Multicultural Conviviality, Diasporic Tension and Local Spaces in White Teeth

Different writers have contrasted critical reactions on London as being a multicultural city after the end of the British Empire. On the one hand, it is seen as a failure by critics such as Stuart Hall due to ethnic turmoil. On the other hand, Zadie Smith’s novel White Teeth reconfigures “local” spaces/places as dynamic sites of multicultural “conviviality.” This article addresses Smith’s engagement with diaspora and identity by focusing on spatiality. The article also elucidates how a dense web of micro-spaces, places and “non-places,” where a diasporic character is free to develop multiple affiliations away from the intricacies of the past (colonial)/present (After Empire), depicts London in fiction through the use of hybrid writing. An emphasis will be placed on how London’s urbanscape has transformed in the post-imperial context.