INVESTIGATING THE PROBLEMATIC OF MULTICULTURALISM IN HANIF KUREISHI’S NOVELS
Keywords:
HANIF KUREISHI, Multiculturalism, British Muslim, Cultural Product, Immigrants, In-Betweenness, Muslims, Londoner, OthersAbstract
The cultural artefact to identify human-being as the ‘Other’ has developed a persistent sense of dissimilitude where ‘us’ receives social recognition, while ‘them’ lives with a demeaning sense of identity. The mentioned social process employs invention of ‘categories’ by casting groups, individuals, or objects into the role of the ‘other’. In this negotiation, the dominant cultural location vilifies the innate qualities of the ‘others’ to any positive social recognition. In the concurrent wave of multiculturalism, the function of this ‘other’ has created a conflict of boundaries culminating into cultural clashes, and strengthening its demand for Cultural Nationalism. By revisiting Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia (1991), The Black Album (1995), and My Son the Fanatic (1997) the paper examines the position of ‘other’ in constructing the British Muslim Identity in the United Kingdom. This article examines Kureishi’s characters to be cultural products with an innate ‘desire’ for equal social recognition. Further the article tries to find how the failure of the ‘desire’ for identity in the characters results in the creation of negative reality.
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