This study begins with a critique of the notion of the hybrid that has so far facilitated a liberal multiculturalist reading of Zadie Smith's _White Teeth_(2000). For an alternative framework, it posits the multiethnic subject to examine in what ways ...
This study begins with a critique of the notion of the hybrid that has so far facilitated a liberal multiculturalist reading of Zadie Smith's _White Teeth_(2000). For an alternative framework, it posits the multiethnic subject to examine in what ways the novel questions the premises of liberal multiculturalism.Smith sheds some significant light on the undersides of holding multiple racial/ethnic identities while not bypassing its utopian possibilities. In case of the first- generation male characters, their interracial/homoerotic bonding becomes a platform for a mode of egalitarian belonging across the racial divide. It further suggests a symbolic union between working-class white and non-white immigrant. The younger generation characters, in contrast, undergo problems regarding a racial, ethnic, cultural affiliation in keener and far more complicated ways than the earlier one. Above all, _White Teeth_ demonstrates that they are formed into the multiethnic subject within the frame of liberal multiculturalism. It delineates the formation mainly through fictionally exploring the persisting legacies of Britain’s imperial history as they are partaking in their subject-making. The novel thereby obliquely suggests that the younger generation is to confront the past that is a seminal pa