voluntarily or forced. It is worth noticing that Carlene, before she dies, keeps her
cancer diagnosis secret from her family and friends. She chooses to focus on the
controllable factors in life — the company of friends, the time with family members,
and decides to ask Kiki a favor to pass on her attitudes of love and appreciation by

continuing to take care of her most beloved painting. Even though the children of
Carlene find it impossible to understand their mother’s decision, as in their mind, Kiki
is practically “a stranger” (278), strangeness and intimacy are not entirely defined by
lineage. Kiki’s friendliness which is intuitive and does not include an expectation of
receiving something in return, means that she will appreciate the painting in a sincere

way.
Kiki’s kindness also influences Levi. When planning a visit to his new Haitian
friend Choo, he brings with him the food available at home. As he recalls, when he
accompanied “his mother as she paid calls in Boston neighborhoods, visiting sick or
lonely people she knew from the hospital. She would always arrive with food” (353).

Being “overwhelmed by the evil that men do to each other” (355), especially what the
so-called elites have done to the disenfranchised Haitians and Haitian-Americans,
Levi, together with Choo, take away (or practically steal) Maitresse Erzulie from
Monty’s office. Eventually, Kiki, the true owner of this painting, chooses to make the
influence of this piece of beauty go further and last longer — she sells it and donates

the money to Haitian Support Group.

Placing Rembrandt’s and Hyppolite’s paintings in one literary context implies
Smith’s initiative in relocating the vernacular artistic elements to the center of beauty
appreciation. In the narrative, the correspondence between Hyppolite’s masterpieces
and Rembrandt’s artworks is essential. They form a dialogue between themselves, in

regard to how different interpretation of them reveal and change people’s reactions to
and relationship with others. To be specific, those who appreciate beauty, with no
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intention to deny one aspect so as to justify the authenticity of the other, can find such
experience praiseworthy and rewording. For instance, although Howard detests the
portrait of his own father, Kiki loves it, believing “it is an item the children will

appreciate” as adults (18). Similarly, the Haitian painting in the novel ceases to be
marginalized, but impresses the readers with its charm, power, and vitality.
The vernacular presentation in On Beauty is also penetrated in the book’s
political reflection between talents and skin color. Similar to the artistic parallel
between Rembrandt and Hyppolite, Smith makes a musical and poetic parallel

between Mozart and Süssmayr (musician), as well as Carl and Keats (poet). As a
talented street poet and a rapper, Carl discovers that Lacrimosa, the most impressive
part of Requiem, is not composed by Mozart, but by Süssmayr. It is a discovery of the
extraordinary in the ordinary, despite the fact that the majority constantly tries to fit in
“with their idea of who can and who can’t make music like this” (137). This mindset

is also applicable to the existing stereotyped understanding of the vernacular and the
authentic. It is always the authentic, the high culture which is expected to be
influential whereas the vernacular, or the low culture is described as unworthy. To be
specific, in historically aggressive terms, being “black” is associated with being dark,
white with innocent and pure; and “black” culture as it appears is presumed as “low”,

which was uninhibited, crude, and simple” (Brundage 5). On the other hand, the high
culture is inheritable, not changeable (not being challenged or transformed over time)
and is “unmistakably European in origin” (5). That is what On Beauty tries to
challenge and redefine. Smith may not deliberately intend to achieve a deconstructive
effect, but through her realistic portrayal of ordinary people, her seemingly

lighthearted depiction of a differentiated aspect of life reshapes our understanding of

those with various cultural backgrounds. After the Mozart concert, Howard feels
relived that it is finally finished, Zora makes emotionless notes on the music without
enjoying it, Kiki and Jerome are moved by the melody, but it is Carl who feels its
rhythms, coming up with a vernacular interpretation that is sharp, distinguished, yet

approachable: “[I]t’s crazy– with all the angels singing higher and higher and those
violins, man – swish dah DAH, swish da DAH, swish da DAH – it’s amazing listening
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to that – and it sounds mad cool when you put words over the top and a beat below”
(136). Even Zora who hardly praises any of her peers, admits that “You’re [Carl] an
amazing person … You deserve to be at this university. You’re about fifteen times as

brilliant and hard-working as most of these over-privileged assholes” (377, italics in

original). Smith never fails to reveal the true talents of Carl, despite the fact that she
may be consciously aware: “art is always already a politicized field that has to do with
race, gender, and class” (Brickley 82).
Claire is probably one of the most humane professors in the fiction who tries to

provide the opportunity for those, including Carl, who cannot afford higher education.
She believes in an idea of “fittingness”, which means “your chosen pursuit and your
ability to achieve it – no matter how small or insignificant both might be – are
matched exactly, are fitting” (214). Being “truly human, fully ourselves” (214) for
Claire signifies that no fixed standard should be forced on anything, and “fitness” is a

subjective measurement that varies accordingly in different circumstances. This is

also part of the characteristic of cosmopolitanism, which encourages mutual
understanding of other people’s “fitness” which matches their experiences, ideologies,
and cultural backgrounds. Different from many of her colleagues who undertake
research and teaching in a rather enclosed academic environment, Claire makes

special arrangements for her students to experience, perhaps, the most cosmopolitan
cultural spot in Wellington — the Bus Stop, a Morocco restaurant which is fuelled by
vernacular artistic elements. Bus Stop represents an essential Arab nature and an
African soul, as well as the aura of vernacular beauty thrilled by the original
performance of street poets and rappers. Yousef, the young owner and the second

generation immigrant from Morocco who marries a German-American wife, enjoys

the presence of young people of various walks of life, and transforms the once almost
exclusively Moroccan restaurant to a cosmopolitan site, as the DJ announces the
arrangements of the night’s performance:

We got some Caribbean brothers in the house, we got some African

brothers in the house, we got people gonna hit it in French, in
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 Portuguese – I am reliably informed we got the United Nations of
Spoken Word up in here tonight, so, you people be privileged in the
extreme. (222)

It is at the cosmopolitan Bus Stop that Clair discovers Carl, who like “Keats with
a knapsack” (230) blows everybody away with his rap lyrics. Similar to the discussion
above about the high and low culture, rap music has been downgraded as a genre
“made of the profanity, violence, misogyny, and sexual explicitness” (Cooper 36), and

Smith reflects a common understanding of rap in her interview with the famous
contemporary rapper Jay-Z: because of its “choice of words”, it is “not music at all
but rather a form of social problem” (Smith, Feel Free 84). However, like Carl’s debut
performance that is about a story of “the spiritual and material progress of a young
black man” (230), Priscilla Hancock Cooper also confirms that “rap is first and

foremost storytelling at its most fundamental level”; and just as Carl is praised for his
talents of composing poems, “rap” in Cooper’s argument, is an “African American
folk poetry much like blues, spirituals, and gospel” (36). 43 As for many Africans,
dancing comes natural to them as a talent, and rap exists ubiquitously in their
everyday lives. For example, not only does Jody Starks in Their Eyes were Watching

God “talk in rhymes” to Janie, but “other characters move talking to a level beyond
mere talking. They rap” (Cooper 37). Besides the coincidences echoing between On
Beauty and Hurston’s work, 44 Smith shares with Hurston a spirit of seeing beyond the
form (black skin), and gaining insights by appreciating the real (beauty). Just as the
U.S. is home for millions of African Americans, “African American art”, using

Friedel’s argument, becomes “nothing if not quintessentially American, often on the

cutting edge of the next dominant cultural form in the ever-shifting landscape of
American art” (3). Similarly, Britons of African origin, as Hall argues, are the
“dominant defining force in street-oriented British youth culture. Without them, white

43
Hurston once contributed to a discussion on spirituals, highlighting that it is a musical genre originated from
Africa with various presenting forms. See Hurston’s article “Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals”, Negro: An Anthology,
pp. 223-225.
44
For the broad connection between On Beauty and Their Eyes were Watching God, see Fischer’s article, pp. 112.
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youth culture would not exist in the form it does today” (Hall, “Frontlines and
Backyards” 136). Smith, in this regard, highlights through Carl the charm and
rightfulness of the vernacular, which is fueled by the glamour of rap and accompanied

with a re- imagination of the relationship between the so-called high and low cultures.
Haitian music is another spotlight in Smith’s depiction of urban culture. Its
“plangent, irregular rhythm”, integrating harmoniously, is steady and firm “like a
human heartbeat” (On Beauty 408). The Haitian artists, who sing and banter among
themselves, compose music for the sake of self-amusement, “as if prospective

customers didn’t even matter” (On Beauty 193-94). A first encounter with Haitian
music opens a new realm in Levi’s perception of art, because its splendor is so distinct
that makes people feel it is from “quite another planet” (194). It is the music that
contributes to producing national narration according to Choo, who expresses his
pride to Levi: “I wish I could play you some of our music, Haitian music … You

would like it. It would move you … I could tell you things about my country. They
would make you weep. The music makes you weep” (360). From rap to Haitian music,
the book from various aspects destabilizes the stereotyped imagination of vernacular
art which might still be marked as low and deteriorating. For Smith, if in the
long-established mindset vernacular art is not yet part of mainstream culture, then

instead of justifying its existence by downgrading its white counterpart, she takes her
own efforts to highlight its uniqueness and its significance for an ever multi- racial
society. Smith’s fiction in general does not merely condemn the suppression or
misunderstanding endured by the vernacular culture, but draws equal attention to
African Americans, Caribbean Americans, Americans, Europeans, and Britons; and

On Beauty in particular demonstrates how different attitude towards the beautiful and
the precious will influence people’s values and life trajectories. Even though people
have independent individualities, their interdependence as community members can
transcend race, appearance, and beliefs, and plays a remarkable role in their
connection with others. That might be one of the indications of “Only Connect” in On

Beauty, a feeling of being connected that makes people feel comfortable and
confident in reaching out to others and to find beauty in commonality as well as in
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difference. The vernacular also transforms urban landscape. If it is by considering
everyone as human that an appreciation of cosmopolitanism becomes effective, then
On Beauty rewrites the image of the vernacular with humanness and sketches its

cosmopolitan value.

This chapter illustrates the renewed definition of the vernacular in On Beauty.

When the word “black” and “white” are used (no matter how ubiquitous and
established such a usage might be), it indicates a discriminated (stereotyped) original

reference to African Americans, and to the Africans and Asians in other parts of the
world. To “peel back thousands of years of negative connotation” is an ultimate goal
that needs time and dedication to achieve (Smith, Feel Free 93). So does the rewriting
of “blackness”, a terminology which is usually associated with the implication of
marginality and disenfranchisement. The book is a paean to African arts and its
diversified culture. Smith, through her transcontinental narrative, also initiates an
equal dialogue between African and Euro-American cultures, instead of simply
constructing “blackness” through the lenses of a discursive Euro-American cultural
stereotype.
In addition, this chapter demonstrates the stereotyped Haitian and African

imaginaries in the novel, while at the same time it destabilizes such imagination with
its analyses of Monty, Carlene, and Kiki. Monty is a discriminative, unemotional, and
hypocritical racist towards anyone who is “black”, despite the fact that he is a
Trinidadian scholar in origin, and a major collector of Haitian paintings. Carlene
appreciates beauty and is appreciated by those who enjoy the feeling of giving,

sharing, and repaying love. Her short appearance in the book does not prevent her
from being the humane and intriguing character in the novel, who bestows her most
treasured property to Kiki. Howard’s wife, who has been victimized by the historical
trauma of blackness, incarnates beauty in its vernacular dimension, and witnesses a
self-development process blessed by her instinctive appreciation to the beautiful and

the precious. Smith endeavors to reach beyond a straitjacket of authenticity, or the

expectation of what an authentic vernacular imagination should be like. Moreover, her
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reimagination of the vernacular needs to be distinguished from a deconstruction or a
denial of the so-called “white” culture. Haitian immigrants change the ethnographical
landscape of America, and influence the people living on North American continent.

After all, Smith seeks for a celebration rather than a fierce defense of diversity.
Returning to her interview with Jay-Z:

Asked if he [Jay-Z] thinks this is a good time for hip-hop, he

enthuses about how inclusive hip- hop is: “It provided a gateway to

conversations that normally would not be had.” And now that rap’s
reached this unprecedented level of cultural acceptance, maybe
we’re finally free to celebrate the form without needing to
continually defend it. (Smith, Feel Free 85)

Smith challenges the traditional understanding of the vernacular which is defined

by marginalization, or treated as exotic, distant, or inferior simply because it is
“different” in a traditionally “white-dominated” society. She parallels diversified
elements with equal attentiveness, challenging stereotypes by demonstrating the
transformative influence brought to individuals through their interactions with their

varied uniqueness. Such a revisit to the vernacular makes it self-evident that

African-American culture is an inseparable part of American culture, unattached to
the old European distinction between high and low culture.

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 Chapter 4 NW: Cosmopolitan and Ghettoized London

If On Beauty shows immigrants’ involvement in transforming urban

ethnographic landscape, then NW, named after a London postcode, is about urban

imagination in its romantic and bleak presence. Most of the academic publications on
NW center on the form and style of the book, the trauma of the disenfranchised, and
the bleak urban life (Carbajal, Knepper, Marostica, Wang “We are not Free to
Choose”, Wells). However, a gripping panorama of contemporary metropolises, or a
Woolf’s way of presenting the queer, or a James Joyce’s tradition of experimentation

does not necessarily serve as the sole reason for Smith’s success. Her sensitivity
allows her to depict a London far beyond being simply multicultural, but full of
tensions. She jumps out of the circle of postcolonial stereotype of trauma, as she
ceases to locate her London in the nostalgic memories of immigrants, who tend to
compare home city and migrated city.

NW depicts London through the lenses of immigrants, working class locals, and
unprivileged residents. It also casts light on those who hold memories of some of
London’s “notorious” places for racism. The novel presents bleakness encompassing
addicts, violence, death, pregnancy termination, and deformed marriages. The world
seems to turn upside down in which the rich and the successful are torn by emptiness,

and a love story which almost finishes with a happy ending abruptly terminated by a
murder. NW’s main characters are representatives of contemporary Britons. They do
not live on the affluent West End, but find their path in the remote London borough;
they are not confined to the oscillation “between black as a problem and black as
victim” (Gilroy, “There Ain’t No Black” 11) but symbolize anyone regardless of their

ethnicity who go through psychological trauma.

Smith’s cosmopolitanism, in this book, is further developed in terms of its
multifaceted nature. On the one hand, Smith constructs an urban imagination existing
in a neutral and universal space shared by other writers and poets. She rediscovers a
Hampstead whose beauty exists in literature’s urban imagination, and in Kirsten

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Mahlke’s words, “creates the excessive spatial expansion at a temporal standstill”
(113). London’s natural beauty, a shared inspiration for writers and poets living across
centuries, when placed in Smith’s contemporary context, implies a hope of unbiased

treatment for everyman. On the other hand, the boundary between the “rich” and the
“poor” is blurred. Smith deromanticizes cosmopolitanism through the lenses of both
physical and mental ghettoized imaginaries, questioning the presumed assertion of
regarding cosmopolitanism as a glorious metropolitan phenomenon. Smith’s
reconstruction of cosmopolitanism is achieved by presenting a London that is not

simply a dwelling place for people of various ethnic backgrounds, nor a city that is
flourished with cultural diversity. Rather, she redefines her North West London as an
indeterminate space where migrancy should not be regarded as a social problem, but a
reasonable phenomenon for those who seek for a better life.
Different from White Teeth, which is written by the young Smith who hardly

travels, in NW, the writer, critic, and New York University professor Smith, when
again looking into her familiar London from a distance, is realistic and critical. She
unfolds the images of the city in tube lines, at bus stop, at dark corners, in the robing
room, inside a giant house, and in the council estate. It is a contemporary vision of the
city with its tensions, whose liveliness emerges from its flaws and imperfect

imaginations. Pregnancy terminations, drug abuse, blind dates with sexual intentions,
childhood misery, and murder create the tensions, conflicts, and contradictories in
Smith’s London. NW embodies Hannerz’s rumination over cosmopolitanism, which
entails “a search for contrasts rather than uniformity” (Transnational Connections
103); but such contracts also entail a cosmopolitan manner of respect: by blurring the

borders of people initially belonging to different classes and races, it images a

cosmopolitanism that makes it possible for people to understand the connection
between self and other, thus entering into a dialogic process of understanding and
acceptance.
4.1 Deromanticizing London and Decategorizing its Citizens

Like Smith’s other novels, deromanticization and decategorization are also

traceable in NW. It is in such novelistic space that the ugly and the unwanted coexist
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with the promising, just as the combination of deromanticization and
cosmopolitanism indicates that cosmopolitanism not only includes the transcending,
but gives insights into pitfalls, failures, and unpleasantness. Wang Hui, in her 2017

article analyzing NW’s imperial imagination, believes Smith’s characterization

indicates the decay of an imperial London, and the evolvement of London
transformed by immigrants. This argument is similar to McLeod’s binary criteria in
his definition of London, which is divided by colonialization and decolonialization
(McLeod 6). However, what seems to concern Smith is not necessarily marking

London as postcolonial, post-imperial, or otherwise. She is sharp about reality, and

curious about differences and otherness. Her cosmopolitanism does not celebrate the
“death of otherness”, a phrase which is used in Upstone’s discussion of, as she calls,
the “otherness machine” in post-racial or trans-racial contemporary society. 45
Otherness machine, according to Upstone, implies that otherness is indestructible, and

is a continuous resonance of difference outside the realms of racism; and

discrimination, in a larger and more complicated sense, is characterized by an
“evolving nature” (129). Upstone argues for a conservative function that literature
plays in reinforcing the social and cultural stereotypes and limitations, and believes in
the permanently dominate role of race. As she argues: “Even when identification is

fluid, contingent and divorced from biology, race continues to signify” (138).
However, approaching NW calls for an inescapable endeavor to reach out of the
unilateral dimension of understanding literature as either a positive driving force for
cultural change or a conservative barrier of cross-boundary interaction. It is
multifacetedness that provides the impetus for NW, rather than the realization or

failure of “utopia” (which is the focus of Upstone’s analysis).

Correspondingly, Smith’s cosmopolitanism also departs from the multicultural
and postcolonial dominated cosmopolitanism discussed in the later works of Derrida,
who frames a radical multicultural democracy. The main concerns of Derrida and
Habermas, such as the memory of failed empires, colonialism, religious intolerance,

45
See Upstone’s monograph Rethinking Race and Identity in Contemporary British Fiction, Routledge, pp.
127-44.
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and the Holocaust, though still prominent, have constantly been reshaped by new
trending features in society that is more non-totalized, and more contextually
concrete. 46 Smith not only catches these changes, but presents them in a less political

and metaphysical manner. Some reviewers’ comments on NW are related to how

Smith assembles James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, specifying their similarities, from
stream of consciousness, being queer, to feminism. However, Smith, as a writer,
reminds herself to remove stereotypes in writing with the purpose of seeking an
ultimate truth in literature:

When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world.

This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed
all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not
your own but other people’s, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out

lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you
have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not
recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something
approximating the truth of your own conception. (Smith, “Fail
Better”)

Smith expressively encourages an attitude of reading beyond preconceived and

totalizing frames. She believes that expecting a novel to be perceived in an enclosed
genre limits one’s interests, and deteriorates their sense of appreciation. The reason is
that if the novels fail “to do all the things you had expected they would” (Smith,

“Read Better”), it will then cause a feeling of disappointment and irritation. Therefore,
Smith prefers to depict the reality in the same way as she experiences it. Her realism
is achieved in a moral rather than commercially- motivated sense, pointing to a precise
depiction of the social reality that she is consciously aware of — unpleasant, full of
injustice, and torn by the determinism of class. However, her text does not convey a

46
For the multicultural enlightenment and European cos mopolitanism discussed by Derrida and Habermas, see
The Derrida-Habermas Reader, edited by Lasse Thomassen.
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mere condemnation of life’s unpleasantness. Wang Hui contends that Northwestern
London is a “besieged city” (“We Are Not Free to Choose” 386) and the four
protagonists brought up in council estates would never escape the circle of

disenfranchisement, or in other words, “they are not free to choose” (391). This
argument, despite of its insightfulness, is too absolute to reveal the contour of the
Smithian realism. Considering Smith’s response to Brexit or British 2017 referendum
of leaving the European Union, the author wrote an essay full of concern and sorrow.
On the top of that, she tries to justify the rights of human being, and their freedom of

seeking for a better life:

The recently migrated have come to this country precisely because

of this patrimony—for the housing, the education, and the health
care—and some have come merely to exploit it, no doubt. But the

great majority have come to participate: they enroll their kids in our
state schools, they pay their British taxes, they try to make their way.
It is certainly not a crime or a sin to seek a better life abroad, or to
flee from countries riven by wars, many of which we ourselves had
a hand in. (Smith, Feel Free 44, emphasis added)

Therefore, on the one hand, Smith admits that immigrants can be the “least
advantaged and most vulnerable”, as Goldberg suggests (148). On the other hand, and
more profoundly, being rather reluctant to fall into stereotypes, Smith justifies
immigrants’ right of living in a new country from a broader, or universally humane

perspective. Accordingly, her writing also indicates a hope of sheltering the

stereotyped and the vulnerable from being totally predetermined by contingent facts
such as class and gender. NW may turn out to be a bleak novel, including mental and
physical struggle, poverty, or sudden death. Yet, this aesthetic “failure” may also carry
an ethical significance, just as in NW, the feeling of perplexity and depression helps

Smith to reveal an impressively potent contemporary London with its glory and
gloom.
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 Smith casts a skeptical eye on a perfectly- made novel, as it is literature’s
imperfect nature that she finds “most beautiful and most human” (“Read Better”). Her
uniqueness is partly revealed in her idea of “failure” or how to “fail better” — an

argument that vitalizes her writing, and helps to form a deromanticization of her
cosmopolitanism. When talking about “ghetto literature”, or namely, the literary
works with foci or depictions of gangsters and immigrant gathering places, Andy
Wood defends the right of their existence, underlining the unjust treatment that such
fiction of ghetto realism faces in the publishing industry: “These novels and the[ir]

characters try to find a space of their own in a society that seems to reject or resent
them and this is one of the central issues which society fails to address and
contemporary literature deals with head-on.” (22) NW finds its presence in such
ghetto realism, with young, criminal, non-white immigrants who drop out of school,
commit crimes, and involve in illegal drug trade. Therefore, David Marcus senses in

the book “determined aspects of inequality” (70), and self-defining and self- making
autonomy is only available for those who already “live in the middle and upper
brackets of society” (71). In this regard, Marcus, echoing Wang’s viewpoint (“We Are
Not Free to Choose”), believes in the absolute determinism and a complete bleakness
in this 2012 fiction. This, however, is partly true and particularly one-dimensional.

Smith unveils the dark side of the people living in council estate, but she also
refuses to be overwhelmingly predetermined by the stereotyped traumas of class. To
understand Smith means to embrace her willingness to “fail better”, as the Smithian
fiction is complex and non-preconceived stamped with a reality that never lacks of
trauma. For Smith, it is demoralizing before the creation to mark the novel as

postcolonial, postmodern, or postethnic. Correspondingly, her literary word resists

authentic stereotypes. In NW, financial struggles, ambitionlessness, and
underachievement are not exclusively applicable to people of color, but literally to
anyone — an unprejudiced depiction that, in Lynn Wells’s opinion, undermines the
preconception of “immigrant and non-white Londoners” in the context of

“mainstream British culture” (100). In the book, Smith sends a reminder that apart
from “white” Virgin Mary, there is also “black” Madonna. In other words, she treats
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both the “white” and “black” elements with great eagerness, believing in the
possibility of their equality and coexistence. She disassociates skin color with social
privilege, and professional success with personal well-beings. Her indeterminacy and

skepticism is related to her own background of experiencing both historical trauma

and hopeful brightness, and her life trajectory that always reaches beyond expectation
and stereotypes. 47 Indeterminacy refers to an ever-developing and ever-changing
status, and a moderate and skeptical attitude towards the once stereotyped categories,
including ethnicity and class. Being skeptical for Smith does not mean that she

absolutely disbelieves the existence of discrimination, but points to her critical

reflection on the credibility of any asserted conclusions.
As a second generation immigrant, Smith embraces both the joyful changes and
traumatic memories that life offers. Writers’ personality, which is elusive and
multifaceted in Smith’s definition, influences their way of interpreting the world, and

leaves unavoidable traces in their writing style. Just as Murdoch discerns, a writer
may not necessarily compose in an autobiographical manner, but their works
nonetheless do not merely pass through them which still retain the authors’ thoughts
and voices. As for NW, writing about her familiar part of London means she might
naturally reveal in her writing a sense of appreciation and attachment. However, she is

also aware of the detailed and subtle trauma that may pass unnoticed for writers who
construct their works based on library research and archived documents. NW intrigues
an endeavor of “an expansion of the heart” fueled by the inclusiveness to human
otherness (Smith, “Fail Better”). NW’s London is not ideal or typical, but is particular
and perplexed. Smith positions her narrative space in a specified part of the city, with

its “anxious dynamics of a globalizing neighbourhood” (Knepper 112). She creates a

space where local issues and global concern, local places and universal uneasiness go

47
I would like to elucidate further why Smith’s own experience is both with trauma and hopeful brightness (for
the discussion of “historical trauma”, see chapter 1). Trauma: Smith, whose mother is originally from Jamaican,
has the memories of racial trauma of London’s non-white immigrants during the second half of the twentieth
century. Hopeful brightness: Smith grew up in Willesden, a London’s Indo-Pakistani community, and none of her
high school teachers would expect that a once overweight stoner can eventually go to Cambridge to study literature.
NW, her fourth novel, was published when she was thirty-six years old, an age which for many writers, they could
only manage to publish their first novel. Her complicated identity, experience, and spectacular career path,
accordingly, shape her writing style to be complex, mixing, intertwining, and unpredictable.
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hand in hand with each other. Through such a ghettoized realism, Smith “incarnates
an alternative rendering of history” (Knepper 120), articulating her grave concern of
immigrants’ well-being and her fervent hope for a promising future.

4.2 Cosmopolitan London

Smith creates a multidimensional literary context for a complex urban space with
diversified residents — Natalie, Leah, Nathan, and Felix. The entire novel
metaphorically analogizes London, or to be more specific, Kilburn and Willesden,
Caldwell and Brayton — areas in London’s borough Hampstead — as a house, with

host, guests, and expected and unexpected visitors. Natalie, a Jamaican-origin

barrister, who has a successful career, a perfect marriage, and a beautiful house in
North West London is the focus of the section named “host”. Leah, who is Natalie’s
best friend, a charity clerk who leads an ordinary and not so “successful” life as
Natalie does is the center of the narrative in the section named “visitation”. Natalie

and Leah, despite their different social roles, mirror and double each other, in a sense
that they are constantly at a loss of their own position and identity. Felix, an ex-addict
born in the poor-ridden Holloway in London, is about to start a new life when his
future happiness is terminated by his sudden death — a murder that is probably
conducted by Nathan (a child friend with Leah and Natalie) and another violent young

man in the same gang. Felix who comes to (reestablished himself as a new-born
young man) and leaves (being stabbed and dead) the city suddenly, is mostly depicted
in the section of “guest”. After dropping out of school, Nathan, a talented footballer,
gets involved in illegal activities such as hustling, trading travelcards, and violent
crimes. Nathan unexpectedly meets Natalie in Hampstead, and both of them are the

main characters in the section “crossing”.

Parts of NW entail a dialogic interrelationship between contemporary city and its
history. Smith creates a literary urban space possessing similarities with Bhabha’s
discursive temporality. The latter distinguishes negation and negotiation, indicating
that it is through a negotiating process that the once separated elements become

unexpectedly reconciled with one another. It is also through negotiation rather than
total denial that the enclosed “bar” of the once incompatible elements are reinscribed
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and re-established with “coextensive, contingent boundaries” (Bhabha, The Location
of Culture 184). Smith treats the city as a permanent existence, and presents the city’s
universal literary imagination existing in authors’ mind — those who share the

commonality of engaging with the same place at different historical points across
centuries. Just as Bhabha uses time- lag to specify postcolonial agency, which exists
outside the holistic identification of race and class defined in a chronological history,
Smith seeks to present a literary agency that both transcends and resonates with the
contemporary time and space — the twenty- first century London and its historical

counterparts. Even the choice of using a postcode of London as the book’s title
indicates that she seeks, within the imagination of local urban space, a universal
connection with other literati who once lived or visited the same place and streets in
the specific part of North West London.
NW also reveals a belief in individual perception, as “reality depends on our

translation of it”. 48 Smith makes the city alive through subjective depictions and
interpretations, which is distanced from a passive recognition of its objective
existence. She creates a city of dynamics — a concrete entity that has the ability to
record its history and people. When Natalie and Leah, although living in Willesden for
decades, fail to discover the beauty of a route that leads to the church of this parish,

Smith makes the city speak to its residents, in fury and disappointments:

How have you lived your whole life in these streets and never
known me? How long did you think you could avoid me? What
made you think you were exempt? Don’t you know that I have been

here as long as people cried out for help? Hear me: I am not like
those mealy- mouthed pale Madonnas, those simpering virgins! I am
older than this place! Older even than the faith that takes my name
in vain!” (76)

Smith’s personalization of the city, rather than being interpreted as mystified,

48
Smith, “Comparing in Nabokov’s Pnin”, a public speech made in London, 00:38:00-00:38:07.
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points to an extended signification of the urban space that transcends temporality,
with its past and present coexist in a specific site. For Smith, a courtyard of an old
church in Willesden, contains more than bricks, gravestones, and a cherry tree, but a

transcending capability that makes Natalie and Leah feel like they are “in another
century, another England” (71). In Smith’s negotiating space, the city is neither totally
framed in the imperial past, nor in the post- imperial present. Instead, it retains its
historical past, but also updates with time. “Kennedy Fried Chicken. Polish Bar and
Pool. Euphoria Massage” (70) are mixed street signs made possible by migration,

reflecting the city’s changes in trivial details — the urban space that is not purified by
traditional Englishness or overwhelmed by newness. Andrzej Gasiorek correctly
remarks that “Smith’s novels are rooted in contemporary cityscapes characterised by
energy, movement, change and confusion” (176). More than that, the city becomes
one of her characters — the kind of character in Woolf’s eyes does not “preach

doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire” (“Mr. Bennett
and Mrs. Brown” 75), but contributes to make a “rich, elastic, and alive” (75) novel
that in Josh Sides’s words, redescribes and reimagines home (7).
It is a city with which Smith endows its cosmopolitan significance in a way of
associating it with people and place, existing both in the past and present. London

itself composes a literary guide book, carrying memories and living experiences of
some great contributors recorded in the history of the city and of world literature:

A great hill straddles NW, rising in Hampstead, West Hampstead,

Kilburn, Willesden, Brondesbury, Cricklewood. It is no stranger to

the world of letters. The Woman in White walks up one side to meet
the highwayman Jack Sheppard on the other … Dickens himself
comes this far west and north for a pint or to bury someone. (55)

Locating the novel in her most familiar place, Smith also presents an unexpected

trip in London on foot. Hampstead, which Smith spares no efforts in praising its
beauty, is believed to be the “literary and intellectual centre of the capital” (Glinert
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291). One of the reasons for paralleling Smith with Charles Dickens is because both
of them present a city that is alive in their every day experience. Dickens writes down
North West London from Camden Town to Gown Street on the paper, and makes his

dwelling place on Gown Street appear in various stories. Smith’s exploration of the
city always stretches outside the “iconic” London represented by the popular tourist
attractions. North West London provides convenience for her to use familiar street
names and locations, and is home to the natural beauty with which she feels attached.
Her affection of Hampstead Heath is articulated through a Phil Barnes — an

acquaintance of Felix and a senior resident in North West London. He talks to Felix
about the power of natural beauty, and the significance of natural sites: “A bit of
green is very powerful, Felix. Very powerful” (117). For born and bred Londoners,
Barnes believes that what they need is a bit of “green” and whenever they need it,
they “go up the Heath … crave it” and “even … little park here is important” (117). In

On Beauty, Smith also explicitly expresses her praise of a “literary” Health:

“Hampstead Heath! Glory of London! Where Keats walked and Jarman fucked, where
Orwell exercised his weakened lungs and Constable never failed to find something
holy … the Heath! From every window the view commands you to come outside and
enjoy it” (Smith, On Beauty 275-76). In her latest novel Swing Time, Heath appears

again, as its unnamed narrator says: “I can always find the Heath — all my life I’ve
taken paths that lead me back, whether I wanted it or not, to the Heath …” (106).
London’s natural beauty, with its tranquility and stillness incarnate an unbiased
attitude, a state of mind Smith encourages, especially out of her concern on the lives
of immigrants in Britain. 49 If natural beauty can be enjoyed by any one, which also

responds to its appreciators with equal affection, then immigrants who choose to join
new environment and become part of the city, should in turn be embraced by the
London of the new millennium.
Compared to Smith’s other novels, NW’s Hampstead Heath, home to one of the
highest points in London, is relocated from the margin of the narrative to the center,

and under some circumstances, is presented in a poetic way. Smith, in her reflection
49
See Smith’s article “Fence: A Brexit Diary”, and see also the previous discussion in the same chapter.
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of NW, admits that “maybe a poem is the best place for London”, and “the capital is
best expressed in poetry” (Interview with Jensen). Correspondingly, when she creates
the city’s images, what can be traced is an extensive connection between her London

and its poetic representations. The praise given by Smith forms a cosmopolitan aura,
resonating back and forth between the verses composed centuries ago and those
nowadays. Smith shares her passion with Joanna Baillie to the site where one can get
the best view of London:

It is a goodly sight through the clear air,

From Hampstead’s heathy height to see at once
England’s vast capital in fair expanse,
Towers, belfries, lengthen’s streets, and structures fair.
St. Paul’s high dome amidst the vassal bands

Of neihb’ring spires, a regal chieftain stands … (Joanna Baillie,

“London”) 50

And Smith’s voices also finds its century-old counterpart articulated by Leigh
Hunt in his sonnet “Description of Hampstead”:

Dear Hampstead, is thy southern face serene,

Silently smiling on approaching eyes.
Within, thine ever-shifting looks surprise,
Streets, hills, and dells, trees overhead now seen, … 51

Smith and those poets are “only connected” with one another, sharing an
affection with the beauty that their “home” London provides. Her precursors either
like herself are born-and-bred in the city, or establish an intimate relationship with the
city through an engagement with its natural beauty. It is her home as well as millions

50
Quoted in Edward Walford’s Old and New London: Volume 5. London, 1878, pp. 449.
51
Quoted in Edward Walford’s Old and New London: Volume 5. London, 1878, pp. 462.
143
of others’. She does not merely highlights the Hampstead Heath, but implies that
London may find its best imagination in nature’s transcending beauty, free from
racism and discrimination. It indicates a connection, transcending time and race — a

sense of cosmopolitanism arranged by Smith but not restrain by her personal mark as
“Black” and “British”. It is everyone’s London. As Barnes continues his conversation
with Felix, he quotes Keats: “In some melodious plot/ Of beechen green/ and shadows
numberless …” (117). It is a quotation from “Ode to a Nightingale” — a poem which
is completed while Keats lives in his house in Hampstead, and the city, in turn, makes

Keats’s memory and living experience permanent by turning his dwelling place into a
museum called Keats Grove. A commonality shared by Smith, Hunt, Baillie, and
Keats is that, they praise the natural beauty, and make it the integrated part of their
own articulation and understanding of the city. In the section of NW entitled
“Hampstead Heath”, there is also a conversation between Nathan and Natalie in short

lines organized vertically — a poetic format. When Nathan asks Natalie why he
should come up to Heath, she replies: “I don’t know – because it’s free, because it’s
beautiful. Trees, fresh air, ponds, grass” (319). Through the seemingly intuitive
preference and appreciation of natural beauty, Smith bridges NW with the historical
literary articulations dating back to centuries ago, forming a differentiated

cosmopolitanism that transcends time, race, and genre.

4.3 Ghettoized London: Physical Deprivation
Smith depicts her London in a multidimensional manner, and reveals aspects of
the city — characterized by a Dickensian social realism — which would not be
considered in a traditional overview of that cosmopolitan metropolis. It is a place

which, in Waldron’s words, celebrates the great gathering of traditions; such mingling
and interacting make the city cosmopolitan, a remarkable feature that philosophers
and social observers emphasize and extol (“What is Cosmopolitan” 232). However,
what seems to be problematic, for Smith, is to romanticize the city. Her moral
awareness lies in her ability to depict the city she loves from a critical perspective.

Moreover, it is probably impossible to frame the novel with the term “Black British
literature”. Mike Phillips, a Londoner and a British immigrant writer of Caribbean
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origin, reflects that “black writing” is superficially related to the writer ’s skin color,
and is almost intuitively “labeled ‘postcolonial’ by the gurus of contemporary
criticism” (144). The reason is that, unlike Selvon, some established Caribbean

immigrant writers, as Phillips remarks, turn “black people in London into comic
caricatures or sentimentalized victims” (150). Contrary to that self- serving style,
Smith’s contemplation of the city is compelling, with less effects taken to “cater for
the taste” of her critics and readers who are mostly “white”. It is a book that confirms
and reaches beyond public stereotypical impressions, and furthermore, about living in

the city that one feels both familiar and estranged. Contrast to the poetic northwestern
London elucidated in the previous section, the paradoxical nature of life and its
unfairness still find their traces in the book. One year after NW’s publication, Smith
comments on the contradictorily unpleasant reality of social life: “Some rise by sin,
and some by virtue fall – that line is embedded deep in NW” (Smith, Feel Free 330).

The issue of discrimination and trauma is deeply seeded in the novel, as Smith
continues: “The happy ending is never universal. Someone is always left behind. And
in the London I grew up in – as it is today – that someone is more often than not a
young black man” (330). Contradictions, conflicts, and inhumanity are not avoidable
in her mind and in her writing. While working on this novel, Smith imagines her

London from a distance, against the backdrop of a radical time during Occupy Wall
Street Protest in 2011. The social issue of inequality finds its corresponding
incarnation in the novel’s preface, as she quotes priest John Ball’s speech in The
Peasant’s Revolt of 1381: “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the
gentleman?” 52 In Smith’s own words, “when you’re writing a novel the world always

seems to be aligning with what you’re writing” (“Interview with Jensen”). Thus, her
London in NW demonstrates a Smithian realism that might not be perfectly aesthetical,
but is profoundly moral.

52
One interpretation: back in ancient times, everyone works and there is no class distinction. The original excerpt
is:“When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were
created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would
have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond and who free. And
therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may ( if ye will)
cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty”. From John Ball, June 12, 1381, “All M an by Nature is Created
Alike”, in Suzanne M cIntire ed. Speeches in World History, pp. 104.
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 NW, compared to White Teeth, is bleaker and more suffocating — the contrast in
the imageries between a cosmopolitan London in the latter and a ghetto London in the
former is sticking. It is a reality that the then twenty-year-old Smith might find

difficult to deal with, or rather, feels reluctant to confront with, although she is
probably conscious about urban ghettoism. People living in the ghetto are often
treated as stereotypes and are practically disenfranchised. They have a troubled
relationship with the society, as they are regarded as a threat, and on many occasions,
are left with no chance but to endure the sense of inadequacy. 53 The issue of

ghettoization is revealed and reflected in NW, supported by harsh realities. The

physical ghetto in NW seems to enclose the characters’ life in a predetermined circle,
with a destiny that one cannot manage to escape. “The book is so real” — that is the
common impression given by critics, readers, and the leading actress of the televised
NW — stimulating a rethinking of the significance of oblivion and displacement. Like

her depiction of characters, a re-contemplation on Hampstead Heath also reveals its

multifaceted nature — cheering and depressing, historical and contemporary,
permanent and changing, having its literary glory and “shabby, dingy, damp and mean
neighbourhood” (Glinert 285). Heath used to be related to robbery, ghetto, and
poverty, where back to the eighteenth century, few people would venture into at night

‘unarmed and unattended” (291). This may partly explain why Yeats, who moved to
North West London as an infant “never liked the area” (288).
It is such a coexistence of natural beauty and realistic cruelty creates a tension in
NW. When Leah is immersed in the “transcending” thinking between the city and
literature, her thoughts are interrupted by Shar, a “nameless” ghetto girl who has been

ignored, is forced to do hustling and deceiving, and constantly suffers from poverty.
Their first encounter happens at the very beginning of the novel when Leah believes
that Shar’s “mother” is in hospital, so she helps the girl to book a taxi and lends her
some money. However, their later encounter in this scenic park is less humane and

53
See the discussion by Lin and Yeoh: “Stereotyped as ghettos filled with exotic danger, they not only figure as
spaces of exception for the containment of undesirable elements associated with poverty, blight and racial deviance,
they are also economically disconnected from the rest of the city and starved of the social services that they
precisely need.” (Weiqiang Lin, Brenda S. A. Yeoh 212)

146
dreamy. “What you want from me? What you want me to say? I robbed you? I’m an
addict. I stole your money. All right? ALL RIGHT?” (55) A contrast is formed
between the picturesque park and a devastated Shar, and between Shar’s hysterical

exclamation and Leah’s weak response: “Let me help, maybe I can … there are places
that … that help” (56). However, in tears, Shar tells Leah that her ghettoized life
cannot be changed, with or without her money and help: “I aint got your money…
I’ve got a problem” (56). The imagination of ghetto, a phenomenon that is
discriminative and offensive, is usually associated with people of color, with drugs,

violence, crimes, killing, and illegal trade. That is another aspect of the city that Smith
tries to show which goes hand in hand with the part that is poetic, romantic, and full
of natural vitality. Smith blurs the boundaries or rather widens the boundary of the
ghetto, presenting a London exceeding the imagination of the romantic West End and
the avant- garde East End — a London existing in ordinary people’s lives.

Those “extremely troubled” people may have no choice but be physically placed
in a ghetto. They are usually identified as the diasporic, including, in particular, the
non-white immigrants and their descendants. It is an urban situation or even a
phenomenon resulting from a preconceived assumption regarding the minority as a
threat of civility. However, such binary divisions of social space, between minority

and majority, and between ghetto and non-ghetto, not only neglect the time and space
in- making, as Bhabha claims, but also one-sidedly ignore the contingent nature of
ghettoization. In other words, born in a ghetto is not a choice, but a forced fact.
Moreover, ghettoization, which usually finds its close connection with certain
collective identifications of minority groups, does not cease to exist in contemporary

time, even in a so-called “cosmopolitan” London. Smith reestablishes the imagination

of a social coldness towards ghetto, which from another perspective, reflects her own
concern of life’s tragedy of immigrants. NW’s London is resonant with the London
depicted in Ben Judah’s book This Is London: Life and Death in the World City (2016).
Judah depicts a London that is an ostensibly “vibrant multicultural area”, and a real

“ethnic ghetto” (344) which is too traumatic for anyone to admit its glorious and
promising existence. London’s cosmopolitan impression seems overwhelming
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considering its hugely mixing ethnic geography, multilingual communities, and
diversified commodities and costumes. However, a city which sells “broccoli from
Kenya and tomatoes from Chile” (Smith, NW 83), and a Hampstead — the home to

John Keats, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Agatha Christie,
Kingsley Amis, and John Le Carre (Glinert 291) — may turn out to be a place of life
and death with unexpected ghettoization. As Judah expresses what he has seen, heard,
and experienced in the city:

London is a patchwork of ghettos. Right here is Peckham, you have

the Africans, over the river in Whitechapel we have the Bengalis,
further east from here we have the Pakistanis, and west from here in
Brixton we have the Jamaicans. I could go on, and on, and on. (36,
emphasis added)

Smith presents a realistic coexistence of ghetto, poverty, and destiny. Abuse,

drug addiction, and promiscuity — these are parts of the city that people may happen
to discover if they go beyond the prosperous and wealthy West End and step into its
shadow. Smith collects fragments of life’s mosaic which, if looking in the distance,

form a complete picture of the ghetto which is physically visible and sensible. There
are Londoners who have traumatic memories, and who have been marginalized and
ignored. The ghetto fragments in the book can be collected in memories, on television,
and from friends. It exists in childhood memories, pointing to the contingent,
uncontrollable misery. Anita, a classmate of Natalie and Leah back to their primary

school years, whose mother is pregnant through rape, questioning the reason of her
own existence: “How do I know which half of me is evil?” (183) It is a ghettoized
contingency which is involuntarily “given” to the child, who marks herself as “evil”
even before she starts to witness and experience the real life. Ghettoization also has
been reinforced and aestheticized by the emotionless media. When the successful

barrister Natalie watches a reality show with her mother, what is demonstrated before
them is a “typical” ghetto family — a jailed father, a drug-addict mother, a daughter
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only concerning about material gains, and a son relying on sickness benefits. Media,
as Smith reflects, portrays poverty as a “personality trait” (269). It is indifferent to
these people as it tries to record and amplify the misery without any motivation for

understanding or somehow making a different to their life. In the eyes of the

“successful”, deterioration and hard-ship in adult life seem to be a personal choice
rather than a destiny. Natalie’s husband Frank expresses this opinion to his wife:
“Cheryl [Natalie’s sister] could stop having children. Your brother could get a job.
They could leave that money- grabbing cult. Your family make poor life

choices—that’s just a fact” (231). Poverty, in the minds of people who have power, is
a simple issue that can be controlled and avoided. However, born in a ghetto means
one constantly feels uncertain about self. Poverty may create a psychological barrier
that hinders the talented from moving forward. In recalling the story of Michelle
Holland, a university dropout, Natalie believes that there is no other option but for

Michelle to decline and fall, and to follow the track that is “designated” for a ghetto
child, despite the fact that the girl is a prodigy in mathematics. “What could she be but
exceptional? Father in jail, mother sectioned. She lived with her grandmother. She
was sensitive and sincere, awkward, defensive, lonely”. (215) Similarly, Nathan, a
nice-looking, talented young man in playing football, who lives in the fringe of the

city, terminates his school education in teenage years — a fact that in Leah’s opinion
is only “a matter of time” (188). So does his involvement in violence (beating his
father), illegal trade (selling London travelcards), hustling, and more serious crimes
like murder. Beyond the expected deteriorating trajectory, however, as Marcus
remarks, Nathan has never been given a chance, deprived of the freedom of living in

this country that he calls home but does not feel at home. Growing up in ghetto also
means immigrants probably have to endure the injustice forced on them by society.
The child Keisha (who later changes her name to Natalie) saw on television a “poor
defenseless boy” (197), who shares the same origin with hers, being stabbed at the bus
stop by “white” boys, and lost his life. Smith does not ignore the truth of racial

injustice in England, as she continues to tell the reader that the Jamaican boy dead
namelessly and facelessly, whereas his murders walk free from the court “swinging
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punches at the photographers” (197).
Ghetto realism includes realities that seem too painful to be true. If Smith is
among the few novelists who expressively admit the ethic function of novels, then it

is morally understandable that she would reveal the sufferings, regardless of the
concern that this might arouse unpopular responses from publishers and critics. In the
fictional album called GARVEY HOUSE: A Photographic Portrait, Felix sees in the
photograph “Afros, headscarves, cane rows” (108), confirming the above quoted
description of what Judah discovers in London — residents who live in ghettos are

often of African, Caribbean, and Asian origins. Even though in the album’s
introduction, it defines the photographs as a contribution to “a fascinating period” in
the city’s history, what stands behind such fascination is a dreadful place, where “kids
barefoot, parents looking like kids themselves” (107). It is part of the city that people
feel hard to conceive or approach. Even for Felix, who lived in Garvey House for

eight years as a boy, facing its dreadfulness, is not sure “if he had a memory of this, or
whether the photograph itself was creating the memory for him” (107). “Struggle”,
“murder”, and “hard times” are the words that appear in Felix’s father Lloyds’s
recalling of young people’s life in Grave House. Smith not only creates the memory
of ghetto, but conveys the message of its continuity. Felix’s mother seeks for an

irresponsible freedom, leaving her children to their father, Felix’s half-brother Devon
involves in robbery, waiting for a “provisional release date” (155), and some unnamed
boys growing up in Grave House “went down to murder” (109). Deterioration seems
like an unavoidable destiny for a ghetto child, echoing the mosaic ghetto life
discussed above. Smith unfolds a ghetto child’s life trajectory:

Five and innocent at this bus stop. Fourteen and drunk. Twenty-six
and stoned. Twenty-nine in utter oblivion, out of his mind on coke
and K: “You can’t sleep here, son. You either need to move it along
or we’ll have to take you in to the station to sleep it off. (119)

In NW, Smith invites the readers to see the indoor life of Londoners, which opens
150
a window that may otherwise be closed when describing the “glorious cosmopolitan”
city. Connected by Felix, Smith makes a parallel between Lloyds and Felix’s old lover
Annie. Whereas Lloyds smokes “spliff”, Annie is addicted to heroin. In Lloyds’ room,

“dishes were piled high in the sink and a small hill of bed linen had been stuffed in the
corner” (105), while in Annie’s, Felix sees “small mountains of spent fags and ash …
towers of paper dotted the floor” (141). The sense of disorder and decadence in both
apartments are identical, overwhelmed by “suffocation and impatience” (141). For
both Lloyds and Annie, the possibility of change seems so uncertain that it might be

impossible for them to be freed from their ghetto situation. Hope is also like a remote
fairy tale for Felix. During his childhood, his mother left him. After reaching
adulthood and living independently, he redevelops an intimate relationship with her
mother during her short visit to his apartment. When he begins to feel attached to her,
she disappears, once again, taking away with her all his valuable items. Later, when

he abandons the drug habits for “nine months, two weeks, three days” (109),
envisions a new life with his girlfriend Grace, and shares his happiness with friends,
what awaits him is a sudden death, a stabbing at the bus stop. When reporting the
murder of Felix, Smith ironically emphasizes that the media particularly mentions the
fact of his birthplace, the “notorious Grave House”, as if it has some connections with

his tragic death. There is a correspondence between media’s prejudiced opinion and
the “affluent” and “established” colleagues that Natalie works with, as “in their
minds”, the North West London where Natalie grew up is “a hopeless sort of place,
analogous to a war zone” (249). Such a deliberate arrangement of showing the
similarities between media and upper-class people conveys Smith’s sarcasm towards

their hypocritical, or in Leah’s word, “bourgeois” life. As it will show in the next
section, for the people who in the public eyes are affluent and successful, they can be
spiritually barren and ghettoized.
4.4 Ghettoized London: Moral Deterioration
The significance of “ghetto” used here is twofold. Firstly, it refers to parts of the

city where ethnic minority groups live. However, it does not merely refer to the
typical residential space that is built by white homeowners to separate themselves
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from what they call, the black counterparts, nor a place that marks the gathering of the
Jews. Secondly, it points to a mentality of being enclosed by the undesired and
unattractive life. “Only connect” is not an exclusive theme of Smith’s third novel On

Beauty, but a shared theme of all her five novels. In NW, a particular connection is
established through a sense of ghettoization. Apart from the physically visible poverty
and sensible misery, this book also portrays a mental ghettoization exceeding the scale
of poverty and material insufficiency. It is a problematic phenomenon goes beyond
migration-related issues, and therefore, not associated exclusively to hybridization

and reconciliation of the original and the new. The imaginaries of ghettoization herein
should not be restricted to the disenfranchised, nor simply be understood as a
derivation of emigration. Although Peter Brooker argues that “ghettoized existence …
can follow emigration” (87), Smith seems to challenge such a stereotyped association.
NW looks into the life of Londoners, unmasking their hidden disposition — a

differentiated “third space” that facilities a negotiation of stereotypes. Smith’s London

is not like Naipaul’s London — the latter is a city of the world with “elegant goods
and manners and freedom” visited by “barbarian peoples of the globe” (Naipaul, The
Enigma of Arrival 130). Words such as global and freedom that seem to associate with
cosmopolitanism in Naipaul’s depiction in effect carry an indication of London’s

superiority, and of a fake prosperity that hides its people’s mental suffering and
struggles. NW, in this sense, is an example which negotiates the undesirable tragedy,
unfairness, and emptiness against the background of a London beyond touristic
imagination.
Smith’s ghettoism is performative in nature. Performativity refers to a

phenomenon that social reality is not a given, but is created and recreated “through
language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic social sign” (Butler, “Performative
Acts and Gender Constitution” 519). In this regard, the affluent people may turn out
to be nothing but a differentiated ghettoized person, and a traditionally defined
“outsider” or immigrant can possibly be the true (and sole) explorer of the urban

space, which virtually is not their home but a new land. The desperation and desire to
escape, to be free, and to try to find self, prevails in the depiction of the residents.
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People who live in the city may suffer from the illusion of being an “other” in the
place that they call “home”, and where they have achieved career success. Similarly,
there are people like Natalie who effortlessly try to redefine her self- identity, to break

“artificial limits” (291), but who still helplessly keeps feeling the otherness in such a
delicately made new-self with which she cannot reconcile. In NW, the focus of its
description departs from social discrimination and separation, and voices a concern
about everyone. Being traumatized, other than caused by financial difficulties, can
also indicate a helpless feeling of being unable to correct one’s direction once being

placed on the wrong track, and the inability to manage life’s misery and emptiness.
Moreover, ghetto, as far as this chapter is concerned, might not be naturalized or
neutralized, or be treated with a shifting impression of fondness, contrary to Josh
Sides’s explication in his discussion of African Americans (2-3).
The ghettoization, as a psychological impasse between the wish to be free and

the desire to be socially recognized, haunts both female protagonists in the novel.
Leah, who has an official job and a considerate husband, forms unexpected doubles
with Shar. In Leah’s pessimistic mind, she does not feel any attractiveness of the city
in which she was born and bred. For her, Shar has a peculiar face of London villages,
and such peculiarity connotes pettiness, or using Smith’s words, “faces without

names” (6). However, when Shar, like a typical ghetto girl, who wears torn and dirty
clothes, and “smells” (7), begs for help, Leah opens the door for this girl who is
practically a stranger. Leah’s intimate feeling to Shar is almost intuitive. She is the
only one that Leah shares the news of her early pregnancy (shortly before her secret
termination), and “together they look like old friends on a winter night” (12). The

natural intimacy between Leah and Shar does not end after their first encounter. When
being urged, repeatedly, by her mother and her husband to take a step forward of
setting up a family, Leah feels the great eagerness to run away with Shar: “Leave all
this! Let’s be outlaws! Sleeping in hedgerows. Following the railway line till it
reaches the sea” (79). If Shar is a girl physically lives in a ghetto, then Leah is

imprisoned in her ghettoized mind. Not realizing that Shar’s begging is a scum, Leah
goes upstairs, pretending to get some money, hides in the toilet and cries. Leah’s
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emotional reaction is partly a result of her empathic personality and agreeable
disposition, but more importantly, considering Shar’s repetitive appearance in Leah’s
mind and life, it might be more appropriate to say that Leah senses the similarities

between them — suffering, hopelessness, and stillness — and cries for herself.
For Leah, rather than saying that she lives in the city, it might be more
appropriate to say that the city simply passes through her without leaving any traces.
She senses the coldness of the city where “money avoids relationship, obligation”
(59), and when comparing herself with her immigrant neighbor Ned, she seems to be

the “stranger” not the “local”. “Admirable. Exploring the city alone, seeking out gigs
and talks and screenings and exhibitions, far-off parks and mystery Lidos. Leah, born
and bred, never goes anywhere” (51). It is “outsiders” rather than the “born-and-bred”
Londoners who are eager to explore the city, which in turn, blurs the boundary
between local and the other in terms of their attachment and appreciation of “home”

or “new home”. Leah’s uncertain and ambiguous attitude to her city also reflects in
her attitudes towards life. She does not feel comfortable with self. When watching the
movement of a worm, she thinks out loud: “[n]obody loves me everybody hates me”
(80). Her three pregnancy terminations, especially the last one made at the age of
thirty-five against the expectation of her mother and her husband, reflect her

uncertainty about the meaning of strangeness and intimacy. Love is universal can be a
reasonable statement only under the condition that it is “deeply felt” and “profoundly
personal” (Padilla et al xv). It includes not only family kinship but a complicated
attachments to the city — an attachment which can be further extended to people’s
appreciation of other places. Universal love is not applicable to Leah. She feels

estranged from her community and neighborhood, and what is reflected in Leah’s
eyes (although she does not live in ghettos) is a lifeless city:

To their right a foreclosed shopping arcade and a misconceived

office block, empty, every other window broken. To their left, a

grassy island nestled beside a dual carriageway. Intended as a green

oasis, it is a fly-tipping zone. A water- logged mattress. An upturned
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 sofa with ripped cushions, foully stained. More eccentric items,
suggesting lives abandoned in a hurry: half a scooter, a decapitated
Anglepoise, a car door, a hat stand, enough rolled-up lino for a

bathroom floor. (70)

Moreover, Leah tends to seek for comfort from the impossibility. Missing her
deceased father, she sees him coming to life, bringing with him the overabundant
“love” and brightness that Leah, who lives in the darkness of self- uncertainty, longs

for. She imagines her father’s affective expressions: “I love you … I’ve always loved
you … I love you don’t worry it’s nice here … I can see a light” (53). It seems like
she is not capable of loving in reality but only in imaginations, and hopes that she
could reach a balance of both staying still and moving forward.
If Leah and Shar form an unexpected pair, then Leah and Natalie are also

doubles as they are the residents living in a city like an “other”, who have never
appreciated its beauty. 54 Whereas Leah ignores the city, Natalie frames Willesden
with her prejudiced negative judgment — anything scenic, beautiful should belong to
another part of the city other than Willesden. Contrary to Natalie’s judgment, the city
in reality appears as a continuum, with its unique openness to the historical and the

new, the latter typically referring to the diversification contributed by immigrants

coming from different parts of the world. While the city undergoes a change with
increasing diversity, Natalie experiences an inconsistent transformation who strives to
achieve self- invention through self-denial. Putting oneself in reality, a person will
measure the self, achieving a sense of acknowledgement of “my inwardness, the depth

of my character, the profundity of my person” (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 48).

However, Natalie does not feel the sense of acknowledgment, nor does she find
comfort with the consciousness of being a citizen, a mother, and a wife. It is only a
false impression for Leah to believe that Natalie leads a “perfect” life: “You have
your work. You have Frank. You’ve got all these friends. You’re getting to be so

54
See section 5.1 in this chapter for the discussion on the city’s cosmopolitanism that transcends time, genre, and
is incarnated Smith’s description of the city’s natural beauty.
155
successful. You’re never lonely” (272). In fact, Natalie prefers to be exclusively
defined by her profession, as “she could only justify herself to herself when she
worked”, and even when at home, she will “go to the bathroom and spend the next

hour alone with her e-mail” (256). Bhabha’s observation of “us” and “other” is worth
quoting here to elucidate the nature of Natalie’s contradictory self, and her
non-existing sense of belonging:

“Black skin, white masks” is not a neat division; it is a doubling,

dissembling image of being in at least two places at once that makes

it impossible for the devalued, in satiable évolué…to accept the
colonizer ’s invitation to identity: “You’re a doctor, a writer, a
student, you’re different, you’re one of us.” (The Location of Culture
44)

The story portrays a Natalie that determines to be one of the Europeanized

Jamaican-Britons but constantly struggles in the trap of a clear-cut binary between
self and other. There are three key words in Natalie’s identity: Africa, British, and
female, which are related to her contradictory self — a girl and then a woman who

spares no effects in appealing to public expectations, and abandons inherited qualities.

She tries to be “the sole author” of the dictionary that defines her (1), but her
determination turns out to be illusory as she is constantly lost in her search of identity.
No third space seems to be obtainable for Natalie — the seeker of a totalized identity,
who accepts holism, and refuses contingency:

Daughter drag. Sister drag. Mother drag. Wife drag. Court drag.
Rich drag. Poor drag. British drag. Jamaican drag. Each required a
different wardrobe. But when considering these various attitudes she
[Natalie] struggled to think what would be the most authentic, or

perhaps the least inauthentic. (282, emphasis added).

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 There is a sense of ghetto in Natalie’s subconsciousness, which is related to her
struggle of getting rid of her origin that is not authentic in her “dictionary”. Rather
than establishing an indeterminate self which embraces various heritage and engages

with a new environment, Natalie strives to impress others with an authentic self by
eventually, becoming a “coconut”, that cannot reconcile the tension of “meaning and
being, or … demand and desire” (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 62). The indication
to escape which is related to disguise, uneasiness, and despair, creates an inconsistent
Natalie, who was named Keisha for sixteen years, and who after becoming a barrister,

“lives just far enough” to avoid the location that related to her childhood past, and to
her Caribbean-rooted memories (64). Being a coconut is more than being hypocritical.
It is a choice of being an estranged self, and to force an uncomfortable other to be the
only self. Her suffering, her sense of emptiness, her loss and grief, aggravated rather
than alleviated throughout her seeking of authenticity — a deliberate departure from

what she possesses, and what is bequeathed to her as a Jamaican-British woman.

Smith avoids to be framed in a postcolonial style, and feels reluctant to create
totalized images for her characters. In other words, any binary assumptions would
appear to be problematic for her. The uneasiness with self leads Natalie to seek her
identity in an extreme way. Through her “blind dates” with strangers, Smith shows a

London “indoors”, displaying its modern ghettoization. Feeling perplexed in the

process of self-creation and self-redefinition, Natalie has “a strong desire to slip into
the lives of other people” (283). Instead of, as Smith’s suggests in the book’s narration,
jointing the group at the bus stop outside Kilburn’s Poundland where there are “many
of the more engaging conversations to be heard in the city of London” (283),55

Natalie tries to seek the answers by meeting the hidden other — Londoners in their
apartments and houses. She discovers an online platform where people, despite of
their backgrounds, seek to “know” each other through unusual intimacy. That is
probably a journey that one least expects to take. It is through Natalie that Smith leads
her readers to go further into the city, revealing its part that seems impossible to
55
Smith seems to suggest that if one wants to know about real life and thoughts of Londoners, they should go to
the bus stop. As she writes in the book: “A local tip: the bus stop outside Kilburn’s Poundland is the site of many
of the more engaging conversations to be heard in the city of London. You’re welcome” (283).
157
explore, and difficult to depict. In the three dates that Natalie made in the North
Western London, she “slips in” the life of the English, Iranian, and Africans. In a
house that lives three young people in their twenties, Natalie saw a life in

euphoric condition dominated by drugs. In a stunningly luxurious house occupied by

two impressively beautiful and affluent Africans, Natalie was let in quickly “before
anyone saw” (293). The people who take the “central” position of the social system
are not morally superior to those who endure the real hardship in life.
Smith, therefore, deconstructs the identity of the so-called successful and affluent

people by exposing another side of their life, which is morally problematic. This book
also gives a glimpse of London’s lawyers and bankers. In a meeting with Theodora,
the first successful Jamaican-British silk, or a member of lawyer in Queen’s Council,
Natalie is told to be “pragmatic”, which specifies that she should “avoid ghetto work”
(242). Theodora breaks Natalie’s presumption that working hard means being more

likely to be acknowledged as it is a profession that is “never neutral” (243). Natalie’s

“innocence and pride” (237) are also diminished by a Johnnie Hampton-Rowe — the
judge that treats her with extreme impoliteness, who appears behind her after the
robing room, and pinches her nipple, an act so unexpected that it takes a while for
Natalie to react. In the “wealthy” areas of Chelsea, Earls Court, and West Hampstead,

the lawyers’ lofts and mansion flats are literally empty — “unsullied by children or
women, empty of furniture, fringed by ghettos” (250) — as their owners have to
entertain clients in clubs.
However, it seems that Natalie’s “exploration journey” could not help her to find
the self that she has long lost, but makes her see a London which reveals itself

outspokenly in a context where a fully authentic identity is absent. Shortly after she
had her third date with two young men, she was caught by her husband, who asks:
“You have two children downstairs … who are you?” (299) Still feeling oblivious
about discovering self and other, the once unswerving Natalie allows herself to be
absorbed in the wild nature, totally emptied with no keys, no money, no masks,

wandering aimlessly on the bridge and in the streets. “She was nothing more or less
than the phenomenon of walking. She had no name, no biography, no
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characteristics.”(304) The city, at last, gives her the comfort and courage that she
needs, and after intuitively walking around Hampstead that she is familiar with, she
gives up the idea of committing suicide, and restarts the life as a mother, and

hopefully a wife if her husband does not pursue a divorce.

NW demonstrates Smith’s dedication to freeing her writing style from the defined
preconception of postcolonial black British fiction, and instead, focuses on exploring
complicated relationships that every Londoner has to deal with: between nationality
and citizenship, poverty and wealth, public and private, and most importantly,

between the conflicting self and the otherness in self. Smith does not prioritize ethnic
similarities when making connections, just as ghettoization is not restrained to
migration. Nor does she avoids her immigrants’ struggles in their only homeland —
London. It is a book asking the question “What is London?” It is a city, like any other
metropolis, that never lacks contradictions and is highly multifaceted. It has a glorious

front door and a dark backdoor. Any residents, who go through both doors despite of
their financial status and origins, may feel displaced and traumatized.
NW represents Smith’s endeavor to create her realistic style, sustained by the
ever complicated modern imaginations — the city and its people — that cannot be
defined by a single classification. City landscape as demonstrated in the book is both

historical and contemporary, containing an inclusiveness to both the old and the new.
Being lost in the city is different from being lost in identity, as the former enables a
rediscovery of self that one might have been deliberately avoid in the process of the
so-called “self- invention”, whereas the latter may consequently cause psychological
suffering regardless of one’s publically acknowledged social position. If literary

works, like the culture in which they are situated, are subjective, mixed, mobile, and
contradictory, then, NW should be regarded both as an impetus and a counterforce of
cosmopolitan London, that “constitutes the deepest reality for its members” (Rozbicki
and Ndege 3). On the one hand, it is a historical city of literary traces transcending
time and space, a place that provides home for people of diversified ethnicities, and

inspirations for writers and poets living in different centuries. On the other hand, the
distressing reality beyond London’s unavoidable gathering and cosmopolitan ethnical
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ethnography implies a differentiated “ghetto” — a word and a phenomenon though
being historically related to the Jews and other immigrants, possesses an enriched
significance in the novel. Ghetto is an enclosed place, which can be physically visible

or psychologically prevailing. NW presents unexpected connections among people,

who may live apart, belong to different classes, but are displaced and traumatized in a
similar way. It re-negotiates ghettoization through the depiction of its characters
whose anxiety is caused by their failure of obtaining a self-consciousness that can
define themselves and their relations. Drug addiction, high rates of crime, and

violence are not the typical or sole marks of the “poor”, just as emptiness and moral
deterioration can be a real problem for anyone.

Smith’s cosmopolitanism demonstrated in NW is aesthetically valuable, with an

attachment to the city shared by herself and her literary precursors. In terms of

London per se, Smith provides an alternative beyond the cosmopolitan London
vitalized by cultural diversity, or a miserable London casting dark spells on its
immigrants. It is a London constantly subject to reimagination. NW depicts the life of
Londoners in a way which shows and redefines ghetto, and questions the uncritical
conclusion of regarding London as a cosmopolitan city, simply because it is home for

people of diversified origins. When ghetto is defined in an urban context, it points not
only to the life of the miserable, but that of the affluent, displaying a city that is
neither fully promising nor desperately hopeless. Likewise, her cosmopolitanism does
not stem from the physical reality of “mix” but is characterized by deromanticization
and decategorization. The book does not differentiate immigrants and locals, the rich

and the poor, thus challenging stereotyped and stratified understandings of race and
class.
There is a sensible urge in NW, or a hope for the betterment of every one. At the
end of the story, Leah cannot help but ask: “I just don’t understand why I have this
life … You, me, all of us. Why that girl and not us. Why that poor bastard on Albert

Road. It doesn’t make sense to me” (336). This return to the comments Smith makes
by quoting Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure — “some rise by sin, and some by
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virtue fall”. It indicates the blurred boundary between goodness and ugliness, pure
and corruption, just as Smith’s London where there is no definitive association
between being professionally successful and morally uncorrupted. By the end of the

story, Leah’s secret act of contraception and Natalie’s secret dates are both discovered
by their husbands. Such a disclosure may signify a turning point, where the two
women can once again become two girls — the best friends who overcome the
estrangement caused by race and class. At last, Smith leaves the ends open by
indicating that Leah and Natalie decide to call the police, reporting Nathan as the

murder suspect of Felix. The moral struggle continues. In Smith’s conscious mind,
she loves her London, both its natural beauty and its people. In the meantime, bearing
in mind the principle of fail better, she feels responsible for depicting a ghettoized
realism, so muddled, yet nonetheless conveying a message of a more promising
society for the disenfranchised.

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 Chapter 5 Swing Time: Post-slavery Trauma and
Cosmopolitan Prospects

As a detailed analysis of Smith’s latest novel, this chapter explores Swing Time’s
post-slavery syndrome, the existential adversity between the superficially similar
doublings (black girls/dancers on both sides of the Atlantic), and the contrast between
ostensible and true cosmopolitans. In the book, Smith further enriches her

cosmopolitanism — a term as well as a phenomenon gaining its impetus by

confronting rather than evading the imperfect part of reality — with an acute
reflection on the mindset of modern people who are still haunted by the traumatic
memories of slavery. Nevertheless, similar to all her other fictional and non- fictional
works, this novel also envisions a more promising future for an increasingly mixed

and complicated society. Its narrative space transfers between New York, England,
and a South African country; imagining such an unnamed country, Smith in effects
portrays a fictional Gambia. 56 Its characters, who live in the seemingly developed
large city, often feel more displaced than their African counterparts, with whom they
share the same origin. It can be viewed as a coming-of-age story articulating

blackness and its shadow, cruelty and forgiveness, and the constraints and
transcendence of stereotyped perceptions. Through the lenses of power struggles and
identity negotiation, Smith presents an aspiration for a more supportive, equal, and
hopeful world.
Swing Time shows two friends with different life trajectories, and is fueled with

doublings across the Atlantic, unfolding diasporic memories of everyone. It combines

the romanticized and the deromanticized, and shows a cosmopolitanism that is
dynamic, complex, and relates closely to reality. Reflected throughout her oeuvre, her
cosmopolitanism is driven by its engagement with life. It encloses an uncertain and

56
Several detailed facts prove that Smith’s imagines Gambia in Swing Time. First, Kankurang, as a world heritage,
exists in Gambia and Senegal. That unnamed South African country is not Senegal. Second, the book mentions that
in that country, one grandchild has a dozen of grandmothers — a custom in Gambia. Third, in the book’s
acknowledgement, Smith admits her indebtedness to Dr M arloes Janson’s Islam, Youth, and Modernity in the
Gambia: The Tablighi Jama‘at, as it provides “many of the cultural underpinnings of this story”.
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ever-developing consciousness as well as a strong wish for a better future, existing
along with supportive (justice, kindness, tolerance, respect and mutual understanding)
and counter-supportive (injustice, discrimination, racism, and sexism) forces.

Regardless of its multifaceted nature, Smith’s cosmopolitanism connects closely with

an alternative of comprehending the ever complicated individual behaviors,
interpersonal relationships, and multicultural realities in an open manner.
Smith deconstructs stereotypes, and makes diaspora universal. Her
characterization resonates with Tihanov’s understanding of cosmopolitanism, and

with Schiller ’s perception of diasporic cosmopolitanism. She portrays characters who,

in various extents, are haunted by what can be called a modern mindset of slavery,
pointing to the lasting effect of mutual enslavement, which confines the historical
perception of both the “white” and the “black”. It is in essence about power
negotiation. Part of it results in the establishment and reinforcement of stereotypes —

the fixed and biased standards Smith intends to challenge and deconstruct. By
inserting historical stories about people of African origins who have never been self
but only an imagined other, Smith in the book revisits blackness, and its capability of
justifying its own existence without European scaffolding. She breaks the established
stereotypes by indicating that being cosmopolitan does not necessarily connect with

“being mixed”, be it in race, culture, or religious beliefs. Approaching

cosmopolitanism in Swing Time means to reframe this concept beyond stereotyped
perceptions, taking into account contradictory components which also play their parts
in constructing the vitality of this term. The essence of such a perception finds its
literary equivalent in the novel, which includes unfairness, cruelty as well as power

and violence — things that seem unappealing and contrary to a cosmopolitan ideal,
but nonetheless it is through the interaction with the unpleasant that a refreshed
understanding of cosmopolitanism begins to form.
5.1 Revisiting Stereotypes
Swing Time unfolds its story of two brown girls — an unnamed narrator and her

friend Tracey — who are innately transcultural with British and African origins. It
also makes a close-up shot of Aimee who is a billionaire superstar and the employer
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of the narrator, Louie who is Tracey’s criminal and violent father, and the narrator ’s
mother who is Jamaican-rooted, a strong- minded social activist and local councilor. In
this book, Smith turns her love of music, and her ten-year experience of tap dancing

into a complex and humane interrogation of race, slavery, and art. She was once an
overweight girl according to the public’s judgment. However, her size, along with her
race and gender, is just part of her self- identity that she means to accept, rather than to
escape or rewrite. Jeffrey Kent Eugenides, the American novelist, has sensed in his
years- long friendship with Smith, her wholehearted acceptance of “who she was” and

“who she is”, and her struggles of maintaining such a state of mind without slipping
into stereotypes again:

She once showed me, with real delight, a photograph of an

unrecognizable, overweight, curly- headed teenager whom she

identified as herself. So along with her passions for singing and

dancing, there was that: the original ungainliness, the dreaded self
discarded, fled from, which remains in eternal pursuit. It’s that girl,
as well as the singer and performer, that make Zadie the writer she is
now. (Eugenides)

As a cosmopolitan novel, Swing Time does not belong to resistance literature,

which is the literature of independent movements attempting to deny certain style so
as to prove its own validity (Brennan, “Cosmopolitans and Celebrities” 4). Her
personal diversity does not end in a singular motivation of decolonization. Rather,

Smith accepts the “West” in her, but also loves to be a Jamaican’s daughter. Her
cosmopolitanism, which is specific, non-standard, and anti-absolute, echoes with a
critical awareness emerged from a recent discussion on a nonhegemonic
cosmopolitanism rooted in relationalities. 57 Scholars participating in the discussion
propose a modification of perceiving cosmopolitanism, signifying a “relational turn”

57
See the essays responding to the question “Whose cosmopolitanism” published in Whose Cosmopolitanism:
Critical Perspectives, Relationalities and Discontents (2015).
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in the comprehension of this concept that often appears to be too oblique to elucidate.
They seek to, 1) performatively theorize a cosmopolitanism for everyone in the
intricate web of connections, and 2) to question the normalized and established

conception of cosmopolitanism, such as its association with immigrants and émigrés.

Tihanov and Schiller, two of the scholars involved in this discussion, are of particular
importance in term of their extending and beyond stereotypical revisit of
cosmopolitanism in exile and diaspora.
Tihanov’s arguments help to construct the overall theoretical basis for analyzing

Smith’s cosmopolitanism in Swing Time. His conceptualization of exile

cosmopolitanism signifies a contemplation of reaching beyond any (subconscious)
constrains of established normalization, and epitomizes a multilayered and dynamic
reinterpretation of this concept. Approaching cosmopolitanism, for Tihanov, means
ceasing to accept uncritically the norm-oriented perceptions, and to deprive from

totalitarian and fixed imaginaries. He believes that the life experience of émigrés
should not be automatically related either to cosmopolitanism or to an inevitable
disengagement from one’s native languages or cultures. Being cosmopolitan is a
personal preference relating to specific environment background, which has to be
considered on a case-by-case basis instead of in an overgeneralized manner.

Accordingly, he questions the seemingly natural association between a Jewish émigré

and cosmopolitanism, pointing out that people who are forced to move to different
places around the world might not feel cosmopolitan at all, and living in an exotic
land can hinder creativity rather than stimulate it. This echoes Hannerz’s opinion of
the gap between being an exiled émigré and a real cosmopolitan, as “his[/her]

involvement with a culture away from his homeland is something that has been forced
on him” (Transnational Connections 105). Some émigrés, as Tihanov discovers,
instead of relocating their roots on a foreign land, may feel uprooted because of the
impossibility of using their own language to write or communicate. Being viewed as a
person of everywhere and nowhere means they are constantly under suspension.

Tihanov’s skeptical questioning also covers the issue of polyglots. The presumption
between an exiled writer and a forced shift from composing in native language to a
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“dominating” language such as English, French, and German (a typical example is
Vladimir Nabokov), may turn out to be self-deceitful. Tihanov exemplifies that
novelists may still write in their native language even when they live far away from

their native countries, and an exiled status does not prevent such writings from
becoming a national canon in their homeland. His method of approaching
cosmopolitanism signifies a necessity of rethinking any phenomenon that seems to be
naturally related to a status of being mixed, diversified, stateless, or multifarious. He
demonstrates his understanding of exile by realizing its “bond between language,

literature and national culture” (152) — to revisit cosmopolitanism means to be aware

of its inner tension and controversy nature in “diverse historical settings” (155). A
new cosmopolitanism, constructed, developed, and negotiated by Tihanov, is
“open-ended, reversible and thus uncertain”, and could not be properly approached
without taking into consideration the “political tensions and contradictions of the

societies in which it unfolds” (155). The opinions from other scholars in the
discussion also supplement and enrich Tihanvo’s theorizing of cosmopolitanism. It is
a concept that finds its roots in politics and philosophy, but should not be exhausted
by them. For Irving, cosmopolitanism is a form of “performative action” (Irving 73), a
“quotidian methodolocial activity” (72) and “subjectivity” (70) divorced from an

abstract or philosophical position. It is not a concept that is so metaphysical that

becomes an inaccessible area for representing reality in life. Cosmopolitanism, for
Jackie Stacey and Sivamohan Valluvan is not transparent nor neatly sealed but rather
draws a picture in which people can recognize themselves when they recall their daily
rhythm, which is also complex and full of ambivalence and occlusion. In other words,

cosmopolitanism, if being theorized properly, is able to help researchers obtain

insights into the complexity of human condition (71). Returning to Tihanov’s
arguments, a comprehension of cosmopolitanism should depart from its
European-exclusive version. It avoids the seemingly divergent yet literally convergent
metanarratives in comprehending this concept, and embraces race, class and gender so

as to sophisticatedly reevaluate “their fruitfulness for cosmopolitanism” (Tihanov 30).

Smith’s depiction of race and trauma, talents and destiny forms a differentiated
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constellation with Tihanvo’s cognizance of cosmopolitanism. Tihanov’s theoretical
conception of “whose reality” that cosmopolitanism should serve for is, using Fiona
McCulloch’s remark of this term, “ideally suited to fictional representation with all of

its dynamic multifarious creations, as well as the endless interpretations that respond
to literary works” (193). As McCulloch correctly argues, cosmopolitanism “cannot be
subject to discursive hegemony” (185). Smith accepts the existence of racial
stereotype but does not restrain herself within an established Black Atlantic context.
She understands the meaning of ethnic trauma, but refuses to confine her presentation

to a cliché, which either completely affirms or evocatively resists immigrants’

depression. Just as Tihanov does not deliberately emphasis the association between
Jews and exile, but chooses to use concrete examples to construct a cosmopolitanism
that is convincing, Smith does not overestimate the effect of globalization, but tries to
reveal her cosmopolitans in details, through every day activities. To analyze her

cosmopolitanism means divesting Berthold Schoene’s theoretical assumption that

might appear to be too hypothesized to grasp its core significance: “[I]n our
increasingly globalised world, the novel may already have begun to adapt and renew
itself by imagining the world instead of the nation” (12).
Schiller ’s resonance with Swing Time is discursive in terms of her elucidation of

diaspora and cosmopolitanism. Schiller challenges the problematic “unquestioningly

accepted assumptions” (108) between being mobile and being cosmopolitan, and
between travelling and a cosmopolitan outlook. Cosmopolitans, seemingly, should
point to those who have lived or travelled in various places around the world, being
stateless or having multiple nationalities, and/or have complex ethnic backgrounds.

Partly, this definition is applicable to people who have diasporic experiences, and also
in particular, to affluent individuals who enjoy global fame, and/or have lived in
different places around the world. “Openness to difference” is an oversimplified
answer to the questions such as “what is cosmopolitanism” and “who should be the
focus of cosmopolitanism” in the contemporary society. Smith in Swing Time also

ironically reveals that people who are powerful enough to produce a cosmopolitan
illusion for the outsiders (motivated by establishing a positive public image), in effect,
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tend to stay in their comfortable zone, voluntarily disconnecting themselves from a
cosmopolitan disposition characterized by respect and acceptance. Her
characterization provides a helpful supplement to Schiller ’s arguments, especially

considering the fact that Schiller does not elucidate further on how traveling may
disconnect with a cosmopolitan aura. Smith’s non-stereotypical characterization
echoes a propensity among scholars in their understanding of cosmopolitanism, as
they tend to, in Schiller ’s argument, “link the term with a modifier that implies its
opposite” (103). Some of the combinations such as rooted, vernacular, and ghetto

cosmopolitanisms have been discussed in the previous chapters. In Schiller’s analysis,

she introduces a diasporic cosmopolitanism by revisiting the definition and the scope
of diaspora, and questions the hegemonic assumption of regarding migrants as
strangers in an absolute sense. In her opinion, the phenomenon of diaspora indicates
multiple displacements and struggles, pointing to anyone (in Schiller ’s case, she

highlights the disenfranchised urban citizens in Western Europe and North America),
be they locals or immigrants, who lack a sense of belonging. Her diasporic
cosmopolitanism, therefore, facilities the possibilities to “engage sociabilities of the
displaced urban poor” (Schiller 105). Such an expansion is important as it signifies a
deeper engagement with reality, and a tendency of moving from discussing a

completely philosophical cosmopolitanism to a less absolute, less abstract, more

meaningful, and more convincing cosmopolitanism.
Deromanticizing cosmopolitanism calls for a revisit of the term’s connection
with cruelty, violence, and secrets, and a rethinking of the relationship between these
bleak sides of reality and cosmopolitanism. Through conceiving Smith’s

cosmopolitanism, it inspires the cognition of minimizing the effects of uncontrollable

elements, especially genes, parents, and birthplaces, and instead focusing on “the
existential fact of their belonging to the human race and their capacity to act with and
alongside others” (Irving 66). Or as Smith writes, “it was important to treat oneself as
a kind of stranger, to remain unattached and unprejudiced in your own case” (Swing

Time 121). The perception of cosmopolitanism needs freedom — the freedom which
in Zadie Smith’s eyes does not pin Shakespeare down to a single identity (Smith,
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Changing My Mind 143), and the freedom which in Kristeva’s world of strangers
creates opportunities to admit and accept the strangeness in selves. Bildungsroman, or
coming of age, which, according to Mączyńska marks a group of realistic novels

(“The Aesthetics of Realism” 138), is also applicable to feature cosmopolitanism. A

commonality between Smith’s culturally and morally engaged fictional depiction and
Tihanov’s and Schiller’s argumentations is that they tend to disassociate
cosmopolitanism with an ideally deracinated “planetary humanism” promoted by
Gilroy in Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line (2000).

Undeniably, Gilroy’s proposal of regarding race renunciation as an everyday politics

is a welcoming shift and breakthrough, but his argument nevertheless still largely
points to a cosmopolitanism as an ideal and utopia. Goldberg’s insights of a
pesdo-postracial society prove that racial stereotypes are still deeply rooted in reality
in the disguise of a ghost- like afterlife. 58 Therefore, a reconceptualization of “our

relationship to ourselves, our species, our nature, and the idea of life” (Gilroy, Against
Race 20) sounds appealing but what should be considered alongside any universal
concern, as Appiah emphasizes in The Ethics of Identity, is individuality and
particularity. This is because, to quote Schiller, cosmopolitanism is a continuum of
“situated mutualities that arise within specific localities and points of time” (116).

Both Tihanov and Schiller along with other scholars engaged in the discussion reject a
static cosmopolitanism. The impetus of cosmopolitanism lies in its imperfectness, and
that is why many of the responses discussed above which focus on the deromanticized
and multifaceted features of cosmopolitanism seem to be more reasonable and cogent.
This echoes Tihanov’s reflection on deromanticizing and deliberalizing exile (142) as

it is not until people begin to be aware of the existence of forced cosmopolitanism and
start to understand that cosmopolitanism can be illusive and counterbalancing that
they are able to approach this complex phenomenon more objectively without
generalizing its subjectivity with totalitarianism. This resistance to norm and

58
Goldberg points out that “Whites, stereotypically, have taken themselves throughout modernity to be
hard-working, blacks to be criminally lazy, M uslims to be violent, Asians to be inscrutable. This culturalization is,
in short, a stepping-stone to racialities’“post-al” reach, their ghostly afterlife. Ethno-raciality became the new
raciality in the name of what from 1970s to the end of the millennium.” (23)
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immobility is generally a new awareness for scholars and authors to respond to a
multifaceted social community formed by residents of multicultural and multiethnic
background, experience, and awareness. Clare Bradford et al reconstruct the

apprehension of utopia with a transformative feature, which challenges hegemonic

structures of established “political power and totalising ideologies” (16), and
acknowledge the existence of both utopian and dystopian forms and elements as well
as the tensions between them (3-6). The co-existing utopian and dystopian themes,
with their extended significance and scales, make it possible for a down-to-earth

interaction between literary imagination and social reality. Similarly, an awareness of

the romanticized and deromanticized features of cosmopolitanism brings a viable
apprehension of this term, representing its aliveness which mediates and negotiates
stereotypes, and an endeavor which cannot be validated without explicit and
unambiguous depiction of individualities. In terms of word choice, it might be more

appropriate to use “community” than “world” in the discussion, because what is

universal for individuals portrayed in Smith’s story is not their cosmopolitical
influences, but their connections, their reflections between self and a stranger in self,
and between self and other. It is by looking closely that one can see a larger picture,
and similarly, it is important to be rooted in concreteness and specificity before an

insight into a larger picture of cosmopolitanism can be gained.

In Smith’s novel, romanticization and deromanticization which simultaneously
affirm and transcend stereotypes appear to coexist harmoniously. Life of the diasporic
and the displaced is associated with deromanticization. People of traumatic memories
may find themselves living as stereotypes; and as a moral realist, Smith challenges

these taken for granted expectations. In Swing Time, when the narrator’s mother is
giving passionate lectures on the pride of African immigrants being “beautiful,
intelligent, capable, kings and queens, in possession of a history, in possession of a
culture, in possession of ourselves” (240), Tracey’s Jamaican-British father Louie
complains that “we feel like we’re nothing, we feel like we’re at the bottom of the

pyramid” (185). Likewise, the book reveals people’s suffering in New York, both
through Granger, Aimee’s huge and black bodyguard, and an American-Gambian
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woman who mentions her difficult life in Texas because of the discrimination of free
spirit. Granger dreams of being raised in Gambia by fifteen mothers, and the woman
from the U.S. falls in love with a local Gambian boy half her age and settles there

forever. Jeni LeGon, who is an idol of Tracey and the narrator, dances like a dream
with other celebrated “white” dancers including Frederick Astaire and Eddie Cantor.
However, behind such a romanticized imagination, LeGon, in reality, is only treated
as a shadow. In Astaire’s mind, “she not only played a maid, she was in actuality little
different from the help” (428). Smith deliberately breaks romanticized imagination

with traumatic memories. With her ethically valuable “negative capability”, she
portrays, as a starting point, the non-white people’s unpleasant and humiliating
experiences. Following her style of uncertainties, Smith also includes the trauma of
every one, and envisions an unbiased and justified society transcending the
stereotypes established by the historical trauma of slavery.

5.2 Post-slavery Trauma

Smith’s negotiation of race, gender, and culture does not end in confirming
stereotypical traumas, but more importantly, in her expectation and adventure of
reaching beyond the slavery-history-haunted blackness. Smith subverts racism by
exploring, back to the African continent, the original form of blackness, presents

Gambians’ talents in dancing, and compares their large, close-knit family with African
Americans’ traumatic ghetto life. Her cosmopolitanism developed in Swing Time is
fueled by a natural, engaging, and almost appealing reconsideration of any
stereotypical conception, be it racial, ethical, or cosmopolitan. It includes a contrast
between ostensible (maybe affluent and influential) world travelers and true

cosmopolitans, the bleakness in the life of New Yorkers, and the contentment enjoyed
by Gambians, not to mention the mess of the imagined “developed” society and the
encouraging simplicity of a “less-developed” community. This continuing literary
contemplation, compared to her other novels, is culturally and politically broader,
more muddled and complex. It is both realistic and promising, admitting the life’s

unpleasantness and explicating a hope for a non-stereotypical future. Smith is not an

extreme realist but a moral depicter, nor a zealous cosmopolitan but a moderate
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high- hoper for an unprejudiced, impartial, and open-minded disposition towards
differences. This means, particularly in her case, revisiting the multilayered
relationship between skin color, talents, and inferior personality.

Dancing and the talent as a dancer are two elements that help to connect almost
all the main characters, bringing about a reflection on race, power, and historical
trauma of “modern slavery”. The title of this novel is also named after an old dancing
movie starred by Astaire. In one scene, the “white” dancer Astaire appears on the
stage with a blackface, indicating a superficial connection to yet a racially prejudiced

disconnection with Bill Robinson — the Harlem Renaissance double that Astaire
imitates on stage, but probably never admires or respects personally. LeGon,
America’s first solo tap dancer, and the idol of the novel’s unnamed narrator and
Tracy (the narrator’s closet childhood friend), endures the backstage racial trauma —
a common experience for “black” dancers in Astaire’s time, who are invisible, and are

treated as a shadow rather than a human, no matter how talented they might be. This
psychological trauma caused by race or simply by the overgeneralized preconception
of any “non-white” individuals, continues to affect the life of individuals in the
twenty-first century. Smith, in this regard, does not deliberately try to avoid or
romanticize this continuity. Tracy and the narrator, as two brown girls, subconsciously

become aware of each other at the dancing class because of their similar skin color,
but their commonalities are more profound despite their completely different life
paths. Both girls have romantic imaginations of dancing, assuming the natural
coincidence between black dancers’ kinetic joy on stage and their cheerfulness in real
life. However, when time moves on from their late teenage years into their early

thirties, they inevitably have been treated “as a kind of shadow” (4).
Smith rediscovers a slavery imagination in Swing Time, which is not only
depicted, as Caryl Phillips does, as a historical memory, but a deep-rooted mentality
that continues to influence people’s thoughts and behavior in the twentieth- first
century. Hyacinth M. Simpson points out that in diasporic Caribbean literary depiction,

“a politics of emancipation” is less about historical event, but more about its everyday
ethnical consciousness — “the exchanges and negotiations” that affect people
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personally (197). Disenfranchisement is framed, repeated, and validated based on
preconceptions. As Du Bois argues, “[these people’s] color was so long an index of
slavery, their poverty the result of slavery, inevitably poverty in any form shard the cast

feeling against slaves” (100). Similarly, trauma and diaspora, which are inseparable
elements of modern slavery, are repeatedly reinforced through generations, especially
in “white-dominated” societies. The term “modern slavery” indicates that discussing
this seemingly historical phenomenon in the twenty-first century not simply involves
a “return” or “turning back” to the past. Slavery as a subject, although arises from the

past, still causes “racial anxieties of twentieth- and twenty- first-century Britain”
(Ward 1). As Abigail Ward continues her argument by quoting D’Aguitar: “Slavery
may be buried, but it’s not dead, its offspring, Racism, still breeds” (1). Granger,
Aimee’s safeguard, and thousands of Grangers living in the U.S. and Britain, is hired
for their height and color, “for the threat considered implicit in their combination”

(Swing Time 143, emphasis added). Walvin illuminatingly points out the mixed and
contradictory deformation of Africanness in the post-Emancipation American society,
where the identity of being African Americans has been modified and thus deformed.
“They needed African strength, but they sought to limit and suppress other features of
African life which had crossed the Atlantic alongside that muscle power” (74-75).

Such a reinforced deformation makes the black people (the descendents of slaves) in
the Black Atlantic twice traumatized, as they continue to live in stereotypical
preconceptions that history has forced on them.
Smith, by making the implicit contrast explicit, gains an ironic strength and
humanness reflecting on people’s stereotyped attitudes toward blackness. In the

narrator ’s short encounter with a huge black door attendant in London, she finds out
that there is “a gentle soul on good terms with the universe, ill-suited to his role”
(143). For those immigrants with ancestors coming from India, Caribbean islands, and
African continent, their identity construction is often determined by a subtle yet
almighty enslaved trauma. 59 As a moral realist, Smith inserts this consciousness in

59
Slavery is a conception and a phenomenon representing one of the most unequal and inhumane activities in
human history. It is worth mentioning that some Chinese people (with yellow complexion) living in today’s U.S.
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the daily lives of her characters, and sharply presents its lasting influence — centuries
of slavery memories continue to haunt “black” people in an imaginary
“white-dominated” society. The overgeneralizing cognition of referring any people

who have African, Asian, and Caribbean origins as “black” is still overwhelmingly
common in European and American societies. Those British Asians, African
Americans, or African Europeans are in effect highly diversified and unique, with a
rich cultural heritage behind them. It is far more heterogeneous compared to the rather
unilateral assumption of marking “black people” with poverty and diaspora. So is the

problematic term black British literature which, as Ward realizes, is “inevitably

contentious” (11) because of “its potential for the homogeneous grouping of
ethnically diverse texts” (9). This flat black image is the production of both slavery
and colonialism, towards which Smith maintains an skeptical attitude. In the book,
she challenges the established “legitimate” images of immigrants or their “white”

counterparts as well as any typical representation. Fernando, Aimee’s project manager

in Gambia, resists a generalized overview of what is Africa. He draws an analogy
between African countries and its Europe counterparts, questioning, “If … you
wanted to know what France was like, would it help if I described Germany?” (194)
Through this comparison, it reveals the singleness of black image in an European or

American context, where Africa’s genuine diversity and glamour shown by

individuals and specific African countries are minimized and erased.
Smith’s refusal of typicality shares some similarities with the “plural” and
“particular” features of cosmopolitanism in Robbins’s argument (“Introduction” 2).
For Robbins, cosmopolitanism indicates a “habit of thought and feeling” that

unavoidably shapes and is shaped by its contextualized environment. Smith’s writing

is transcultural and transethnic, but this is not the most convincing reason why her
novel can be read as cosmopolitan. Rather, Smith’s cosmopolitanism is initiatively
habitual because she pays attention to cultural connections without being confined or
exhausted by it. Robbins’s comment on cosmopolitanism, though seemingly impartial

[note 59 continued]and Caribbean Islands are also descendants of slaves. Smith in Swing Time, obviously, only
concerns about people with black complexion.
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and dialectic, still uses Europe as the criteria for his binary categorization: “Like
nations, [cosmopolitanisms] … are both European and non-European” (2). The
Euro-American centric standardization provides the ground for a stereotyped

blackness, which finds its initial roots in slavery. Smith in Swing Time tries to recover
an original blackness which is humane, dynamic, and most importantly, distances
itself from mental slavery.
Skin color and dancing talents are two prominent elements that Smith uses to
highlight the physical connection and mental distinction between people across the

Atlantic when she moves the story’s narration between Gambia, New York, and
London. Opposite to a solidified identity reinforced by a modern, enslaved mindset
is a multifaceted self with valued uniqueness. Smith, through her characterization,
presents various self- identity developing processes, particularly through a reflection
on the seemingly self-creation yet truly self- negation tragedy of African and

Caribbean immigrants. The “white” becomes the target of total denouncement for a
social activist like the narrator ’s mother. Her whole struggle reveals resentment to
both self and other, as she profoundly tries to escape the blackness that evokes her
traumatic memory. This is a mental enslavement which in the discursive context of
analyzing Smith’s novel is inseparable from a stereotyped, universally applicable

trauma. Immigrants in England, especially those who respond to the British

government’s labor plea in the 1950s, and initially imagine this remote nation as a
welcoming Mother, are violently rejected by a public portrayal of black people as
“violent, unruly and unwanted visitors to a racially homogeneous Britain” (Lamming
5). The smash of immigrants’ tragic innocence towards a utopian America or Britain

results in a fixed consciousness of inferiority. Out of their long endurance of historical

prejudice emerges adverse changes, which are often self-contradictory in nature, for
example, a disability to leverage uniqueness, an eagerness of assimilation, and a
misleading advocacy of blind confidence. In Swing Time, the narrator’s mother, who
experiences inferiority as a Jamaican immigrant from a poor family wants to escape

all the trauma that life has forced on her. What she only manages to achieve,
regardless of her seemingly pan-African and anti- imperial speeches and activities, is
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to become an enslaved person in reverse, who denies everything of her origin. All the
efforts that she puts into self-education and into winning the election as a local
councilor and then a backbench Member of Parliament, and all the speeches that she

makes about the pride of Africa origin (“we are beautiful, intelligent, capable, kings
and queens, in possession of a history, in possession of a culture, in possession of
ourselves” (240)) go against her actual values and behaviors in life. She tries to shape
the narrator by asking her to play “their game by their rules”, so as not to “end up a
shade of yourself” (188). She is a feminist in the public’s eyes, but always relies on

men to move forward; as a promoter of labor, she regards household duties as

“domestic oppression” (55) and does not take any formal jobs. In public, she reiterates
Africanness and condemns “dictatorships in West Africa”. In private, however, she
expresses her pride and her power of self-transformation, and emphasizes that “we
can’t be nostalgic” and “we’ve no home in the past” (310). In other words, she is

exteriorly a heritage propagandist, but practically a self- identity uprooter, enslaving

herself in a way that is described by Yanick Lahens in his comments on actual slavery:
“slaves must lose the memory of their family, lineage and origins. Deprived of their
humanity, they are then able to become totally submissive” (159). The narrator ’s
mother is eager to become an accomplished woman — an eagerness that makes the

narrator feel that her ostensibly bright public image is covered by “a huge shadow”
(240).
Smith’s depiction of shadowness and skin color shares a commonality with that
of Geroge Lamming, the Caribbean-British writer, despite the fact that the former is
less pan-African and does not particularly seek for a “superiority of the black mass”

(Lamming 25). The trauma of complexion that Smith’s reveals reverberates in

Lamming’s 1983 essay, which combines his personal and professional experiences as
an immigrant and a writer:

Black divided among lines of complexion, and all were kept

severely at a social distance from the white world. The island has
never really overcome this barrier; and a concordat of silence
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 descends on any crisis that appears to have its origins in race and
colour. (Lamming 32)

A mental status of enslavement influences everyone — both the traumatic

African-origin immigrants and the imaginary “white masters”. Lamming explicates
such mutual imprisonment: “The colonial experience is not just the experience of the
coloniser himself … [T]he coloniser is imprisoned in that experience no less than the
colonised” (156). This historical experience of colonialism and slavery is not temporal,

but long-lasting. In Kathleen M. Balutansky and Marie-Agnès Sourieau’s reflection,

the trauma caused by this piece of history still impacts Caribbean peoples:
“[Colonialism’s] resulting injury is still felt deep in the region’s psyche” — “a
continuing psychic experience that has to be dealt with long after the actual colonial
situation formally ‘ends’” (5-6). Lamming depicts an ironically strong humanness in

his writing, believing that men and women from down below are not simply poor but
are “black” — a mark imprinted by the “White Power”. The hypocritical bubble of
decolonization, for Lamming, is actually “a new colonial orchestration” (28). “The
totalitarian demands of White supremacy”, a single instruction determined by the
degree of skin complexion in plantations and colonies alike, silences the vibrant

cultural articulations of non-white individuals. The tragedy is that when African and
Caribbean people were “catapulted out of their peaceful, indigenously earthy lives”
(Lamming 33), they may lose themselves in the turbulent waves of self-creations, or
like Tracey, wasting their innate talents and eventually becoming a stereotyped black
girl.

Swing Time not only collects various racial struggles, but provides a constellation
of African Britons and African Americans whose genius is appreciated, and whose
endeavor to preserve their own uniqueness is acknowledged. Smith spares no effects
in praising Tracey as a talented dancer, who excels in tap and is good at almost every
type of dancing. In the teenage narrator’s eyes, Tracey has the whole world, whose

dancing skill is parallel to that of the Nicholas Brothers in Harlem Renaissance, to the
first tap soloist LeGon, and to marvelous dancing singer Michael Jackson. Once
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getting drunk and singing in a bar, the narrator, being sensational, completely absorbs
herself in the beats and notes. The feeling of having total control of her life, of being
able to speed up and slow down her music at her own will, makes the narrator think of

Nina Simone, the mid-twentieth century American singer. Simone rejects the word
“jazz” but prefers the reference “black classical music”, regarding the former as a
“white word for black people” (138). Augusta Savage, the sculptor from Harlem, who
the narrator ’s mother prizes and Aimee appreciates, endures severe unequal treatment
because of her complexion. Her eventual career success as the first African-American

artist in the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, not only wins her
fame, but the psychological strength of embracing her unique blackness. Both Nina
and Augusta, who Smith indirectly praises and admires through the words and
comments of her characters, strive for and eventually obtain a unattached and
unprejudiced recognition of their expertise. Smith’s deconstruction of blackness might

be better elucidated with the following articulation from Jessie Fauset, who was
praised at the “midwife” of many artists and writers during Harlem Renaissance:

Why should it take any courage to acknowledge you are what you
are? That girl probably doesn’t mind being colored, because, oh,

because—how can I make you see? Being colored is being her

natural self and she can’t imagine being any other way. Any more
than I can imagine being a boy, or a giant, or a Scandinavian or what
have you!” (Fauset 78, emphasis added)

On the other hand, Smith reveals a tension between aspiring examples and actual
traumas. Despite the narrator’s passionate association between Tracey and her artistic
doubles transcending time and space, under that girl’s proud camouflage, she would
only believe in the traumatic and inferior indication of being a brown girl. A forced
African diaspora carrying the memory of an enslaved and colonized blackness shapes

the girl’s understanding of “authentic” identity, and leaves her in an endless circle of
self-denial and thus self-enslavement. Even from childhood, she already disconnects
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her natural skin color with beauty, and consciously regards being white, blonde-haired
with blue eyes as the only ideal combination. Given that turning white will
nonetheless be a fruitless vision, she then focuses on her second choice, comparing

her complexion with the narrator’s. Being “a little paler” (179) than the narrator
makes Tracey feel the privilege that she desires dearly, especially under the condition
that in her mind, she lives in a white dominated society. The color of skin is as well
stratified, but nevertheless, all the indications and classifications ultimately find their
roots in slavery. “Over the generations”, as Roderick Hicks observes, “the idea that

light is the preferred skin complexion became engrained in the American psyche …
Whites believed it. Light-skinned blacks believed it. And dark-skinned blacks
believed it” (102). The connection between lighter skin and better treatment is almost
sealed in slave’s memories, which consequently, influences the conception of the
people across the Atlantic. The colonial otherness, as Bhabha argues, is a “white

man’s artifice inscribed on the black man’s body” (The Location of Culture 45). Such
features discovered by the cultural theorists find their contemporary incarnation on
Tracey, a self-controversial girl who longs for an imagined, yet deformed
“betterment”. She seeks to prevail over others, but she is frustrated and entangled in a
modern mindset of enslavement. This unresolved dilemma makes her a hostile guest

after discovering that she and the narrator are the only two “black” girls at the “white”
classmate Lily’s birthday party, ignoring the fact that this innocent classmate prefers
to be color blind and to see only what is in people’s heart. The narrator’s admiration
for Tracey’s talents does not help the girl to excel in her career as a professional
dancer. Tracey as a victim of modern slavery is not blessed by her talents, but

becomes a stereotyped deteriorating black girl who, as she becomes increasingly

hysterical, is blind by her hatred of blackness.
A feeling of shadowiness as a diasporic descendent prevails the Black Atlantic,
and it is a psychological barrier erected by the established indication of skin color in
the “white” dominated societies. It is a stereotype created by a joint force of social

discrimination and self-prejudices. “ … Africans [so do their contemporary

descendants] were most easily distinguished, categorized and remembered by their
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colour … [They] were employed as servants, but their status was, on the whole,
enslaved.” (Walvin 105) Enslavement, as Smith shows, is not only forced, but also
subconsciously reinforced in both the minds of the white and the non-white, pointing

to a continuing personally voluntary desire of meeting presumed authentic standards.

Gifted as Tracy, who inherits her dancing talents from her father, the girl suffers from
problems of drug, alcohol, and sexual violence, drops out of stage school, and
eventually gives birth to three fatherless children. Largely, she reaffirms an outsider ’s
assumption that the identity of being “black” associates with deterioration, indicating

being criminal, offensive, and violent. Tracey, to a certain extent, is trapped in her
prejudiced mind in which she envies, hates, and hysterically condemns the power,
privileges, and luck enjoyed by her imaginary “white” people. What is worth noting is
that, from a different perspective, Tracey’s pathetic life is partly caused by the
mistreatment that she endures — a stereotypical prejudice that leaves her no chance to

change or improve. Many non-white immigrants and their descendants, like Tracey,
have no choice but to be restrained by a framed imagination of “black other” and of
what blackness means against a “white-centric” ideology. Compared to Tracy, the
narrator seems more fortunate. She receives university education, and travels
frequently between New York, London, and Africa as an assistance of Aimee — a

dancer, singing superstar, and a billionaire. However, the narrator is haunted by

slavery memories, and works as a “modern slave” for Aimee, who never treats her as
a person or friend, but only an assistant. Slavery delimits basic rights, from liberty,
property, to political expression (Goldberg 17). Similarly, the narrator, who once
“lived on Aimee, ate with Aimee, went out with Aimee” immediately found herself

homeless after her employer, a modern “master”, fired her (431). In various extent
and forms, both girls struggle with, and fight against their identity of not being treated
as a human, a distinguished self, but a stereotypical shadow.
The overwhelming shadowiness of trauma, controversially, will not automatically
be reduced even after one achieves publicly acknowledged fame. The book shows a

scene when the narrator and her mother, full of curiosity, expect Michael Jackson to
provide some explanations for his “blenched” skin. But Jackson replies instead that
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“I’m a slave to the rhythm” (237), desperately wanting to change the topic. Becoming
“paler”, therefore, is simply a physical change of which its superficiality cannot help
to deal with an enslaved mindset. When the narrator looks at the picture of an African

princess who is Queen Victoria’s goddaughter, she feels a sense of stillness when
people shrink themselves in a westernized envelope sealed by slavery and
colonization. The princess’s name was Aina, meaning of “difficult birth”, instead of
Sarah which appears on official publications and is given by the Queen. In her
high- necked Victorian corsetry, Aina looks “closed” and “perfectly still” (293). Back

to Aina’s time, when she was given as a “gift” to the Queen, such a change might be
forced. However, the effects of using “white” scaffolding to support an African
identity are long- lasting. The choice to be “whitenized” gradually turns from an
involuntary survival need to a voluntary choice, as Tracy, after beginning to dance
professionally, changes he name to Tracee Le Roy. “Pretending” might be the suitable

word to summarize all the straws that Tracey holds tightly. She believes that by
pretending to be someone else will help her to survive in a “white privileged” society.
That is a mythical, extreme, and static whiteness, within which locates the
consolidated racism that leads to double enslavement of both modern “masters” and
modern “slaves”. It means that it is not possible only to blame Tracey as the sole

causer for her misery and deterioration. By the end of the story, the narrator’s dying
mother finally realizes the necessity of ignoring the contingency and focusing on the
parts over which one has control. Her own daughter was “born lucky” with a loving
father, but Tracey, who only has a violent and criminal father, should be protected
properly before she becomes a confirmation of her “unavoidable fates”: “In a few

years Tracey would be pregnant, according to my mother, and so would drop out of
school, and the ‘cycle of poverty’ would complete itself, ending, most probably, in
prison”. (167) Tracey, with her unique blackness, might have a different life path
provided that people around her could be more helpful and understanding instead of
living in their stereotyped minds, waiting in certainty for Tracey’s life to fall apart.

Apart from skin complexion, dancing is another outstanding element that helps
Smith to portray the differences between being appreciated fully as a dancer and as a
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dancer stamped by the narrowly defined blackness. Swing Time, like its title indicates,
is founded and flourished by the image of outstanding dancers. Smith switches
perspectives back and forth between Gambia and England to highlight how enslaved

mentality affects people’s appreciation of African dancing performance. She situates

the narrator in a third space, as a girl who partly lives in the shadow of trauma, but
who instinctively feels the urge to break the “white-determined” scaffolding for the
black people living in Europe and America. This is mainly achieved through the
depiction of the narrator’s experience in Africa, her compassion for Tracey, and her

contemplation of what really supports blackness as an identity signifier of a full

human being rather than a prepossessed imprint. Although Lindsay Gail Gibson
believes that the narrator and her mother are widely aware of their diasporic history,
which is a significant part of their heritage, Smith seems to have a far-reaching
ambition of digging out the invisible connection transcending the predetermined

memories. In other words, the classical combination of race, diaspora, and identity
gains new impetus in Smith’s fiction, showing their multilayered dynamics. Most
importantly, Smith uses dancing to reflect an Africanness that contrasts with the
western framed blackness. Talents, which are innate, help the African immigrants to
move their bodies in an impressively innovative way, as “their responses to the

rhythms of the music seemed obviously natural to them” (King-Dorset 17). Zora
Neale Hurston, of whom Smith praises her unprejudiced blackness and ultimate
humanness, portrays in her short story Drenched in Light (1924) an African-origin girl
Isis, who is not only talented but appreciated, as what she really is. For Hurston,
talents makes Isis drenched in the light, gleaming with the sunshine that can warm an

outsider ’s soul. For Smith, her appreciation of Africa is equally profound. Dancing
talents find their incarnated doublings between Tracey and LeGon, as well as between
Tracey and “many Traceys” (225) in Gambia. When exploring across time and media,
Tracey’s “heart-shaped face, the adorable puffy cheeks, the compact body” and “the
long limbs” (192) finds their doubles in LeGon, who dances in the film Ali Baba Goes

to Town. The difference is, when looking into LeGon’s eyes, there is “no hint of
Tracey’s brand of cruelty” (192) — the cruelty which the narrator has “always
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detected in her [Tracey’s] face” (358). Tracey’s cruelty is intensified and fortified by
violence, and whenever she struggles, she restricts herself further in the stereotypes
and responds even more hysterically. The mental enslavement that Tracey

subconsciously authorizes and constantly endures creates a barrier for her to transcend
her limited blackness. Following Smith’s narration across the Atlantic, there are many
girls on the island who belong to “Tracey’s tribe” and who are also talented quick
learners. The difference is that for those girls, compared to Tracey, although they are
poorer and have darker skin, they are free from a perceptual blackness-whiteness

space created by relativity. The school girls and LeGon are like Tracey’s African
doubles as they share the commonalities of talent and beauty that are unique and not
replicable. Unfortunately, the cosmopolitan ties and imaginations end up as an illusion
when Tracey, who stops dancing, becomes “an anxious, heavy-set, middle-aged”
mother (400), and who goes to another extreme by behaving like a racist in reverse,

resenting the white, the visible, and the capable. LeGon, who has played almost every
maid that one can possibly imagine, continues her journey of becoming a tap soloist,
who has gone through racial trauma but not deformed by it. That echoes with the
attribute of a vernacular cosmopolitan defined by Bhabha: “ … in the midst of loss,
poverty and defeat, the chances for creativity, humour and the virtues of a common

life enshrined in the everyday experience of social marginality” (“The Vernacular

Cosmopolitan” 141).
The narrator has the instinct of transcending trauma and discovering the
fascination of artistic beauty — both traditional and innovative. A conflict between a
vernacular-beauty seeker and a firm believer of post-slavery syndrome reaches its

peak, when the narrator and her ex-boyfriend Rakim find themselves in an
irreconcilable situation, disagreeing with each other. The origin of tap dancing, which
for the narrator is “beautiful” because it was initiated together by slaves and their
masters — a hybrid form that makes the narrator feel proud of her ancestors’ resilient
innovation even under extreme conditions. However, Rakim, a radical young man

with an absolute sense of Pan-Africanism — who prefers the ghettoized, the traumatic,
and the remote to the actual and the specific — is furious about the narrator ’s
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“aesthetic” discovery. His bitter reply “Oh massa [master], I’s [I am] so happy on this
here slave ship I be [am] dancing for joy” (290) reveals his unwillingness of
associating slavery with anything that transcends trauma. His radicalism is rooted a

one-dimensional interpretation of blackness, which leads to hatred, contempt, and

cynicism. He superficially protests against the injustice that the enslaved people
endure, but his blackness cannot exist for its own sake, because its greatness and
uniqueness are supported by the acknowledgement of “whiteness”. Ex-slave
immigrants, as Walvin points out, are mistreated and mocked when they desperately

sought respectability. The “white” people need their muscle power but seek to “limit
and suppress other features of African life” (75). For Smith, such enslavement as a
mental problem still exists. In reflection, the narrator reveals the enslaved mindsets
that her immigrants fellow endure, and makes probably the most significant
deconstructive declaration of mental enslavement:

Why did he think it so important for me to know that Beethoven

dedicated a sonata to a mulatto violinist, or that Shakespeare’s dark
lady really was dark, or that Queen Victoria had deigned to raise a
child of Africa, “bright as any white girl?” I did not want to rely on

each European fact having its African shadow, as if without the

scaffolding of the European fact everything African might turn to
dust in my hands. It gave me no pleasure to see that sweet- faced girl
dressed like one of Victoria’s own children, frozen in a formal
photograph, with a new kind of cord round her neck. I always

wanted life – movement. (294, emphasis added)

Smith’s deracialization is different from an empty and abstract envisioning of

racial utopia. Rather, it is by showing the entirely different image of residents in
Africa where blackness is natural that Smith revisits and then gives a differentiated

response to the question of deracialization. On stage, Tracey the professional dancer

enjoys the stillness of being in 1893 Chicago, with “broom in the air, arm outstretched,
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kinetic joy” (359). That is the moment when Tracey can move her feet gleefully — a
staged self which is “uncluttered and straightforward” (265), dissimilar to her
traumatic, and mentally enslaved self in reality. A deracialized Soho region of London,

as Tracey’s ex-lover nostalgically recalls, is actualized “in art [and] in love”, where
“there was no black, there was no white” (345). “[S]winging London, bohemian
London, literary London, theatrical London, that this was our country, too … if
London began and ended on Dean Street, all would be … happiness” (345, emphasis
added). This is the cosmopolitan glory that is realized in arts, especially on London’s

theatre stages. That is why the narrator, gazing at the Tracey on stage, hopes that she
could “pause her there in that position [kinetic joy] for ever” (359). In order to remove
the dust cover of a westernized African image, Smith transfers her narrative space
from Europe and U.S. to Africa. Through presenting the most original form of
blackness, she retrieves its aliveness and preserves its dynamics. It is worth

mentioning that the chasm between visionary and reality still disturbs the narrator.
Her diasporic journey of roots-seeking is mostly tranquil, because an abstract,
imaginary connection only ends up in utter triviality. Her shared origin with the
Africans is subconsciously overtaken by her comparisons between herself and the
locals in terms of appearances, as she cannot help but admit that levels of blackness

may vary, and people in Africa are much “darker”. Such a comparison no longer
dominates when the narrator encounters with a crowd, immersed in frenzy joy
gathered around the human cultural symbol Kankurang, a selected boy for Manding
initiatory rite. As “the greatest dancer” (163) the narrator has ever seen, he represents
an actualization of a deracialized dancer. His appearance excites the crowd, with

everyone “laughing, screaming, running” (165), making it possible for a joy that the
narrator has been looking for all her life. The blackness carried by the novel’s narrator
is different from the blackness represented in the African people who still live on the
continent. Blackness, at least in the case of Kankurang, is only an innate and
contingent color; and dancing for Africans is as natural as walking. There is no

discriminative, violent, and traumatic indication behind the dancing performance, all
of which provides the most instinctive and least fabricated impetus for the formation
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of Smith’s cosmopolitan novel.
5.3 Cosmopolitan Prospects
Cosmopolitanism of efficacy is about dealing with the drops while seeing the

ocean, instead of concentrating on the panoramic images without providing insight

into specific facts. Swing Time is a transpatial novel, but not all the characters who
travel between continents are cosmopolitans. In other words, the broad spatial
expansion is not the most important precondition for Smith to establish her
cosmopolitanism. Those who travel widely (an act that directly or indirectly relates to

exposures to diversified environments) but refuse to be involved in local cultures, or

those who even though born with a biracial or multiracial linage, refuse to recognize
or accept self but constantly seek to become an imaginary other, are not
cosmopolitans. Therefore, the aura of cosmopolitans as well as of cosmopolitanism,
although associating with transcultural activities, is largely determined not by

superficial involvements, but by actual engagements with the “other” and the
“difference”. It is appropriate, at least in the context of this dissertation, to define
cosmopolitans as those who, while drawing a cross-cultural trajectory, begin to
establish an intimate relationship with local cultures. The once exotic experience
transforms them by influencing their world values and by directing them to be clearer

about how to treat others and themselves without going to extremes, or becoming
hysteretic or depressed. Cosmopolitans probably should refer to those who learn to
appreciate, be moderate and understanding, and who consciously try to make people
around them feel comfortable rather than uneasy. Fernando, the Brazilian operator for
Aimee’s school project, is well educated, having a Ph.D. degree, and a professional

experience. The difference between him and many other intellectuals, who prefer to
stay in their comfort zone, is that Fernando dedicates to discovering local roots in
order to better discover and maintain its lasting values.

My job is to make sure something of use is left here, on the ground,

whatever happens, whenever she leaves … I couldn’t tell any more

if we were talking of the whole world, of the continent in general, of
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 the village in particular, or simply of Aimee, who, for all our good
intentions, all our proverbs, neither of us seemed able to think of
very clearly. (253-54).

As the narrator observes, he is always “listening, learning, asking for more

detail” (249). While staying in Gambia, he determines to use Aimee’s money to set up
something that is sustainable and has a lasting influence and long-term function,
instead of a temporary, fanciful project that is only initiated to satisfy Aimee’s caprice.

A true cosmopolitan does not only visit different places as a passer-by without being
shaped, to various extents, by local cultures. Fernando is probably the most dedicated
and praiseworthy cosmopolitan in Swing Time, who is “locked in intense discussion
with men and women of every age and circumstance, crouching by them as they ate,
jogging next to donkey-drawn carts, sitting drinking ataya with the old men by the

market stalls” (249). By looking closely, as the narrator realizes, he is able to see “the
larger, structural problems” (449), instead of interpreting everything personally and
partially.
On the contrary, Aimee, who the narrator and Fernnado work for, and who in the
narrator ’s comment should “take everything, have everything, do everything, be

everyone, in all places” (340), and who has a global accent which is “New York and
Paris and Moscow and LA and London combined” (95), is only an ostensible
cosmopolitan. The chasm between viability study and “life as it appears before you on
the road and the ferry” (165) represents the difference between Aimee’s illusive
cosmopolitan public image, and her conceivably proprietary attitude. The London in

her mind, as the narrator reflects, is “a city centered around St. James’s, bordered to
the north by Regent’s Park, stretching as far as Kensington to the west — with
occasional forays into the wilds of Ladbroke Grove — and only as far east as the
Barbican” (104). In other words, stereotypes shape her perception of both people and
the city; and wealth enables her to live in an exclusive bubble that hardly includes

elements such as empathy or social engagement. Coming to Gambia as a

“philanthropist”, she accepts and believes in the “natural” association between Africa
187
and poverty. Spending time in Africa neither excites her nor motivates her to engage
with the school project, because it is like taking a holiday — enjoying the same
privileged treatment that she receives in other places around the world. With personal

wealth higher than the GDP of the whole country in which she would like to build a
girls’ school, Aimee goes to a local hotel to “rest” after arriving at the island, leaving
the girls who are arranged to welcome her waiting in vain for six hours. During her
visit, she quickly becomes interested in a young man called Lamin, the narrator ’s
local guide, and is concerned more about flirting with him than discussing the overall

projects made by local leaders and Fernando. After she manages to bring Lamin to
New York, she derides his custom, feeling “very provocative and funny” (366)
because he still prays five times a day. She would uses art’s universal property as a
defense, only to justify herself against any inappropriate actions that she takes, a
capability inseparable from her power and wealth. Her defenses, ironically, lands on

“love”, which does not encompass tolerance, kindness or appreciation, but is a means
of possession and ownership. Because she is an artist, she is “allowed to love things,
to touch them and to use them” (370). The “typical” cosmopolitan features that can be
easily recognized in Aimee do not have a direct connection with the cosmopolitanism
defined in this project. As a result, Aimee remains a wealthy celebrity who lives in her

stereotyped sense of superiority.

Smith, at the end of the novel, combines slavery, race, gender, and
cosmopolitanism together in a couple — James and Darryl. This middle-aged couple
is a “mixed combination” (US-American and African-American), but unlike Aimee,
such “multicultural gathering” is connected with cosmopolitanism which embraces

the history and the past “but not deformed by it” (433). Darryl recalls with laughter
about an old neighbor at Harlem, who, influenced by the post-slavery mentality,
believes that he, the “black” man, is enslaved by James. This historical trauma,
however, does not lead to hatred, violence or decay (as it happens on Tracey), but to
an even stranger willingness to be lovable, accepting, and forgiving. Smith, in her

interview with Eugenides, not only praises Darryl, but regards him as a model — a
person who is aware of the historical trauma behind blackness, but accepts and further
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finds himself blessed as an African descendent:

“Darryl, to me,” Zadie says, “is a model of — I can’t describe it —

but active ambivalence. He is as well read on African-American

issues as anyone could imagine being. Yet there is also a part of him
which is radically existential. He is absolutely aware that there is
such a thing as having been subjected to the experience of blackness,
which causes all kinds of consequences, political, social and

personal, and at the same time, he claims the freedom of just being
Darryl, in all his extreme particularity. I haven’t met many people
like that.” (Eugenides, emphasis added)

When the narrator is fired by Aimee and suddenly becomes homeless, the couple

provides “immediate, characteristically generous” help to this girl they can hardly call
as an acquaintance (433). Nevertheless, when she impulsively determines to ruin the
reputation of her former employer by contacting new agencies, unveiling her illegal
adoption of a baby girl from Gambia, they sincerely tell her, out of love, that she is
“still very young.” (434). If the narrator is “still young” in her thirties, then her mother

uses nearly a life’s time to become a cosmopolitan. After being brought to a hospice,
she says to the narrator: “[Tracey] was a part of our family, practically” (394), despite
the fact that she once drew a clear distinction between the two girls, and despite all
the depressing emails Tracey has sent to disgrace her. Her mother ’s death is like a
restart of the narrator’s life, as the narrator finds that there might be something

“simpler, more honest” that she can offer (453). When the narrator is heading towards
Tracey’s home, and when she sees “[Tracey’s] children around her, everybody
dancing” (453), it is a sign that she will forgive Tracey’s cruelty — depressing emails,
envious behaviors or harsh words. For the narrator, “time was on [her] side”, and the
future’s uncertainty gives her “a new feeling” (450), full of hope and confidence. The

narrator, her mother, and the New York couple, their words and deeds resonate with
Derrida’s interpretation of forgiveness: “[i]f there is something to forgive, it would be
189
what in religious language is called moral sin, the worst, the unforgivable crime or
harm” (On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness 143). Further, there is a possibility for
Tracey and her three children to step out of the shadow of stereotypes with the help of

the narrator, who realizes at the end of the book that “I was her sister: I had a sacred
duty towards her” (448). Forgiveness is a means of self- salvation, which may help the
narrator to stop being a shadow of others, and in turn, starts to help Tracey step out of
the shadow caused by subjective and contingent elements. After she begins to accept
who she is, including her African heritage and her singing talent, she can

advantageously transform her multicultural traits into cosmopolitan virtue. Ceasing to

be self-discriminating, her very diversity will allow her to treat others with respect
and openness, and help her to engage in the dialogue with the traditionally-defined
“other”.

Swing Time presents a cosmopolitanism, which in Robert Spencer ’s words, is

“never strident or dictatorial” but “provoke[s] thought via complex, multifarious, and
inconclusive renderings of particular situations” (Cosmopolitan Criticism and
Postcolonial Literature 59). In this novel, Smith continues to construct her unique
fictional complexity, through which she reveals the increasingly contradictory,

complicated, and perplex social reality across the Atlantic. Smith is acute in
examining immigrant figures, and by doing that, she also questions a superficial
understanding of cosmopolitanism. Swing Time shows a lasting yet largely
unconscious cognition — modern slavery as a phenomenon in society — that would
otherwise go unnoticed within the depiction framework of a grand celebration of a

multicultural and diversified society. The Euro-American African immigrants and

African locals form a conflicting double, of which the former is victimized by mental
enslavement. This also points to the feature of Smith’s deromanticization of
cosmopolitanism which reveals contradictions in reality, and facilitates a
contemplation of the significance of how to reconcile with the unpleasant

contingencies that history forces on facts.

The impetus in Smith’s fiction for deromanticizing cosmopolitanism is gained
190
from both driving and opposing forces, and it is through a reflection of the worst that
an eagerness of seeking a better alternative may emerge. That is what Tihanov and
Schiller along with other scholars try to elucidate when they dedicate a

cosmopolitanism to those who are “struggling for a more just and equal world, whilst
understanding that impermanence, contradiction, a human imperfectability and
disorientation are also integral to concepts and practices of cosmopolitanism as
openness and social justice” (Schiller and Irving, book dedication). In Bhabha’s
discussion on vernacular cosmopolitans, he envisions an ideal status of immigrants,

who move into another culture, appreciate the difference while at the same time
preserve their precious uniqueness. “In another’s country that is also your own, your
person divides, and in following the forked path, you encounter yourself in a double
movement … once as a stranger, and then a friend” (“The Vernacular Cosmopolitan”
142). The boundary between the self and the other, stranger and strangeness in selves

is increasingly oblique in Smith’s characterization. Finding a double in the other and

discovering a self in multiple forms, Bhabha’s prospect is an envisaged destination
that Smith wants to reach in her racial construction, and the ultimate hope that one can
trace in almost every novel that she writes, especially Swing Time. The target readers
of the novel in Smith’s mind are black girls, 60 who are young and talented, with

experiences and memories of historical trauma. The blackness in the book nonetheless
has sublimated to include the incredible, especially the charm of Gambian culture — a
tiny part of African culture that is not as typical and representative as expected, but is
potent and strong enough to destabilize the preconceived blackness in its
European-centered interpretation.

60
See Tom Gatti’s interview with Zadie Smith, as Gatti asks: “When asked about the target audience for their
book, writers usually say that they don’t write for an audience, or they write for themselves. But you have said that
Swing Time was written explicitly for black girls.”
191
 Conclusion

This dissertation elucidates the cosmopolitanism in Smith’s fiction. It

demonstrates the cosmopolitan articulation in her five novels published so far,

exploring her beyond-stereotypical portrayal of contemporary urban space and its

residents who live in a multi-cultural society featured by ethnical and religious
diversifications. It discovers that Smith establishes her world of letters fuelled with
multifactedness and counter-stereotypical imaginaries, arguing that the gaining of
cosmopolitanism, in her fictional works, indicates a becoming rather than a given. In

essence, it contends that Smith deromanticizes cosmopolitanism, and makes it a

concept as well as a social phenomenon which is not equivalent to a romantic,
trouble- free, or plausibly faultless yet virtually heterogeneous imagination, but goes
hand in hand with life’s injustice and hardship. Her fictional themes cover race,
ethnicity, and gender, as well as identity reconstruction, contemporary blackness, and

historical trauma rooted in the social reality. Casting light on these issues, Smith
demonstrates her ever-developing perception about multi- featured identity which is
possessed by most of her immigrants and metropolitan dwellers. She turns mere
coexistence into a cocreative synergy through her cosmopolitanism that originates
from a reflection on indeterminacy, various religious heritage, the beauty of African

people and African art, the “cosmopolitan” London, and contemporary enslaved
mindset.
Smith is acutely aware of the unpleasantness endured by people of emigration
backgrounds. The council estates where she grew up, the London’s borough
Willesden, and her mother ’s island Jamaica serve as a source of inspiration for this

New York University professor. As a moral depicter, she is also devoted to writing in
an autobiographical manner. It means that the people, the city, and the characters in
Smith’s stories allude to her own experience, and her voice is the strongest and mostly
recognizable in the narrative. Imagining her London, New York, and African and
Caribbean areas, Smith becomes increasingly critical of racial struggles, recognition

192
of immigrants’ culture, and identity negotiation. By questioning inequality and
deep-rooted value system that drains the self-esteem of African, Caribbean, and Asian
immigrants, and cause on- going anxiety, she also sheds light on a promising future in

which each person steps out of the predesigned circle designated by their skin color
and origins, accepts their varied heritage, and interacts with the diversified cultural
environment in their experience of reconstructing self- identity.
Deromanticizing cosmopolitanism entails a revisit to this term in a contemporary
social context, and a reflection on this phenomenon in daily rhyme. Smith’s

cosmopolitanism emerges from daily activities, embraces local and original

particularities while at the same time enables distinct and even traditionally
incompatible parts to exert a co-creative influence on identity construction. It has a
quotidian feature that connects everyone, especially ordinary people with various
heritage and cultural backgrounds. Such a connection is established by a number of

dilemmatic and traumatic matters that both the so-called local or immigrants find
impossible to escape. White Teeth underlines the processing of becoming a
cosmopolitan during which one may experience the sense of uprootedness and
rootlessness and even goes to an extreme if they seek to establish an absolutely
authentic self; The Autograph Man reveals the identity crisis endured by a second

generation immigrant with various traditions, and explores the possibility of being
multi-religious, benefiting from varied heritage without being exclusively restrained
by any one of them; On Beauty depicts a universal beauty transcending the prejudiced
understanding of blackness and the vernacular; NW unveils a binary imagination
which both affirms and goes against the impression of a cosmopolitan London; and

Swing Time sketches modern “slavery”, challenging the inheritance of historical

trauma while depicting the process of turning innate hybridity into a positive
cosmopolitanism. Therefore, each novel engages with the unpleasant reality but is not
exhausted by it. Rather, it is by depicting life’s harshness and seeking a way to make a
difference that Smith manages to discover the co-creative strength in her

cosmopolitanism.
In White Teeth, groups of Asian and African immigrants find their appearances in
193
the novel. Their gathering creates an impression of multicultural celebration — a
racial utopia that the young Smith envisions, and tries to pursue in her writing.
Smith’s cosmopolitanism finds its initial foundation in her debut. She confirms the

established impression that immigrants are traumatized, homesick, and rootless, while
at the same time she also destabilizes this conventional opinion through her
characterization of both English locals and immigrants. Holding various attitudes
towards roots, a series of characters in the book demonstrate the failure and possibility
of obtaining a cosmopolitan identity. The process of becoming a cosmopolitan starts

from resistance, goes through confusion and uncertainty, and eventually reaches a
status of indeterminate harmony with a new consciousness about self- identity. Smith
not only depicts a social mélange of people with different ethnicities, but articulates a
hope of a happy multicultural land, where people no longer attempt to completely
preserve or erase their roots. They instead embrace every part of their identity, and

choose not to be overwhelmed by such diversity. This novel shows the importance of
indeterminacy in cosmopolitanism. One thing that remains consistent, in Smith’s
fiction, is that she depicts characters’ gradually gained cosmopolitan consciousness.
Being hybrid does not necessarily mean they are cosmopolitans, and equally, born to
be a local, he/she may nonetheless possess a cosmopolitan attitude.

Starting with her reflection on contemporary identity in her Asian and Caribbean
Britons, Smith then invites Jewish and Chinese immigrants to her literary world, thus
demonstrating religion’s role in this multi- faith society. The Autograph Man facilitates
a co-creative relationship between the seemingly incompatible and the unrelated —
the religious and the secular, and combines established religious subjects in one book.

On top of the multi-ethnic society to which Smith always pays close attention, this
novel, in particular, presents a postsecular return of religion in contemporary literature.
On the one hand, it reveals religion’s continuing impact on shaping self- identity, as
people of varied traditions can still benefit from their diversified heritage; and such a
depiction also throws light on the question about identity crisis, for those who are

confused or feel guilty about their mixed fidelity. For the protagonist Alex, instead of
being restrained by any rituals or conventions, he achieves personal growth and
194
development thanks to the influence of his Jewish and Zen traditions. At the same
time, he does not abandon his secular habits nor be converted to an ardent believer.
On the other hand, such a return points to the productive adaptation of religious

motifs in literature. Instead of being merely glorious and metaphysical, the ten sefirot
of Kabbalah and the Zen classic Ten Bulls fit in the contemporary discourse where
their original meanings and significance are preserved and interact actively with the
narrative.
Smith’s writing is fuelled with African elements. African Americans and mainly

Haitian arts and Haitian immigrants are the foci of On Beauty. The novel’s critical
attitude towards university serves as her starting point to express the destructive
effects of Euro-American centered arrogance, which distorts the image of African
people and African art. Thence, the novel questions the function of higher institutions,
presenting its inability of discovering, let alone persevering, the true beauty, and it

further indicates that the traditionally marginalized may find their existence in
contrast to the interpretation articulated by some university lecturers and professors.
This novel associates blackness with beauty, a universally appreciated one that should
be approached beyond the frame of trauma and colonization. The female protagonist
Kiki becomes the incarnation of beauty in the novel, and Haitian art finds the

unexpected parallel in Rembrandt’s painting. Smith not only enables the co-existence
of the once incompatible, but also endeavors to reconstruct the conceptions of
blackness, which have been stereotypically framed. The charm of the Haitian painting
lies in its colorfulness, its openness, and its aliveness, and the beauty of a person is
shown by the unconditional love towards others, both of which transcend ethnicity

and class. This ideal status, however, cannot be attained without struggling and
turbulence. Various conflicts and tensions coexist, against the background of which
emerges a blackness that is never one-dimensional, but multifaceted. The motivation
behind this, for Smith, is to generate a counterbalanced force against racism and
discrimination, and to highlight blackness through in Bhabha’s words people

in-between, including African and Caribbean immigrants as well as their cultures and
arts. On Beauty shows a vernacular cosmopolitanism that gains its impetus from the
195
generally referred marginalized imaginaries. Instead of applying reverse racism,
Smith articulates her appreciation towards both Rembrandt and Haitian painting, and
towards all the talented, the precious, and the beautiful. It is a cosmopolitanism that

highlights the importance of revisiting the undervalued, enabling the so-called

marginalized people and culture to enjoy equal recognition as its European
counterparts do.
Smith’s story returns to London in NW, in which she further transcends
established boundaries by arranging doublings between characters of different social

“classifications”. The book displays that although some people may desire to escape
the life of which they have no control, they are nevertheless stuck in stillness, unable
to move backward or forward. If being physically ghettoized may be a contingent fact,
then being mentally ghettoized is a universal syndrome. Smith’s London is a
double-door city, with those coming in from the grand front gate, and others creeping

in from the back gate in the shadow. However, in a status of mental ghettoization, the
boundaries between the front and back gates, as well as the privileged and the
disenfranchised, are blurred. Smith reimagines London’s cosmopolitanism, admitting
that when one steps outside the glorious West End, they may find ghettos with people
from Europe, Asia, or Africa. Another doubling Smith intends to make is London in

history and at present. It is a London with transcending natural beauty, providing

unbiased inspiration for all literati, Smith herself included. Therefore, although NW
seems to be a bleak novel, it carries the author’s affection for her home city, her
neighborhood, and also, her hope for a more inclusive environment with more
possibilities.

Swing Time unfolds a transcontinental story, in which the narrative space

jumping back and forth between London, New York, and Gambia. Smith underlines
the connection between dancing talents and skin color, and reimagines blackness
through the historical trauma of slavery. The enslaved mind to a large extent
influences the behavior of almost all the main characters in the novel, who are still

haunted by the historical memory of slavery. While revealing the harsh reality of
being strained by an enslaved mindset, Smith makes an effort to find a way out — a
196
future in her mind, and in the heterogeneous community. African Americans and
African Britons, with their talents, have been living as a shadow for decades, framed
by the traumatic memories of slavery recreated and continuously reinforced both by

themselves and their “white” counterparts. That is the stereotype that Smith revisits
and deconstructs. She accordingly presents blackness in its original form, which is not
restrained by stereotypes or trauma but characterized by talents and beauty. It is in
Africa that people, who are born with a sense of rhythm, are treated as real dancers
rather than black dancers. In the book’s depiction of hybrid identity, it shows a

journey, through which people may turn their innate multicultural heritage into a
cosmopolitan attribute. It is a cosmopolitanism that advantageously embraces their
uniqueness, and gains the leverage to transform their multi- identity into an
increasingly open attitude which harmoniously combines commonness and diversity.
According to the discussion above, it can be summarized that Smith never avoids

depicting reality, while at the same time always manages to grasp the potential
brightness that can empower anyone, especially, the disenfranchised — the people
who are not the minorities, but the majority of social members. The experience of
diaspora is not a phenomenon exclusively applicable to the Jews, and Asian and
African immigrants, but can be applicable to anyone, despite their origins, class, or

gender. Only when immigrants are appreciated as their true self without the barricade
of stereotypes, can they more likely become cosmopolitans that Bhabha envisages in
his vernacular imagination, or Nussbaum advocates in her love of knowledge. It is
their experience, their struggles, and their transformations that help to construct a
cosmopolitanism of efficacy. Being co-creative, interactive, and open,

cosmopolitanism in turn also helps contemporary residents to construct their identity

in a hybrid and multicultural society. What is shared among Smith’s fictional works,
though in various extents and from different perspectives, is that they promote a
rethinking beyond the once incompatible elements and the traditionally fixed
imaginations. Her cosmopolitanism still connects everyone and everything through

love, kindness, and beauty, but more than that, by confronting the traumatic elements
in life, it gains the impetus for appreciating differences, preserving uniqueness, and
197
accepting varied heritage in a co-creative process. Through deromanticizing, Smith’s
fiction demonstrates a possibility for the twenty- first century city dwellers to possess
a cosmopolitanism that confronts the trauma that is unavoidable while more

importantly, enables them to embrace their multiple-self with positive reconciliation.

Her fiction also contributes to enriching the significance of cosmopolitanism in
literary criticism, providing inspirations for further exploring the meaningfulness of
this term in a contemporary urban context.
After a review of the arguments elucidated above, this dissertation ends with a

look into the future study of Smith’s fiction. What needs to be admitted is that this
dissertation, by analyzing Smith’s fiction from one perspective, may have its limits in
revealing other features of her fictional works, including in particular her humor, her
depiction of campus life, her portrayal of Muslims, and her articulation of gender. Her
interpretation of Zen Buddhism, and the influence of Chinese philosophy on her

creation also call for a more in-depth examination and elucidation. Moreover, her
cosmopolitanism can be further explored if a comparative study is conducted between
her cosmopolitan theme and the cosmopolitan thoughts contained in other works
created by her contemporaries and predecessors.

198
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221
 攻读博士学位期间取得的主要科研成果

1. “Deromanticized Cosmopolitanism in Smith’s Swing Time and Chi’s 晚安玫瑰

(Goodnight, Rose).” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 20, issue
1, 2018, Article 4, 唯一作者, A&HCI 来源期刊；
2. “Postsecular Return of Religion: Jewish and Zen Elements in Zadie Smith’s The
Autograph Man.” Neohelicon, vol. 45, no. 2, 729-43, 唯一作者, A&HCI 来源期
刊；
3. 《创伤与种族 肤色与天赋——评扎迪·史密斯新作《摇摆乐时代》的“黑人性”
刻画》， 《外国文学动态研究》，2018 年第 1 期，50-56，唯一作者，CSSCI（扩
展版）来源期刊。

222
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