and a non-linear – contrary to tradition – set of beliefs/principals that
present an inherent restlessness and the need for change and resistance.
Kureishi constantly flips between the lives of the characters and the
perception of life as experienced by Karim. he is placed in the midst of a
polarised society; where radicalism is contradicted by convention, to be
different is to be cool; two ideas presented through Margaret (the
traditionalist) and Mrs. Eva Kay (new-age spiritualist and radical); and a
transition (a disruption) in the family mainly induced by his father’s renewed
and revitalised interest in spiritual practice in conjunction with Eva. Hanif
Kureishi’s exploration and critique of the stigma’s of progression as seen in
both novels and continuity of the western tradition cross-fertilising with a
multitude of cultural and religious beliefs, for instance, the teachings of
Buddhism. The desire to shift toward novel, foreign, or iconoclastic teachings -
or to reconcile more familiar faiths to unfamiliar ones – expresses a timely and
healthy impulse to include a wider world in to humanity.
By making the character firstly accept his own predicament by stating it,
Kureishi goes on to develop Karim, as well as introduce the reader to the
differing facets of his life: friends, sexual interests, family, and so on.
In ‘The Black Album’ focus is perceived through the eyes of Shahid Hassan who
is a teenage student of a rundown inefficient college in London, and a Muslim
second generation immigrant. Kureishi introduces the reader and Shahid to
hybridity – the Multi-culturalism – present all ready in London’s streets and
society; we are made to observe the compact way in which the different cultures
fit together, obscured further by the disordered nature of the college students.
For both immigrants and native-born members of the working and lower-middle
classes, notions of culture and class authenticity help to demarcate borders for
both progressive and conservative forces. Resistance based on authenticity,
however, often flounders when it becomes an officially sanctioned site of
marginality within the dominant culture. Hybridity reflects both groups’
investment in the dominant culture, but can obscure the borders which mark the
unequal power relationship between ethnic groups. The fate of Kureishi’s
second-generation, upwardly mobile characters in both novels interrogates both
the alteration of traditional radical resistance through hybridity and the
culture-wide transformation potential created by the upward mobility of the
second-generation within the dominant cultural system, realising the basic
stance of both novels is to imply acceptance of the reality of people of colour
by White Britain (both the establishment and the working classes).
It seems that when one is promised new kinds of experience, one is led to
suppose that one has long been involved in illusion, ignorance, or error. One
may regard both oneself and the patterns and meaning of the world’s claims upon
one’s life as at fault: so if one awakens it will be because one has somehow
escaped from (or struggled above) what one has become used to – and often the
shakles are named to be the entire western tradition.
Bibliography
? The Buddha Of Suburbia, Hanif Kureishi, Faber and Faber Ltd., 1990 ?
The Black Album, Hanif Kureishi, Faber and Faber Ltd., 1995 ? Mastering
Economis and Social History, David Taylor, The Macmillan press Ltd., 1988 ?
A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, Raman Selden, The Harvester
Press, 1985 ? Comparative Religion, A.C.Bouquet, Penguin Books, 1960s ?
Anti-D?hring (Herr Eugen D?hring’s Revolution in Science), Frederick Engels,
Foreign Languages Press Peking, 1976 ? http://www.ibo.org/archives.htm
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