Literature and society: Bauman’s liquid modernity in Zadie Smith’s novels White Teeth and NW

Universidade do Minho Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas Brunno Gomes Voronkoff Carnauba Literature and Society: Bauman’s Liquid Modernity in Zadie Smith’s Novels White Teeth and NW December 2021 UMinho | 2021 Literature and Society: Bauman’s Liquid Modernity in Zadie Smith’s Novels White Teeth and NW Brunno Carnauba Brunno Gomes Voronkoff Carnauba Literature and Society: Bauman’s Liquid Modernity in Zadie Smith’s Novels White Teeth and NW Master Dissertation Master in English Language, Literature and Culture Work developed under the supervision of Professor Margarida Isabel Esteves da Silva Pereira Universidade do Minho Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas December 2021 ii DIREITOS DE AUTOR E CONDIÇÕES DE UTILIZAÇÃO DO TRABALHO POR TERCEIROS Este é um trabalho académico que pode ser utilizado por terceiros desde que respeitadas as regras e boas práticas internacionalmente aceites, no que concerne aos direitos de autor e direitos conexos. Assim, o presente trabalho pode ser utilizado nos termos previstos na licença abaixo indicada. Caso o utilizador necessite de permissão para poder fazer um uso do trabalho em condições não previstas no licenciamento indicado, deverá contactar o autor, através do RepositóriUM da Universidade do Minho. Licença concedida aos utilizadores deste trabalho Atribuição-CompartilhaIgual CC BY-SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deep gratitude to some of the people who have helped me do this dissertation. To my dear advisor Professor Margarida Esteves Pereira for all the support and dedication in providing me with all the proper material and ideas, always with good humor and readiness. To my dear mother Tânia Maria Gomes Voronkoff Carnaúba who gave me life and all the love that I could have, helping me to deal with my concerns in this process. To my beloved wife Laís Leite de Oliveira who with all her love, positivity, and assistance, has provided me strength in the most difficult moments throughout this challenge. To my dear sister Tatianna Gomes Voronkoff Carnaúba. Always with a good book in her hands, she has been my greatest inspiration for literature. To all my family for being part of my life and all my friends who have brought me joy and laughter during this journey. To my psychologist Danielle Marins Scabello for helping me keep my emotional balance in times of pandemic. iv STATEMENT OF INTEGRITY I hereby declare having conducted this academic work with integrity. I confirm that I have not used plagiarism or any form of undue use of information or falsification of results along the process leading to its elaboration. I further declare that I have fully acknowledged the Code of Ethical Conduct of the University of Minho. v LITERATURA E SOCIEDADE: A MODERNIDADE LÍQUIDA DE BAUMAN NOS ROMANCES DENTES BRANCOS E NW DE ZADIE SMITH RESUMO A literatura contemporânea é, de muitas maneiras, transnacional e, como resultado dessa expansão geral da arte e da cultura, há uma ampla gama de diferentes aspetos a serem examinados nesta área. Entre eles, vamos retratar temas como identidade, urbanismo, classe social, migração, capitalismo e multiculturalismo sob a ótica da Modernidade Líquida, conceito desenvolvido pelo sociólogo e filósofo polonês Zygmunt Bauman. O mundo pós-moderno é caracterizado pela quebra de barreiras geográficas e, como resultado, vivemos em um fluxo constante de informações e influências culturais. Mas como essa conexão inesperada com o mundo está a nos afetar? Com isso em mente, vamos observar a representação dessas questões na obra literária da escritora britânica Zadie Smith, em particular em seus romances Dentes Brancos (2000) e NW (2012). Essas duas histórias mostram como é viver na Londres moderna, um lugar cosmopolita onde a globalização, o consumismo e a velocidade são todos componentes que se relacionam nesta nova realidade. Assim sendo, os padrões morais e sociais vêm passando por uma crise em que as pessoas buscam um senso de direção e sentem a necessidade de um modelo ou pelo menos de alguma orientação no limbo em que vivemos. Essa grande multiplicidade tem gerado perplexidade no comportamento humano e nas relações sociais que, paradoxalmente, aproximam e distanciam. Nesse sentido, iremos analisar os fragmentos de evidências e especificidades dos aspetos acima mencionados na literatura de Smith. Palavras-chave: Literatura de Migração; Modernidade Líquida; Zadie Smith; Zygmunt Bauman. vi LITERATURE AND SOCIETY: BAUMAN’S LIQUID MODERNITY IN ZADIE SMITH’S NOVELS WHITE TEETH AND NW ABSTRACT Contemporary literature is, in many ways, transnational and as a result of this general expansiveness in art and culture, there is a wide range of different aspects to be scrutinized in this area. Among them, we are going to depict themes such as identity, urbanism, social class, migration, capitalism, and multiculturalism from the standpoint of Liquid Modernity , a concept developed by the Polish sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman. The postmodern world is characterized by the surpassing of geographical barriers and, as a result, we live in a steady stream of information and cultural influences. But how is this unexpected world connection affecting us? With this in mind, we are going to observe the representation of these matters in the literary work of the British writer Zadie Smith, particularly in her novels White Teeth (2000) and NW (2012). These two stories display what it is like to live in modern London, a cosmopolitan place where globalization, consumerism, and speed are all related components of this new reality. Accordingly, moral and social standards have been going through a crisis in which people search for a sense of direction and feel the need for a model or at least some guidance in the limbo in which we live. This great multiplicity has prompted bewilderment in human behavior and social relations, which, paradoxically, approximates and distances. In this sense, we will analyze the shreds of evidence and specificities of the abovementioned aspects in Smith’s literature. Keywords: Liquid Modernity; Migration Literature; Zadie Smith; Zygmunt Bauman. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Direitos de Autor e Condições de Utilização do Trabalho por Terceiros ....................................... ii Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… iii Statement of Integrity …………………………………………………………………………………………………. iv Resumo …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… v Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… vi Table of contents ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. vii List of tables …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. viii Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1 I. Literature and Liquid Modernity …………………………………………………………………………………. 5 1. Literature, Society, and Globalization …………………………………………………………………. 10 2. Literature of Migration in a Liquid World ……………………………………………………………… 10 3. Multicultural London ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 18 II. The Writing of Zadie Smith ………………………………………………………………………………………. 21 1. Tone, Style, and Influences ………………………………………………………………………………. 21 2. The Narratives ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 26 3. The Essays ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 32 4. Smith and Others: Differences and Similarities …………………………………………………….. 35 III. Liquid Modernity in White Teeth and NW …………………………………………………………………… 41 1. White Teeth …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 41 1.1. Identity, Territory and Capitalism ………………………………………………………………… 43 1.2. Solid and Liquid Characters ………………………………………………………………………… 46 1.2.1. Young Characters and Their Process of Identification ……………………………. 52 1.2.2. The Volatility of Relationships …………………………………………………………… 58 2. NW ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 61 2.1. Keisha/Natalie Blake: Desires and Achievements …………………………………………… 64 2.2. Leah Hanwell: Money versus Humanity…………………………………………………………. 66 2.3. Felix Cooper: Love, Hope, and Tragedy …………………………………………………………. 69 2.4. Nathan Bogle: Finitude versus Expectations …………………………………………………… 72 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 74 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 76 6 In the afterthought of his book Liquid Modernity , Bauman (2000) brings a quite interesting reflection to what we are addressing, which is about the relationship between the poets (that is to say, the writers) and the sociologists . He states: if we do not wish to share the fate of 'false poets' and resent being 'false sociologists', we ought to come as close as the true poets do to the yet hidden human possibilities ; and for that reason we need to pierce the walls of the obvious and self-evident, of that prevailing ideological fashion of the day whose commonality is taken for the proof of its sense. Demolishing such walls is as much the sociologist's as the poet's calling, and for the same reason: the walling-up of possibilities belies human potential while obstructing the disclosure of its bluff. (p. 203, our italics). These yet hidden possibilities are infinite. They are evident in both areas and what we aim to do here is to contribute to avoid that the emergence of new horizons stops. In other words, we are allowing the growth of knowledge. The search for new discoveries needs to be in constant development. This is what literature and sociology have in common: they help humanity to go beyond the obvious, surpassing the common barriers of what is already known. Taking into consideration that our focus is British Contemporary Literature, another word that needs to be addressed and which links culture, sociology, and literature is Globalization . We now live in a world that is a great and complex unit. Everything looks somehow entangled; what happens in a country may interfere in a different country on the other side of the globe. People are constantly interacting with one another from different places and cultures through television, the internet, and other modern technologies. As a result, we witness a shift from a cultural to a multicultural spectrum. Because we live in a world that goes through a steady stream of changes, our values also change; they may eventually become mistier and thus, tradition gradually loses its significance. In this sense, Anthony Giddens (2002, p. 25) states: “The traditional family is under threat, is changing, and will change much further. Other traditions, such as those connected with religion, are also experiencing major transformations. Fundamentalism originates from a world of crumbling traditions.” Presumably, other than changes in religion, the gradual loss of patterns prompts a great feeling of insecurity towards several spheres of life. The idea of living, as Bauman would say, “like zombies” is present in many contemporary novels, which will be addressed later on. And so, a new battle arises: cosmopolitans versus fundamentalists ( Ibidem ). In a new social scenario of multiplicity, “cosmopolitans 7 welcome and embrace this cultural complexity. Fundamentalists find it disturbing and dangerous.” (Giddens, 2002, p . 26). At least, “we can legitimately hope that a cosmopolitan outlook will win out” ( Ibidem ), even though this might take an indefinite time. All these different social concepts have developed amazingly fast, just as the use of the word globalization. What we observe today is that “no political speech is complete without reference to it. Yet even in the late 1980s the term was hardly used, either in the academic literature or in everyday language. It has come from nowhere to be almost everywhere.” (Ibidem). However, if we look back at what led to this outcome, probably the most important historical event was The Industrial Revolution, an event that had a great influence not only in the world economies (from agriculture to large-scale industry) but in politics and culture. In this sense, to explain why he took British writers as a starting point to discuss some of the chief elements of culture and society, Raymond Williams (1990, p. 6) asserts: The Industrial Revolution, which eventually swept or impinged on most of the world, began in England. The fundamentally new social and cultural relationships and issues which were part of that historically decisive transition were therefore first felt, in their intense and unprecedented immediacy, within this culture. (1990, p. 6) Nevertheless, we now live in a reality in which the features that define the culture (components that used to be very well defined such as religion, politics, moral values, language, traditions, etc.) of a nation-state are little by little weakened. Nationalism does not represent the same ideal that it once did. For many years, the nation-state “owed its success to the suppression of self-asserting communities; it fought tooth and nail against 'parochialism', local customs or 'dialects', promoting a unified language and historical memory at the expense of communal traditions.” (Bauman, 2000, p. 173). So, paradoxically, to build a standardized culture, the nation-state used to suppress smaller cultural rituals. Now in a globalized world, what once used to represent the identity of a country is entangled with the experiences of other countries. As a result, we see in the literature from the late twentieth century until now, a whole new range of reflections based on migration and multiculturalism. Along with this new approach, a crisis of individual identity also appears, which is not only caused by globalization but also by other factors that relate to Bauman’s Liquid Modernity . Moreover, it is crucial to stress that although it might be seen as a recent phenomenon, globalization is historically related to other not-so-current events. According to Paul Jay (2010, p. 2), 8 as some scholars define globalization as a contemporary phenomenon linked to the development of electronic media, the rise of transnational corporations, global financial institutions, and proliferating forms of entertainment that easily leap national boundaries, others define it as a historical phenomenon running back to at least the sixteenth century and incorporating the histories of colonization, decolonization, and post-colonialism. (Jay, 2010, p.2) As a result, if we take into consideration that globalization has begun a long time ago, there is a wider scope of literary studies in transnational matters that could probably include novels from the sixteenth century until today. An adequate analysis of the crisis regarding the notions of nationalism and the cultural aftermath of colonization is in the collection of essays first published in 1988 entitled Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature, a study that addresses, among other things, the literature of the nineteenth century in Ireland, as opposed to the British. In the introduction, Seamus Deane (2001, p. 3) points out that although without great success, Ireland produced, in the first three decades of this century, a remarkable literature in which the attempt to overcome and replace the colonial experience by something other, something that would be ‘native’ and yet not provincial, was a dynamic and central energy. (Deane, 2001, p. 3) Therefore, Ireland “has once more raised the question of how the individual subject can be envisaged in relation to its community, its past history, and a possible future.” ( Ibidem ). Indeed, identity is a wide concept that involves several social aspects, but today the influence of the nation-culture in the development of one’s identity does not seem to have as much relevance as it used to, or at least as it appeared to. It is now the opposite that operates; that is to say, the more multiple we are the better are the chances for us to fit in with the rest, even though this may compromise our understanding of our self . According to Deane (2001, p. 4), a proper example of the failure in trying to develop a new concept of nationalism in Irish literature is seen in the great work of James Joyce. In this sense, he puts forth: “this is true even when we consider Joyce's writings where the totalizing process finally homogenizes difference, erases rather than lives through oppositions like those of the cosmopolitan versus the national community.” 9 Differently from what had generally happened in Europe in the late nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, that is to say, “the reconciliation of the specific and the universal” ( ibidem ), Ireland was at odds with what is called the Arnoldian notion of literature. Based on Matthew Arnold, this model upholds that “the ‘best’ literature is the literature that has managed to transcend the local, historical circumstances of its production and come to embody universal truths about reality and what it means to be human.” (Jay, 2010, p. 17). On the other hand, it would be radical to categorically state that all literature that praises a national identity is somehow diminished, but the fact is that there was a duality between these in England and Ireland. One of the results of this duality is that “the collusion of Irish with British nationalism has produced contrasting stereotypes whose most destructive effect has been the laying of the cultural basis for religious sectarianism (…) in relation to either Protestantism or Catholicism.” (Deane, 2001, p. 8). This is just to exemplify how the idea of nation-culture may be complicated even to the point of causing a sense of rivalry. Religion is only one possibility to display a disparity of values and opinions. With regard to other matters on the cultural sovereignty of the nation-state, Terry Eagleton, in the essay Nationalism: Irony and Commitment , puts forth a discussion on the irony of the alienation caused by the vindication of national values. We could, therefore, add that the very concept of nationalism is, to a certain degree, contrary to that of globalization as it goes towards an opposite direction from multiculturalism and fluid modernity. In this sense, he develops a correlation with class: “Nationalism, like class, would thus seem to involve an impossible irony. It is sometimes forgotten that social class, for Karl Marx at least, is itself a form of alienation, canceling the particularity of an individual life into collective anonymity.” (Eagleton, 2001, p. 23) However, just like the individual identity is threatened by nationalism it may also be threatened by globalization, which is another form of collective anonymity, like a great and complex unit of a nationstate. So that would be another irony. Apparently, building a set of rules with the aim of establishing a social order attracts the opposite of that social order and prompts great dissatisfaction. In this sense, Eagleton (2001, p. 26) states: Our grudge against the ruling order is not only that it has oppressed us in our social, sexual, or racial identities, but that it has thereby forced us to lavish an extraordinary amount of attention on these things, which are not in the long run all that important.” (Eagleton, 2001, p. 26) 10 Thus, if we think about the meaning of being British or Irish or from any other country, we intrinsically envisage a whole set of characteristics that were historically related to that place. But that was for the exact reason of not having ways to go from one place to another, or at least to the fact that it used to be difficult to move through different nations and, consequently, to different cultures. Nevertheless, what we witness today is that it is not only easy to travel abroad as it is also easy to be somewhere else even without being physically there but virtually. Social, sexual or racial identities are, therefore, “not in the long run all that important” ( Ibidem ) because all social patterns are now fused, resulting in a paradoxical feeling of belonging and bewilderment. In addition, Paul Jay claims that the transnational turn in literary studies is not caused only as a result of globalization. According to him, it “has to be understood as the effect of a more complicated set of intersecting forces dating back to the late 1960’s, forces operating both within and outside the academy” (Jay, 2010, p. 17) including several social and political movements like the anti-Vietnam War movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the gay rights movement, and the rise of theoretical and critical practices within the academy dominated by a sustained and critical attention to difference (deconstruction; feminist and gender studies; work on race, class, and sexual orientation; and minority, multicultural, and postcolonial literatures). (Jay, 2010, p. 17, our italics) All this variety of such important themes has developed a quite positive effect when it comes to the search for freedom . Many of these matters are intrinsically related to a search for new values, deconstructing old concepts and prejudices. As he stated, it all comes down to difference , and to understanding how our world differences operate and what the social prospects from this new reality are, we must reflect on our modernity today – the liquid modernity. 2. Literature of Migration in a Liquid World In the year 2000, Zygmunt Bauman started this new concept with the book Liquid Modernity and then, as a result, he wrote many other books that establish a multidisciplinary study. For him, we live today in a society in which there is a steady movement, a movement which we have never experienced before and, therefore, we do not know how to deal with it. The most important key to tackle this situation is consciousness: being aware of the liquefaction of what used to be our social standards. 11 Right at the beginning of his book, he explains the metaphor with the term liquid . It has to do with instability, change, lack of form . And so, to present us this concept, he builds a comparison with the opposite term, solid. The Solid Modernity used to have patterns of life and values that were very well established. People knew what they wanted and planned their lives in a noticeably clear way, whereas today we encounter ourselves with a great amount of information that is affecting our power of choice and judgment. What path we should follow, what opinion we should have, what beliefs we should trust in, or what job we should look for are some of our agonies, because our world has infinite options and innovations, resulting in great uncertainty. Therefore, there is a tendency for people not to plan their life job or life partner, as now life is so fickle. We only plan our current job, current partner (Bauman reflects more deeply on this issue in the book Liquid Love - 2003), current diet or more drastically, our current opinions, our current political views, and so on. Sometimes it is hard even to understand whether certain actions are morally right or wrong. To contextualize and develop his ideas, Bauman presents the differences between these two different historical and sociological periods, solid and liquid. One aspect that differs quite notably is the notion of time and space and how this interferes in the games of power through the territory. In this sense, he reflects on how the philosopher Michel Foucault uses Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon2 to portray this matter. In the Panopticon, the inmates were tied to the place and barred from all movement, confined within thick, dense and closely guarded walls and fixed to their beds, cells or work-benches. They could not move because they were under watch; they had to stick to their appointed places at all times because they did not know, and had no way of knowing, where at the moment their watchers - free to move at will - were.” (Bauman, 2000, pp. 9-10) Under these circumstances, there is a hierarchy of power in which we have the ones who watch and the ones who are watched. This hypothesis used to make sense when territory was extremely important and directly associated with the notion of power. However, in our modern liquid world, this is no longer necessary. We are now experiencing a new reality in which “power can move with the speed 2 The Panopticon was designed by the English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). It was a proposal of a penitentiary “envisaged as a circular building, with the prisoners' cells arranged around the outer wall and the central point dominated by an inspection tower.” (Retrieved in https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project/who-was-jeremy-bentham/panopticon). There was never a prison built by the exact model created by Bentham, although there are many prison buildings until our current days which resemble some of its characteristics. 12 of the electronic signal - and so the time required for the movement of its essential ingredients has been reduced to instantaneity.” (Bauman, 2000, p. 10-11) In times of Solid Modernity, the best way to wield power over others was to have total control on the space where they were, and therefore time was managed by the “routinizers.” However, we now live in a Post-panoptical reality in which the best techniques of power are “escape, slippage, elision and avoidance, the effective rejection of any territorial confinement.” (Bauman, 2000, p. 11). Having said that, with the new global and exterritorial scenario, as we have stressed, the very ideal of nationalism becomes vague. On the other hand, we no longer must worry about “routinizers” watching us to know what we are doing, because being watched the whole time has become the new normal to the point that we want other people to know what we are doing, how we live and our most confidential information, as we see in social media, for example. As a result of this new reality, the private surpasses the public and thus it becomes public as well. Another way to perceive how the relation time/space has changed is to reflect on the concept of city. A city is meant to be filled with strangers and being in the position of stranger is precisely what makes us be civilized and behave according to certain rules. In this sense, Bauman (2000) states: The meeting of strangers is an event without a past. More often than not, it is also an event without a future (it is expected to be, hoped to be, free of a future), a story most certainly 'not to be continued', a one-off chance, to be consummated in full while it lasts and on the spot, without delay and without putting the unfinished business off to another occasion.” (p. 95) At odds with this traditional concept of civilization in which we do not know all the citizens, a special city was once designed by the architect George Hazeldon. He aimed to create a city “unlike ordinary cities, full of ominous-looking strangers oozing from dark corners” ( Ibidem , p. 91). However, a city that is surrounded and protected from others eradicates the civility of the people living there. Civility is fundamentally public and a city like that is private. Once again, the private surpasses the public. As Bauman upholds, the fear of being observed by the State shown in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) is no longer the only possibility. Instead of being afraid of how the government would surveil our behavior, we ourselves are constantly playing this role. With the advance of technology in liquid times, it is no longer necessary to lock people up in order to 13 have control over them, since “holding to the ground is not that important if the ground can be reached and abandoned at whim.” (Bauman, 2000, p. 13). As a result, what we many times observe in contemporary literature are novels depicting characters with a lack of roots in place and in values. Our world is a whole big, globalized unit and this can be observed in the literature of migration and postcolonialism. According to Franssen & Kuipers (2015, p. 292), if we are all part of the same territory, a connected and fluid world, it is understood that “literature has given way to other, mainly visual and digital, cultural forms.” One of the results is that “the question of translation flows from the (semi-)periphery to the core.” Before this change, most of the literary renowned works were books translated from English and that belonged to “the literary centres of Paris and New York.” (Ibidem) , but now national identities have been transforming their concepts. This world phenomenon has started approximately by the end of the twentieth century and therefore, progressively and positively, countries have become less segregated and more alike. According to Boehmer (1995, p. 243), “the multivoiced migrant novel gave vivid expression to theories of the ‘open’, indeterminate text, or of transgressive, non-authoritative reading.” As a result, we witness an interest in “the provisional and fragmentary aspects of signification” ( Ibidem ) as well as in “the constructed nature of identity”. ( Ibidem ). Inevitably, literature has turned into a new direction that has to do with diversity and multiculturalism, and this is an outcome of the sociological changes we have been discussing in this study. Thus, the same way as we see that Liquid Modernity brings a certain feeling of confusion, many of the world’s latest novels also bring about this positive idea of openness and acceptability. As Boehmer (1995, p. 244) also stresses, “postcolonial and postmodern critical approaches cross in their concern with marginality, ambiguity, disintegrating binaries, and all things parodied, piebald, dual, mimicked, always-already borrowed, and ironically secondhand.” Within this great diversity, however, there are (and there will still be for an indefinite time) adversities as to dealing with cultural differences, and these differences must be understood and experienced with a free mind toward the new panorama in which we live. In this sense, Boehmer (1995, p. 245) points out that despite the common experience of empire, cultures in relationship will in some measure always experience difficulty in completely understanding one another. If carelessly expressed, a perception such as this can risk resurrecting the old idea that East must remain East, and West 14 West. My claim, I must therefore clarify, is not that a society is necessarily enclosed within the scaffolding of its own values and preconceptions. Rather what interests is the partial opacity to one another of different conceptual worlds and the importance of trying to clear up that opacity to some degree with diligent research and applied understanding. Our current frenetic environment is, therefore, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there is an increase of possibilities and the breaking of old concepts and cultural or geographical barriers (such as prejudice, for instance), which has to do with multiculturalism and people living in better harmony. On the other hand, there might also be a lack of guidance to social patterns or, more drastically, a tendency to intolerance, which according to Walkowitz (2009), is more often linked to minority cultures in literature. Humans have never felt so lost with such an abundance of information. Thus, freedom (or the eternal search for it) may be a positive outcome of the modern world, but it is difficult to gauge if there is a healthy limit to it. With this regard, Bauman (2000) states: 'Being thrown on one's own resources' augurs mental torments and the agony of indecision, while 'responsibility resting on one's own shoulders' portends a paralysing fear of risk and failure without the right to appeal and seek redress. This cannot be what 'freedom' really means; and if 'really existing' freedom, the freedom on offer, does mean all that, it can be neither the warrant of happiness nor an objective worth fighting for. (p. 19) “Mental torments” and “agony of indecision” are quite present in the characters of contemporary literature because of the excess of possibilities, information, and world connections, so we must ask ourselves if there is really such a thing as total freedom or whether having too much freedom is also a type of prison. Increasingly, we witness stories that display insecurity ; not that this component was not there in any other historical period in literature, but as we evolve and change, problems change their perspective and now we see a different kind of insecurity as an outcome of a liquid culture. As Williams (1990, p. 289) points out, this utopian and potentially dangerous freedom is somehow what Orwell was seeking, for he was “one of a significant number of men who, deprived of a settled way of living, or of a faith, or having rejected those which were inherited, find virtue in a kind of improvised living, and in an assertion of independence.” However, “there is no other way to pursue the liberation but to 'submit to society' and to follow its norms” (Bauman, 2000, p. 20), but what norms? 15 When we submit to society, all forms of human manifestations subconsciously fit into the new established values. It is not different in literature, as Williams (1990) states: an essential hypothesis in the development of the idea of culture is that the art of a period is closely and necessarily related to the generally prevalent ‘way of life’, and further that, in consequence, aesthetic, moral and social judgements are closely interrelated. (p. 130) The big issue today is to understand whether we have a prevalent ‘way of life’ or if we are living in an adjustable limbo. For instance, if we think about how religion interferes in our culture, we could also think that it is not only the beliefs – in the sense of faith in a greater divine God – that are relevant but a wider sense of what it means to be part of a religion. Regarding what we understand as Western Christian values, Williams shows how T. S. Eliot’s essay The Idea of a Christian Society (1940) depicts the way these standards mold us to live according to what seems like a judicious behavior. Williams (1990, p. 232) states that the essay’s chief matter is “to distinguish a Christian idea of society from other ideas with which it has become entangled, or by which it is evidently denied.” (p. 230). However, what often happens today is that socially established patterns are turned into the lack of patterns and a feeling of uncertainty. To show this uncertainty in a practical example, we underline Paul Auster’s novel Invisible (2009). The main character Adam Walker usually does not seem to be under the control of his life as in the case of the friendship he develops with Prof. Rudolf Born. Although he has second thoughts about whether he could or could not rely on Born, he continues to build a relationship with him. He also builds a relationship with Prof. Born’s partner Margot, as he cannot avoid his feelings for her. Moreover, he builds an incestuous affair with his sister Gwyn. He knows this is considered immoral but does it anyway. He does not succeed in making sure that he is living the right way . There is this idea that the world commands us (not the other way around), leads our paths, and that things happen by chance. To a certain extent, the author is saying that people have different views on things, interpretations of life are variable, and we cannot be completely certain about all facts. In other words, truth is relative. In this sense, Bauman (2000) presents two social types of individual: “there is a wide and growing gap between the condition of individuals de jure and their chances to become individuals de facto - that is, to gain control over their fate and make the choices they truly desire.” (p.39) These observations have to do with freedom. By feeling that he is not under the control of his life, Adam 22 Smith’s engagement with a broad range of themes and eclectic writing style has made it difficult for scholars to define exactly how Smith’s novels should be categorized. Critics who observe Smith’s indebtedness to writers such as Forster or Woolf associate Smith’s work with the British literary tradition and others who identify with her engagement of postcolonial themes of cultural alienation and exile relate her work with the Black British literary tradition. (p. 4) Truth is that it is not necessary to label a writer into a single category, as they have many different facets to be addressed. This is an expected result of a miscellaneous set of literary influences and ideas. This multiplicity also has to do with globalization, as we now have access to a much wider amount of information, bringing about reflections on themes that didn’t use to be part of certain groups and now affect, even if indirectly, a greater spectrum of people worldwide. So Smith herself and her work is already a proper example of our modern and diverse reality. She addresses, for instance, the life of characters who have to deal with racism, xenophobia, or other types of prejudice, as we often witness in the migrant characters, and at the same time, she may also address classical literary characteristics such as Woolf's stream of consciousness (as in NW ) or Forster’s inner and individual matters of the characters (as in On Beauty ). With regard to the global and multicultural spectrum of her work, everything started already before the author was born, for she is the daughter of an English father and a Jamaican mother. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020). Likewise, we could say that in White Teeth (2000) there is a certain autobiographical element, for instance, in the character of Irie, who is the daughter of the Englishman Archie Jones (a British war veteran just like her real father Harvey Smith) with her Jamaican (like her Jamaican mother) spouse Clara Bowden. However, as Walters (2008, p. 2) states, “Smith rejected the multicultural title ascribed to her and repeatedly in articles she expressed discontent with the label. While others praised White Teeth, Smith was highly critical of the novel calling it ‘a fat and messy kid’”. In her point of view, she had still a lot to learn in the art of writing, a reasonable observation since she was only twenty-five years old when the novel was first published. But the fact is that although the book doesn’t define her style as a whole, it worked as a spur to continue writing about similar matters, even if with distinct perspectives, in some of her subsequent novels, such as On Beauty (2005) and NW (2012). One of these matters is undoubtedly multiculturalism, which connects to Bauman’s Liquid Modernity . (Although this is not the only topic related to Bauman’s studies). Nevertheless, she should never be reduced (as any other writer shouldn’t either) to a limited spectrum, but at the same time, we 23 understand that writers follow a certain line of thought that is built throughout their works. This line is also defined by their previous experiences as readers. Influenced by classic writers such as Charles Dickens, E. M. Forster, Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Kafka, Zora Neale Hurston, and Virginia Woolf, Smith has built a significant foundation in the process of shaping her literary identity. In this sense, Walters (2008, p. 2) states that she was “exposed to an eclectic mix of literature ranging from C. S. Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to the Bible’s Old Testament ”. As a matter of fact, she displays some overt references to Forster’s Howards End (1910) in the novel On Beauty (2005), as we will discuss in the next part. As to the contemporary writers, she is most commonly related to Salman Rushdie, especially in Midnight’s Children (1980) and The Satanic Verses (1989), as we will observe later on. In addition, she also relates to a whole new wave of writers who appeared at the end of the millennium and who began to formulate a new postmodern concept in literature filled with dualities and a mixture of styles, resultant from the diversity of the chaotic modern world. In this sense, David Marcus (2013) states: The literature of the 1990s and early 2000s was a catchall of voices and styles: experimental and staid, high and low, monumental and grotesque— often all at once. While an older generation of novelists—Peter Carey and Philip Roth, J.M. Coetzee and Ian McEwan, Toni Morrison and Barry Unsworth—retreated to history, choosing to fictionalize the past rather than be consumed by the present, a new group of avant-gardists—Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, and Zadie Smith—tried their hand at the now. Inspired by the speculative fiction of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, they sought to write the next BIG NOVEL: fiction capacious enough to contain the wide girth of post–Cold War capitalism. (p. 67) Authors such as Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, and Dave Eggers have in common with Zadie Smith the feature of writing ambitious novels filled with references and showing great skills of knowledge in complex combinations of words and ideas. However, this may have put her sometimes in a tricky position when it comes to the literary critics of her work. According to Ammara Khan (2014, n.p.), “Smith was celebrated for her narrative technique with her debut novel, White Teeth, but since then some readers have had a love-hate relationship with her unique style. The form-content argument often comes up in discussions about her work.” For Marcus (2013, n.p.) this greatness in narrative technique might often compromise the element of humanity, that is to say, the proximity with human emotions and with reality, with the world 24 as it is . Therefore, he upholds that it gets harder for the reader to build a strong connection with the character’s emotions, since the story is so concerned with presenting information, getting too technical and resulting in an unbalance between emotions and aesthetic ideas. Truth is that the majority of the predominantly negative reviews written by Khan (2014, n.p.), Marcus (2013, n.p.), and others about Smith's work were actually spurred on by the harsh criticism pointed by James Wood in his article published in 2001 in the American magazine The New Republic . He coined the term hysterical realism that refers to a group of contemporary authors such as Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers, and some other names which include Zadie Smith. According to him, they present the similar feature of giving more attention to writing techniques and thorough investigations rather than to the feelings and human elements of the characters. These elements would be the real meaning of literature: not to inform, but to entertain the reader and make them feel . In his viewpoint, “storytelling has become a kind of grammar in these novels” (Wood, 2000, n.p.) focusing too much on the structure. As a result, he believes that there is “an awkwardness about character and the representation of character. Stories, after all, are generated by human beings, and it might be said that these recent novels are full of inhuman stories” ( Ibidem ). In this sense, Marcus (2013, n.p.) states that James Wood perhaps best captured this line of criticism in his 2000 review of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth . The problem with “hysterical realism,” as he called it, was not only that it imitated the world around it too closely but that it also confused motion for vitality, narrative acrobats for emotional complexity, catalogues of facts for the drama of knowing. (p. 68, our italics). Regarding Wood’s criticism, Smith herself has written an article in response. Firstly, she humbly accepts the term and even agrees partially with the idea by saying that it is a painfully accurate term for the sort of overblown, manic prose to be found in novels like my own White Teeth and a few others he was sweet enough to mention. These are hysterical times; any novel that aims at hysteria will now be effortlessly outstripped - this was Wood's point, and I'm with him on it.” (Smith, 2001). 25 However, by no means should we discredit the beauty and greatness of this style that is a result of a different time in history; this is probably the result of our complex and chaotic world, which is completely different from the one where classic writers from the eighteenth and nineteenth century used to live. In addition, Smith makes the wise observation that it is too vague and generalizing to ascribe a single term to so many authors. Accordingly, we believe that every writer has their own style. In this sense, it is a sloppy and overly simplistic statement to put all these authors in the same category (and such a negative one), trying to create some kind of literary movement that includes some quite important names in literature. In this sense, she states that: any collective term for a supposed literary movement is always too large a net, catching significant dolphins among so much cannable tuna. You cannot place first-time novelists with literary giants (…) some of the writers who got caught up with me are undeserving of the criticism. (Smith, 2001). Some of these writers who do not deserve the criticism in Smith's viewpoint are for instance Wallace, DeLillo, and Pynchon. And she continues by highlighting that "we cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are”. Thus, every single person has their distinct capacities. If these capacities are sometimes considered too inhuman , let us remember that, regardless of who did it, they were humans too. To complement her argument, Smith exemplifies it with DeLillo’s novel White Noise (1985) and underscores the big influence of television and media on our modern culture. The good thing is that there are still writers doing some kind of art that is less close to the more commercial forms: He argues against silence and intellectual obfuscation. He says: tell us how it feels. Well, we are trying. I am trying. But as DeLillo dramatised (again, in White Noise), it is difficult to discuss feelings when the TV speaks so loudly; cries so operatically; seems always, in everything, one step ahead. Yet people continue to manage this awesome trick of wrestling sentiment away from TV's colonisation of all things soulful and human, and I would applaud all the youngish Americans - Franzen, Moody, Foster Wallace, Eggers, Moore - for their (supposedly) small but, to me, significant triumphs. They work to keep both sides of the equation - brain and heart - present in their fiction.” (Smith, 2001). 26 Moreover, Smith has shown great skill in depicting emotions and connecting with the reader in many ways throughout her writing career, to the point that Wood himself made lots of compliments to her novel NW (2012), for example. Marcus (2013) also believes that as she has continued with other novels, she has found in her narratives a wider set of literary styles, such as in On Beauty (2005), a novel that differently from White Teeth ’s alleged acrobatics, presents us the inner and individual issues and reflections of the characters in a way that is closer to the reader. But even in White Teeth , she already presented connections to the characters' emotions, such as Irie's platonic love for Millat or Samad's internal battles for following Muslim dogmas strictly. Wood's term seems, then, somewhat exaggerated and carries with it a quite negative connotation to a book so rich and so important to contemporary English literature. His criticism is perhaps only useful in explaining that Smith's novel has such a strong social and political element that it may at times have brushed aside the characters' internal dramas. However, we do not see this as a failure; it is a matter of style and the focus on which the story is placed. Moreover, let us not forget that art is subjective and, therefore, it will always be subject to different interpretations. Therefore, the opinion of one single literary critic must always and inevitably be seen as an individual perception. White Teeth 's ambition has reached much more positive than negative goals. It is a novel that has opened the doors to the continuity of Smith's work and thus, the wide range of different subject matters in the novel was the initial step for her to go deeper into these and other matters in her subsequent stories. Her novels, which we will discuss in the next part, bring a fruitful range of reflections, not only to the literature of migration but to other social and political matters as well as human factors such as family, love, prejudice, and other challenges of modern life. 2. The Narratives Although in academic papers Smith is most commonly related to the Literature of Immigration (and it is important to highlight that even inside the spectrum of immigration there are several pathways to follow), there is a much broader range of themes to be discussed in her novels and short stories. In this sense, the interpretation of any text is always composed of distinct layers and the same story can be addressed through different angles. To give an example, if we take a classic novel such as Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) we can say that it is about the cultural differences between Jamaica and England, which, to a certain extent, has to do with colonialism. However, we could also state that the story is about a woman who 27 wants to be loved, or also that it is about the process of a woman losing her sanity or about a marriage falling apart, or about the negative effects of chauvinism in a relationship, or about the role of dowries in building a family at that time, or about the rewriting of Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847), and so on, and so forth. These are all possibilities that depend on one thing only: perspective . All in all, everything comes down to how you are looking at something, to what element of the story one wants to see, and go deeper into studying. It is not different from any other author or novel. Just as we chose in this study to connect Bauman's Liquid Modernity to Smith’s work (especially in White Teeth and NW ), there are several angles through which we can see an account and also many other ways to relate these angles. In this topic, then, we are going to address some of these possibilities in her work. However, since we are going to study White Teeth (2000) and NW (2012) with a more intent examination, these two novels are going to be, for now, just rapidly presented so that in the third chapter we can give them more focused attention. Within this wide range of possible perspectives, we could state, for instance, that White Teeth (2000) “chronicles the lives of best friends Archie Jones, a down-on-his-luck Englishman whose failed suicide attempt opens the novel, and Samad Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim who struggles to fit into British society.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020). With that said, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal are the first representation of multiculturalism in the story. The friendship between an English and a Bengali is, to a certain extent, the basis of the narrative, and the fact that they come from different nations (colonizer England and colonized India) is directly related to the focus of this study. NW (2012), for its part, connects to Liquid Modernity in other themes. Whereas White Teeth (2000) has to do with multiculturalism and postcolonialism, NW (2012) has to do with social inequality and how it interferes in the urban life of Northwest London, a place that is common to both novels. According to Marcus (2013), “one might see NW as a consolidation of the exuberant sense of invention in White Teeth and Autograph Man with the ethical realism of On Beauty ” (p. 72, our italics). In this sense, NW (2012) shows not only a different perspective as also a greater sense of sensibility towards the character’s inner and psychological matters. As to her second novel, The Autograph Man (2002) , she presents the life of Alex-Li Tandem, a man who sells and fakes autographs, depicting existential reflections about the vanities of modern life in a narrative that “deals with Jewish mysticism and celebrity obsession.” (Walters, p. 2). But the novel is also about grief and religion, as we witness the character of Alex employing the practices of Zen Buddhism to go through the process of accepting the loss of his father, a man who died quite young 28 and unexpectedly (in a wrestling match), at the age of thirty-six. According to Beatriz Zapata (2020), the novel establishes a parallelism between Li-Jin’s struggle and the event of the wrestling match, contrasting his quiet death against the spectacle of fame. But in the novel, Li-Jin’s death takes centre stage and will be the defining event in Alex’s life and narrative.” (p. 283) Therefore, there is an element of criticism and a sad irony for the main character. The irony is that Alex makes false autographs and is obsessed with celebrities and yet, even having such a strong need (or illusion) of being next to fame, his father’s death acts as a constant reminder that what really matters to him is the non-famous people, his family, the people who are close to him. They are the real basis of his essence and identity. In this sense, fame has now a new aspect. Everyone has the opportunity of reaching it through media exposure by using their smartphones. As Bauman (2000) underscores, “the desired life tends to be life 'as seen on TV'” (p. 84) and so the frequent illusion abovementioned is that “it is the lived life that seems unreal” (Ibidem) . Thus, it is also a story about the nebulosity of reality and the futility that often operates in our modern and capitalist world. Smith has developed a great sense of creation with her first two novels (Marcus, 2012, p. 69) and then, she has put into practice other of her literary elements in works such as On Beauty (2005), a novel that is considered one of her best works until now. The book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, one of the most important literary prizes for books in the English language, and won the Orange Prize for fiction in 2006. (Penguin Random House, n. d.). It is "a campus novel that focuses on questions of aesthetics, politics, and identity" (Walters, p. 3) and which depicts an interracial family living the challenging experiences of cultural difference in the fictional university town of Wellington, changing now the scenario from White Teeth ’s England to the also global reality of the United States. As James Lasdun (2005) once pointed out, Smith displays “a style at once flexible enough to give voice to the multitude of different worlds it contains, and sturdy enough to keep the narrative from disintegrating into a babel of incompatible registers.” Therefore, her third novel continues to follow a style that portrays the diversity of the beautiful yet chaotic modern life. However, there is a new turn concerning her debut novel: 29 White Teeth had a similarly heterogeneous cast, but whereas in that novel Smith kept it together by keeping it light, with a knockabout comic style (Dickens, by way of Rushdie and Martin Amis), here the intent is to live more inwardly with her characters, and the model, alluded to throughout, is E. M. Forster. (Lasdun, 2005). In this sense, Smith demonstrates the characteristic of being volatile in depicting similar matters with different perspectives. Connecting her first book with Rushdie and her third with E. M. Forster is in fact an evidence of this volatility. Rushdie, as we will see hereafter, has a style of brooding humor and melodramatic prose, usually offering a nonlinear timeline, connecting different historical events with situations in the story, as we also witness in White Teeth (2000). Moreover, there are also many resemblances between White Teeth (2000) and On Beauty (2005). Just as in her first, her third book depicts the rivalry between two families that come from different cultural and religious backgrounds and at the same time become intertwined throughout the story, creating a certain paradox of simultaneous distance and proximity. Thus, many characters become friends, despite their differences – a positive outcome of multiplicity. As to the references to Forster’s Howards End (1910) in Smith’s On Beauty (2005), what we see is a resemblance in style in the opening sections, because just as the letters from the character Helen to her sister in Howards End (1910), we witness the emails from the character Jerome to his father in Smith’s On Beauty (2005). In addition, there is the bequeathing of a valuable piece of art from one family to another. Howards End is the name of their old inherited house that is left by Ruth Wilcox to Margaret Schlegel and similarly, in Smith's novel Carlene leaves Kiki a treasured painting. (Hay, 2008) In this sense, Lasdun (2005, n.p.) asserts that “the unruly Belseys, like Forster's Schlegels, become embroiled with another family whose conventional household seems the stolid opposite of their own”. According to him, the connection is “in everything from the stately scene-setting passages (particularly where rooms or houses are being evoked) to the most incidental moments” (Ibidem). With a different viewpoint, Randi Saloman (2021, p. 688) states that when “pushing her reader to reimagine difference as an advantage in interpersonal relations, rather than an obstacle, Smith urges us to read both her own and Forster’s novels in this light.” What he upholds, however, is that the novels do not follow the same light of thought and that Smith builds an improper connection with Forster. And then he asserts that “Forster’s ideal is not a globalised world in which individual distinctions are erased , but a world made rich by the conscious realisation of alternatives” (Ibidem, our italics ) . 30 There is here a contradiction in his words. Isn't Smith's feature of reimagining "difference as an advantage in interpersonal relations" a "conscious realisation of alternatives”? In this sense, “individual distinctions” could not be erased by an author who believes in “difference as an advantage”. It does not look assertive to imply that Smith’s globalized world is made by erasing individual distinctions, as it is precisely the opposite: living in plurality does not undermine one's individuality. It may confuse the processes of identification, but individuality is an innate and intrinsic characteristic of each subject. We do not deny the fact that, as Saloman advocates, there are differences between Smith and Forster. However, the novel On Beauty (2005), just as White Teeth (2000) and other of her works, is about living (or trying to live) in harmony with differences, but not ignoring the fact that these differences sometimes bring about certain issues. Although there are issues to be addressed, it does not mean that her work brings a negative view of diversity. It shows a positive view, but also a realistic one. According to Marcus (2013), the turn in style from White Teeth (2000) to On Beauty (2005) was significantly positive, moving to a more humanistic narrative. He underlines that “she did exchange the maximalist experiments of her early work for a more disciplined and more sober realism.” (p. 69). He believes it is “a work of fiction that focused less on “how the world worked” than on “how it felt”. ( Ibidem ) These constructive changes extend to NW (2012), in which we witness the lives of four workingclass English characters who come from the council state of Caldwell in the Northwest of London, hence the title. The novel “satisfies, in many ways, this need for a more sociological and also more experimental realism” as it “boldly returns to the metafictional and maximalist experiments of her early years.” ( Ibidem, our italics) NW (2012) is quite different in form and style in comparison to her previous works. Challenging to the reader, it is experimental and shows other literary components such as stream of consciousness, shifts between first and third person, and screenplay-style dialogue. Not only different in style, the narrative is also innovative in its ambiance, as highlighted by Rachel Cooke (2012, n.p.) when she states that “no one is talking it up as the great metropolitan novel we are all (supposedly) waiting for.” Whereas White Teeth (2000), On Beauty (2005), or even The Autograph Man (2002) portray a wider spectrum of life in a way that draws our attention to the mechanisms of the modern world as a whole, NW (2012) gives us a closer look to the characters (as in stream of consciousness), to language and linguistic factors, and to how human interactions operate in people who come from the "same" place, which would be the Estate Council where they live in London. Accordingly, the novel is set in "a 31 universe away from the roaring, schematic book of her male counterparts" (Ibidem) such as Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, or Jonathan Franzen. With regard to her short stories, Grand Union (2019) is an untraditional collection perhaps difficult to decipher. It depicts a whole set of distinct subjects with a vertiginous style filled with references to several layers of knowledge. The American writer Rumaan Alam (2019) makes harsh criticism to the work in his review, stating that some of the tales may in fact “feel more like feints than stories” (p. 42) and that “there is no sense of movement or engagement with anything” (Ibidem). On the other hand, he also complements some of its accounts, namely The Lazy River, Sentimental Education, Kelso Deconstructed and For The King, affirming that they stand “in contrast to Smith’s handful of experiments, showing what this author is capable of doing with a few thousand words.” (Ibidem) Afterward, the succinct book Martha and Hanwell (2005) presents us two short stories namely Martha, Martha , and Hanwell in Hell. In the former, Martha is an English-Nigerian looking for a place to rent in Massachusetts, USA and thus she makes the acquaintance of Pam Roberts, the realtor who helps her in her search. As to the latter, the story is about Clive Black, a man who is recounting to Claire Hanwell how he met her father, Mr. Hanwell, addressing themes such as race and gender issues. In this sense, Anna Kozak (2014, p. 1) states that “Clive presents a phallocentric perspective by silencing females and describing the non-white races as the ‘Other’.” Then, just as many of her previous works, the novella (or perhaps a longer short story ) The Embassy of Cambodia (2013) is set in the modern and diverse Northwest London. It was originally published in The New Yorker and although it is not very often spoken about, it displays many of Smith's best qualities in storytelling. Differently from her long and wide novels or her rapid and peculiar short stories, this account depicts the life of Fatou, an old maid who works for a rich Asian family and eventually goes secretly to a pool club using guest tickets she steals from her employers. But what most strikes us in her character is strength and resilience. We come across someone who is not the typical victimized refugee, bringing us a brilliantly forward-looking side to this stigma. (Doughty, 2013). Khan (2014, n.p.) asserts that in this work “the Joycean fragmentation of NW is replaced by Forsterian impeccable prose reminiscent of On Beauty ” (our italics) showing, in a smaller version, the right dose of different subjects. In this sense, “if we look at the ideological significance of the story we'll find issues as diverse as power and inequality, religion and the limits of human empathy, death, and genocide, human suffering and alienation” ( Ibidem ) displaying once more an amplitude of themes. 38 and neocolonial cartography of the city of London is metonymically contained in the space of the hotel’s kitchen.” However, as the other writers mentioned hitherto, Ali also displays her individual features. Whereas Smith’s White Teeth (2000) presents a tragicomic style often with an ironic reference to real events, Ali’s novel acquaints us with multiculturalism compressed in a single room of a building and also with the ingredient of mystery: the homicide of a worker in the kitchen’s basement as the center of the plot. Accordingly, there are distinct paths chosen to represent migration. Not only in In the Kitchen (2009) but especially in Alentejo Blue (2006), Ali portrays the migratory process in “other routes and other places within Europe that remind us that the migratory movements are themselves more heterogeneous and multiple than the traditionally considered ones based on centre/periphery models.” ( Ibidem ) Therefore, in the age of diaspora and liquid society, everyone connects and disconnects; people shift from their original zones in a less obvious context. Differently from the Bangladeshi and Caribbean going to England in Smith’s White Teeth (2000), what we see here is people from the center searching for new horizons in other countries ( periphery ) such as the small village in Portugal shown in Alentejo Blue (2006). It is an utterly different scenario from the one we observe, for instance, in Ishiguro’s abovementioned A Pale View of Hills (1982). The novel “takes aim at British stereotypes about Japanese character, at assumptions about the tranquility and desirability of English rural life for Asian immigrants, and at immigrant and native fantasies of pastoral ‘Englishness’ rooted in soil and blood.” (Walkowitz, 2009, p. 224). In this sense, the novel addresses migration to rural England, differently from Smith’s urban scenarios. Other distinct subjects are reflected in the book such as war's aftermath, trauma, and differences between Japanese and English mores. Nevertheless, as Michael Molino (2012, p. 323) highlights, the novel also “resembles other twentieth-century novels that shift between specific moments in a character’s experience and memories of past moments vividly, faintly, or problematically recalled” as in some novels abovementioned. Thus, again we perceive simultaneous differences and similarities between these writers. In this sense, a writer might be influenced by others but might also draw discussions that were already brought before without even being aware of it. However, regardless of the writers’ awareness or unawareness of previous registers, novels (as well as any other texts) are, to a certain extent, always re- 39 writings, re -inventions and thus, every text is an intertext. In his classic essay The Death of the Author , Roland Barthes (1977) states that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single “theological” meaning (the “message” of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture. (p. 146). Therefore, when Smith, Ishiguro, Rushdie, or any other author writes, they are inevitably putting into words the ideas that they have developed through the readings of previous writers. And not only writers but also anyone, regardless of who they are, can potentially influence others since we live in a world of constant social interactions that build our discourse. Nevertheless, even though Barthes believes that writing and creator are completely unrelated, each person writer has their individualities that make one text different from another, as we see in these authors. But they vary more in tone and style rather than subject matter. Similarly, Matei Calinescu (1997) highlights that the repeated reading of certain classics over time generates the idea of rewriting them and, more importantly, that rewriting ideally asks for rereading, or for the kind of attention that is characteristic of reflective rereading, both in regard to the master text and to the text that is derived from it. (p. 243) So when Smith rewrites Forster in On Beauty (2005) in its postmodern approach, the only difference between any other novel that is not apparently influenced by some great author or by anyone is that these influences are not explicit but implicit. Accordingly, postmodern novels usually show an explicit reference to literary classics, creating new models of re-signifying previous texts and demystifying the fact that all writing is a form of re-writing. These and other novels portray, among other things, the issues of the globalized world in which the concept of distance and time develops a new look and a representation of a liquid society in which everything moves constantly. Salman Rushdie, for instance, also displays these global relations with his peculiarities. According to Russell King et al (2003), his writing shows 40 what it is like to be a post-colonial cosmopolitan, whilst not ignoring the wider histories and geographies of migration and diaspora. As well as demonstrating the globalisation of migration—in which a move from middle-class Bombay to London may be less of a cultural jolt than a migration from a remote Welsh hamlet to London—Rushdie also, tragically, provokes the global backlash of religious fundamentalism. (p. 7). Globalization of migration and religious fundamentalism are both themes portrayed in Smith’s literature and are, to a certain extent, connected. They are intertwined because as we have said before, religious fundamentalism is spurred on by factors such as crumbling traditions (as Giddens puts forth) and these, for their part, are a result of a liquid world in which social patterns are gradually becoming more nebulous. The globalization of migration in a liquid reality shows that all contemporary novels are, to some level, interrelated. If literature is a portrait of society and now what we see is a society of steady networks and connections, it is inevitable to keep a territorial culture in a single story, without being influenced by all the constant interactions of the modern world. In other words, we could say that not only London but the whole globe is little by little turning into a single and multicultural place. Therefore, Smith might have more in common to the names mentioned hitherto, but probably many other writers (if not to say any writer) from other countries and other cultures are related to her and vice-versa. With that said, we are now going to present more explicitly the relationship between Bauman’s Liquid Modernity and Smith’s White Teeth (2000) and NW (2012) and how they distinctively connect to this social concept. 41 PART THREE: LIQUID MODERNITY IN WHITE TEETH AND NW 1. White Teeth White Teeth (2000) is an ambitious tragicomic novel that portrays the life of three families – the Jones, the Iqbals, and the Chalfens – crossing through different generations and different cultures in the beautiful and diverse scenario of Willesden, London. Depicting historical events, real-life facts, and political insights, the fiction is often referred to as a family saga , for its wide and long story with many characters, layers, and concerns such as identity, friendship, cultural differences, immigration, urban life, race issues, gender issues, science versus religion, tradition and other matters that relate to our mixed and chaotic modern world. The novel circulates around the friendship between Archie Jones, an English man, and Samad Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim man. They met when they were serving in the Second World War and after many years, they still maintain the bond, often going to O'Connell's, a traditional pub where they chat, relax and reveal to the reader many of their thoughts and opinions towards life. Archie has a daughter with Clara Bowden called Irie and Samad has the twin sons Magid and Millat with his wife Alsana Begum. The third family, lastly presented, is formed by the Jewish and intellectuals Marcus Chalfen, an important professor, his horticulturalist wife Joyce Chalfen and their son Joshua, who studies at the same school as Irie, Magid and Millat. As the story grows and consolidates, the three families intertwine, looking different as social beings but quite similar as human beings in their challenges. It begins with Archibald Jones attempting to commit suicide, as a result of a profound frustration of divorcing his then wife Ophelia, after thirty years of marriage. He tries to die by inhaling the gas from his car, but before reaching his goal he is saved by an unknown butcher who does not want any trouble next to his workplace. After this deliverance, he believes that the world gave him a second chance at life and this is when he meets the much younger Clara Bowden, daughter of a devout Jehovah’s witness, and who, very rapidly, becomes his second wife. (Krolewski, 2019, n. p.). As a Muslim and a Bengali, Samad struggles to maintain his cultural and religious customs to himself on English soil. He is obsessed with the possibility that his great-grandfather is Mangal Pande , a Hindu man from real-life history who was responsible for the first shot of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Samad tries his best to convey the Bengali tradition to their offspring but all his attempts are unsuccessful. In Samad's eyes, ten-year-old Magid looks more promising, and therefore, he sends him 42 back to Bangladesh in the hope that he will keep the family traditions whereas Millat stays in England. (Krolewski, 2019, n. p.). However, what happens is that Magid becomes an atheist keen on the sciences and who is more and more inclined to Englishness. Ironically, rebellious Millat is the one who gets closer to Islam but in a negative way that Samad does not approve, that is to say, being part of a bigoted group of Muslim fundamentalists called Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation (KEVIN). (Krolewski, 2019, n. p.). The Joneses and the Iqbals connect with the Chalfens when Irie and Magid are caught smoking marijuana at school and as a punishment, they have to participate in study sessions at the house of the young Joshua. The couple is quite welcoming and compassionate with Irie, Magid, and Millat at the expense of their own son Joshua, who feels deserted. (Krolewski, 2019, n. p.). Marcus works on a polemical genetical project called FutureMouse in which he inserts chemical cancer-causing agents into the body of a mouse to scrutinize the progression of a tumor in living tissue. By doing this, he believes that he can predict the next steps in the advancement of a tumor in order to prevent complications in real life similar situations. As they become more involved with the Jewish family, Irie and Magid turn out to work for Marcus's project, but his son Joshua decides to rebel against his father by taking part in a radical group of animal rights known as Fighting Animal Torture and Exploitation (FATE). (Krolewski, 2019, n. p.). Meanwhile, after arguing with her mother about her desire of going to Africa, Irie decides to go live with her grandmother Hortense Bowden and Ryan Topps, Hortense's assistant who also lives there. They are very devoted Jehovah's witnesses and strongly believe that the end of the world is coming soon. Although they seem to be narrow-minded, Irie respects them and maintains a healthy relationship in her new address. (Krolewski, 2019, n. p.). Afterward, Irie has intercourse with Millat and then with Magid, becoming pregnant with a baby that represents the last generation in the story. She does not know who the father is and neither does the reader, as this information is open to interpretations. Regardless of who the father is, she starts dating Joshua, who had feelings for her all along. Thus, she decides to live with him and her son in Jamaica. (Krolewski, 2019, n. p.). The story ends at the announcement of the FutureMouse Project on New Year’s Eve of 1992 to 1993, an event to which some of the characters are opposed for distinct personal reasons. Not only Marcus’s son Joshua Chalfen and the FATE group are against the project, but also Millat and KEVIN as well as Hortense Bowden and some Jehovah’s witnesses she brings with her. While they try to sabotage 43 the event, something unexpected happens. Samad realizes that one of the doctors participating in the announcement is Marc-Pierre Perret, or Dr. Sick, who happens to be Marcus’s mentor. (Krolewski, 2019, n. p.). Previously mentioned in the story, he is the doctor whom Archie had to kill in the war but secretly did not, and so this fact is revealed to Samad after many years. Millat tries to shoot the doctor, but Archie jumps in front of him and is struck in the thigh while the FutureMouse escapes from its cage. Since they are identical twins, the witnesses are not able to identify whether the perpetrator of the crime was Millat or Magid and thus both are sentenced to community service. (Krolewski, 2019, n. p.). For being a tragicomedy, the whole story is portrayed throughout the novel with a brilliantly light and meek tone. As Perfect (2014) states, What is perhaps remarkable about the opening pages of White Teeth is that they immediately introduce such weighty issues as madness, divorce, suicide, and being utterly convinced of the pointlessness of one’s own existence, and yet by rendering each of these familiar the tone of the narrative is able to remain unremittingly jovial. (p.84) This idea of pointlessness is directly related to Liquid Modernity , which brings about insecurity as well as the lack of form and values. Therefore, many of the matters depicted throughout this plot are associated with the fact that we now live in a global and multicultural world. A reality without the barriers that it used to have before creates new barriers to a world in which everything changes constantly, resulting in a feeling of chaos. In this sense, we are now going to build these relationships between Smith's novels and Bauman's concept in a pragmatic course. 1.1. Identity, territory, and capitalism ‘And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems like some long, dirty lie … and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?’ (Smith, 2000, p. 407) 44 'Rootedness', if any, can there be only dynamic: it needs to be restated and reconstituted daily - precisely through the repeated act of 'self-distantiation', that foundational, initiating act of 'being in travel', on the road. (Bauman, 2000, p. 209) When we think about identity, inevitably we have to think about location. We think in location because we build our psyche in relation to the environment where we live and the people with whom we interact; this is how our culture is defined. Paradoxically, then, to form our own individualities, we need others to create a parallel of how they are and how we are. However, what we see today is that this range of interactions has extended in unlimited proportions. Even Mars is now aimed by us. Therefore, how can we strongly belong or connect to such a colossal set of available options? In Smith’s quote above, the character speaking is Samad Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim from Bangladesh living in London, England. When our territory changes, we change as well, but without forgetting our former values and education. If we thought about Samad in a different historical period, we could by no means think of him living in another country or even in another city. All types of transportation are precisely the reason for this interaction to happen between two (or more) different cultures. Carriages, cars, boats, or planes, all of them have initiated a process that has never stopped: the process that we can call an expansion of human geography . These and other factors of our modern life form a new kind of capitalism that is wider. In this sense, Bauman (2000) affirms: Under the new circumstances, the odds are that most of human life and most of the human lives will be spent agonizing about the choice of goals , rather than finding the means to the ends which do not call for reflection. Contrary to its predecessor, light capitalism is bound to be value-obsessed. The apocryphal small ad in the 'Jobs sought' column - 'Have car, can travel' - may serve as the epitome of the new problematics of life. (p. 61, our italics). If one has a car and can travel, that means their new dilemma is no longer trying to find a way to transport to another place but to choose what place they are going to. This choice of goals now represents literally the whole world. It is a result of what Bauman explains as a shift from heavy capitalism to light capitalism . In contrast to heavy capitalism of solid modernity, the new obsession in light capitalism is based on value, representing a big change in the way we perceive life. We have 45 already reached a point in which we have not only cars, but many of the things we wanted and so now the preoccupations are about what path to follow. Perhaps Samad does not understand that what prompts his feeling of not belonging anywhere is the fact that we now belong everywhere. Therefore, now more than ever we feel that birthplaces are accidents because since we are born we can potentially be anywhere, and even if for financial reasons one could not be physically in another place, they can virtually. Moreover, trying to fight against the new fashion is pointless, as it is absolutely impossible to avoid such a social phenomenon. Samad’s inquiries about where to go or what to do are agonies about choices of goals ; not literally about what place to go but about what values and social patterns to follow. Thus, he is not finding the means to the ends . As expected, he suffers from the burden of living in a liquid world shifting from heavy capitalism, a period related to order, control, and certainty to light capitalism, our current period of dynamism, freedom (or the illusion of it), and uncertainty. In this sense, Bauman (2000, p. 58) states that in heavy capitalism, “capital was as much fixed to the ground as were the labourers it engaged” whereas “nowadays capital travels light - with cabin luggage only, which includes no more than a briefcase, a cellular telephone and a portable computer.” ( Ibidem ). Exemplifying this with entrepreneurs, we can say that the American Henry Ford represents the former, with his big companies fixed to the ground and employees working in the same place until retirement, whereas Bill Gates represents the latter, with dynamic worldwide companies with no physical bonds (Bauman, 2000). Thus, the act of being in travel that Bauman points out is a non-stop condition and the first action to soften this new existence is consciousness. Being aware of this steady state of changes is essential to our development and therefore to prevent us from a future of ultra-individualistic humans with no standards. However, Samad is oblivious to this predicament. In a state of great bewilderment, he does not understand the wideness of liquid and extraterritorial life. What he tries to do is to collect all the efforts to maintain his previous values, culture, and religion to his twin sons Magid and Millat. The boys, in turn, also share a feeling of rootlessness , as they did not have their parents’ solid education. In fact, they are living and interacting with English people while having traditional Muslim parents from Bangladesh. As a result, these and other characters search for their own identity amidst the chaos of postmodern cosmopolitan London. In this sense, regarding Smith’s writing, Muhammad (2018) puts forth: 46 she has dedicated herself to describing the constant, churning exchange of cultures that renders any concept of identity ultimately unstable. To Smith, identity will always lapse into the impurity of cultural exchange. The hard work is to construct meaning out of that disorder once you realize that the myth of cohesive identities is a crutch. (p. 32, our italics). Especially today, identities are much broader, and this complexity is quite overt in young characters such as Irie, Magid, and Millat. They search for identity, lighting, and acceptance. These teenagers are essentially the pure outcome of a multifaceted world built by the impurity of cultural exchange and the expansion of human geography . With that said, it is valid to observe some of these characters in the novel through the light of Bauman’s contrast between what is solid and what is liquid. 1.2. Solid and Liquid Characters In White Teeth (2000), some of the main characters, normally from the older generations, partially represent Bauman’s Solid Modernity , for having strong and well-determined social values, whereas predominantly the younger ones represent Liquid Modernity , showing dynamism and nebulous social standards. Other characters are more complex and difficult to frame within this range of concepts, therefore staying somewhere between the two poles. Although we know that characters are subjective, we would like to schematically present this parallel with the following charts to give us a notion of how Bauman's concept relates to the human elements in the story. 47 SOLID MODERNITY General Considerations: Clarity of values; they know (or seem to know) exactly what to believe in and how to behave because they have chosen a specific life model to follow. The negative side is that they struggle with the new dynamic reality of the modern world and may often feel like they are falling behind.) Character What makes him/her predominantly solid Samad Iqbal Being perhaps the most solid character in the novel, he wants to keep his Muslim and Bangladeshi conduct by perpetuating it to his offspring. However, to a certain extent, he is also in-between the poles, as he oscillates between his own values and the occidental temptations, especially with regards to sexual desires. Alsana Iqbal (née Begum) Although being in a pre-arranged marriage, she is headstrong and quite certain about her opinions and often disapproves some aspects of western culture. She thinks that some matters of conjugal life are better solved with silence, but does not accept or submit to her husband’s attempts to impose his visions. Magid M. Iqbal Probably the only young character that is more inclined to solidity. Very strongminded, he decides to pursue everything that relates to Englishness . It is the path he follows even without his father’s approval. In fact, he confronts his father’s will to make him a Muslim man. Differently from his brother, he truly identifies with the morals he has chosen. Marcus Chalfen He shows solid dedication to scientific studies. In addition, he has welldetermined principles for being part of a traditional Jewish family. He identifies with Magid's serious and formal style. Joyce Chalfen She also shows solid dedication to science as a horticulturalist. For being also a traditional Jewish like her husband, she worries about the overt lack of direction and sense of duty in Millat’s behavior, trying to save him from what she considers to be negative inclinations. Hortense Bowden Although she is very kind and compassionate to her granddaughter Irie, she represents probably a more negative side of solidity. Because of her inevitable life path in Jamaica, she looks narrow-minded due to her obsession with Judgment Day. Moreover, she is also persuaded by Ryan Topps, a man who lives with her and is also obstinate with religious dogmas. Table 1: Solid Modernity characters 54 Both groups have in common the opposition to the project FutureMouse created by Joshua’s father Marcus Chalfen. They try to identify with the other members, but there is an issue: at some point, they feel divided between their own opinions and the groups’ opinions. This is precisely how one builds their own identity, that is to say, by making their own conclusion towards the world in comparison to the visions from others. It is the discursive approach of identification; it takes time and effort, but it is needed for the process of one’s individuality. Millat tries very hard to have a perfectly solid (probably too solid ) and well-established lifestyle by following four rules created for anyone who wanted to enter KEVIN: 1. To be ascetic in one’s habits (cut down on the booze, the spliff, the women). 2. To remember always the glory of Muhammad (peace be upon Him!) and the might of the Creator. 3. To grasp a full intellectual understanding of KEVIN and the Qur’ān. 4. To purge oneself of the taint of the West. (Smith, 2001, p. 444) However, there was a huge problem: the fourth rule . He was just too fond of the Western culture; and so how could he choose not to like something? It is a matter of taste, an internal feeling. It was too hard for him. As it is pointed out, He knew that he was KEVIN’s big experiment, and he wanted to give it his best shot. In the first three areas he was doing fine. (…) But even as Millat reflected on this with pride in his mother’s hallway, his heart sank. For therein lay the problem. Number four. Purging oneself of the West. Now, he knew, he knew that if you wanted an example of the moribund, decadent, degenerate, over-sexed, violent state of Western capitalist culture and the logical endpoint of its obsession with personal freedoms (Leaflet: Way Out West), you couldn’t do much better than Hollywood cinema. And he knew (how many times had he been through it with Hifan?) that the ‘gangster’ movie, the Mafia genre, was the worst example of that. And yet . . . it was the hardest thing to let go. (Smith, 2001, p. 444-446). Millat grew up having access to a massive content of western entertainment, watching movies, programs, listening to American songs, wearing their clothes, and, of course, living in London and doing 55 most of the things all English people do. With that said, he finds himself in a great conundrum. His difficulty is caused by the strict criteria from the KEVIN group. But he knows what his tastes and habits are. When we say that the group is too solid it is because it does not fit with the liquid world where we live; it is just too strict, too old-fashioned, too closed, and strange. Modern life is filled with dynamism, changes, and it is a time of acceptance, of open minds. That is exactly the opposite of what the Islamic group believes to be the best way to live. It would perhaps be much wiser for the group to change the rules, modernize them, if they wanted to have more participants. On the other hand, that would break their idea of “living with certainties.” Regarding the parallel of being similar or different, Bauman (2000, p. 176) states: “The aspect in which we are all alike is decidedly more significant and consequential than everything that sets us apart from one another; significant enough to outweigh the impact of the differences when it comes to taking a stand.” This is why Millat takes a stand of staying in the group; for the simple reason that it is better to identify with what is similar rather than identifying with what is different. This is, therefore, a type of small community . Thus, the best way to live today (or at least the easiest) is through volatility . This is what Millat does. Although he knows he is in a bigoted religious group, he needs to find his ways of identifying, which has to follow a more malleable approach. This is because the volatility of identities, so to speak, stares the residents of liquid modernity in the face. And so does the choice that logically follows it: to learn the difficult art of living with difference or to bring about, by hook or by crook, such conditions as would make that learning no longer necessary. (Bauman, 2000, p. 178, our italics). The same situation happens with Joshua when he tries to join FATE. It all comes down to community and as Williams (1973) would say, they have always existed. It does not matter if it is a nation-state, a city, or a small group of people. The difference between Millat and Joshua, in this case, is that Joshua chooses to enter the group as a result of not succeeding in identifying with his father, a person with whom he was, in fact, supposed to create a bond. The small community that would be his own family, father and mother, is not doing its job. Since communities are necessary, he tries something else. 56 Nevertheless, just like Millat, he has difficulties in following every single criterion established by the group, especially the fact that he is not certain anymore if what his father does to the mice, for the sake of science, is really such a morally serious mistake. Thus, the reason that prompts Millat and Joshua to have difficulties in building their identity and taking part in communities is quite clear. As Williams (1973, p.165) states, it is because "identity and community became more problematic as a matter of perception and as a matter of valuation, as the scale and complexity of the characteristic social organization increased." That is to say, after globalization and modernization, things have naturally turned wider, and therefore, more liquid . Hence the importance of volatility. When Joshua entered the group he knew, just like Millat knew in KEVIN, that "life for FATE members was difficult, dangerous and punctuated by frequent imprisonment". (Smith, 2001). Still, he wanted to feel part of something, he was searching for identification. However, of course that at some point he would find it quite hard to keep all his opinions in harmony with the group's opinion. Like Millat, he started to develop his own sense of identity, his individuality, and, as a result, starts to question some of the standards of this association. Completely lost, he finds himself divided between the group and his father at the very moment of the attack on the FutureMouse project: So looking at Marcus up there with his magnificent mouse, celebrating the great achievement of his life and maybe of this generation, Joshua can’t stop his own perverse brain from wondering whether it is just possible that he and Crispin and FATE have misjudged completely. That they have all royally messed up. That they have underestimated the power of Chalfenism and its remarkable commitment to the Rational. For it is quite possible that his father will not simply and unreflectingly save the thing he loves like the rest of the plebs. It is quite possible that love doesn’t even come into it. And just thinking about that makes Joshua smile. (Smith, 2001, p. 525). In this sense, Joshua understands that he needs to build his own opinions, his own personal views. He now takes into consideration that maybe he does not agree with all the values from FATE. So, part of who he is apparently may identify with his family. It is a process spurred on by Crispin, the group’s leader. He understood that he did not enjoy hearing other people mocking his family’s peculiarities: 57 Joshua bitterly regretted telling Crispin about this little idiosyncrasy of his family, their habit of referring to themselves as verbs, nouns and adjectives. It had seemed a good idea at the time; give everybody a laugh; confirm, if there was any doubt, whose side he was on. But he never felt that he’d betrayed his father — the weight of what he was doing never really hit him — until he heard Chalfenism ridiculed out of Crispin’s mouth. (Smith, 2001, p. 494). Similarly to Irie and Millat, Smith shows that as Joshua has social interactions, he makes choices, and these choices are what create the discursive processes of identification highlighted by Hall. Magid, on the other hand, seems to be the most solid figure among the young characters or at least, the most certain about his values. As the resolute person that he is, when he goes to O’Connell’s, his father’s favorite traditional Muslim Bar, he asks for a bacon sandwich, knowing that this would be against his father’s religious standards: ‘All right — what about mushrooms and beans? Omelette and chips? No better chips in the Finchley Road. Come on, son,’ he pleaded, desperate. ‘You’re a Muslim, int ya? You don’t want to break your father’s heart with a bacon sandwich.’ ‘My father’s heart will not be broken by a bacon sandwich. It is far more likely that my father’s heart will break from the result of a build-up of saturated fat which is in turn a result of eating in your establishment for fifteen years. One wonders,’ said Magid evenly, ‘if a case could be made, a legal case, you understand, against individuals in the food service industry who fail to label their meals with a clear fat content or general health warning. One wonders.’ All this was delivered in the sweetest, most melodious voice, and with no hint of threat. Poor Mickey didn’t know what to make of it. (Smith, 2001, p. 450-451). Besides having a very well-established process of identity, he knows exactly how to argue against the Muslim command of not eating pork. He knows he does not identify with this rule, followed by his father, and has many arguments against it. In fact, he is much more identified with science and rationality, some of the characteristics he has in common with the Jewish Marcus Chalfen. Differently from Marcus's son, Magid truly identifies with every aspect of his lifestyle. They build a very strong friendship and when Marcus is going to meet him for the first time at the airport, after exchanging letters for a long time, he knows that they are going to continue this striking relationship for the simple 58 reason that they are fond of scientific studies, something that gains the upper hand in matters of faith , in comparison to religious faith: They would save each other. This couldn’t be faith could it, Marcus? He questioned himself directly on this point as he scurried along. For a gate and a half the question unnerved him. Then it passed and the answer was reassuring. Not faith, no, Marcus, not the kind with no eyes. Something stronger, something firmer. Intellectual faith. (Smith, 2001, p. 422, our italics). Magid's process of identification with Marcus Chalfen matches perfectly with the values and ideas he already had because they are similar in many ways. In this sense, although he shows difficulties in connecting with his father Samad, when we compare his process with Joshua's and Irie's, it was much easier for him to find affinities with someone else. 1.2.2. The Volatility of Relationships Some of the agonies created by the choice of goals are also seen in a character that is not young but is quite liquid: Archibald Jones. When he tries to commit suicide – a decision he has made by flipping a coin – his agonies are translated into randomness. In this sense, Archie displays great insecurity towards the capacity of making choices, as other matters in his life are also decided in the same manner. To make such an important choice, which should be the most relevant of one’s life, he chooses to abstain from the responsibility. However, he does not die: The thinnest covering of luck was on him like fresh dew. Whilst he slipped in and out of consciousness, the position of the planets, the music of the spheres, the flap of a tiger-moth’s diaphanous wings in Central Africa, and a whole bunch of other stuff that Makes Shit Happen had decided it was second-chance time for Archie. Somewhere, somehow, by somebody, it had been decided that he would live . (Smith, 2000, p. 4) To his own surprise, he remains alive and however nothing more mattered to him, he meets Clara, a woman who brings him positivity. Just like the randomness chosen by him when flipping a coin, it was also unpredictable that he would meet her. From two completely different realities, they 59 marry, and thus Clara's appearance in Archie's life is, to a certain extent, what prompts him to move on with his second chance in life. The main idea is that things happen by chance and there is no way to control them: A dark line would now be drawn underneath the whole incident, underneath the whole sorry day, had not something happened that led to the transformation of Archie Jones in every particular that a man can be transformed; and not due to any particular effort on his part, but by means of the entirely random , adventitious collision of one person with another. Something happened by accident. That accident was Clara Bowden. (Smith, 2001, p. 23, our italics) Not only is Archie’s salvation random but also other events throughout the story reveal this feature of depicting sudden fluctuations and, although Perfect (2014, p. 78) has stated that many critics point out an “overly predictable” plot, the matter here is not to discuss if the plot is predictable but if the facts were predictable to the characters in the story, and the fact is that they were not. Maybe some readers would already be expecting some events to happen, and this is not necessarily an issue. But the characters did not know these facts. They were random to them. Archie was not expecting that he would live nor that he would marry again. According to Appadurai (2019), “the heart of the new traumas of the forced refugee in the new country is that he/she has a plot (a narrative or a story) but no character, identity, or name.” (p. 1) To a certain extent, this applies not only to refugees but to many people who decide to live in another country. They have a plot, which in this case would be their life, but they search for new processes of identification and these new processes are unplanned. Therefore, it was also random for Clara that she would meet and marry Archie. It is random that she is English. Her mother came from Jamaica to live a new life and so she was born there; she could not know these facts in advance. Like Archie, she also had a past relationship; it was in her adolescence with Ryan Topps: Clara was from somewhere. She had roots . More specifically, she was from Lambeth (via Jamaica) and she was connected, through tacit adolescent agreement, to one Ryan Topps. (…) There was Clara and Ryan for eight months before Clara and Archie were drawn together from opposite ends of a staircase. And Clara might never have run into the arms of Archie Jones if she hadn’t been running, quite as fast as she could, away from Ryan Topps. (p. 27, our italics). 60 In his book Liquid Love , Bauman (2003, p. 6) once highlighted that modern individuals are “despairing at being abandoned to their own wits and feeling easily disposable, yearning for the security of togetherness and for a helping hand to count on in a moment of trouble, and so desperate to ‘relate’”. The biggest issue is that at the same time and paradoxically, they are “wary of the state of ‘being related’” ( Ibidem ). In our case, they did not have many changes in relationships. Archie married twice and Clara had had only one boyfriend before him. However, what we could apply here is the desperation for finding someone to connect with, the striking necessity to have "a helping hand to count on." When they meet, Archie starts to see light in life again and Clara, in her turn, sees her new partner as some kind of savior , someone she needed . Clara was not like Hortense. Yet a residue, left over from the evaporation of Clara’s faith, remained. She still wished for a saviour . She still wished for a man to whisk her away, to choose her above others so that she might Walk in white with Him: for [she] was worthy. Revelation 3:4. Perhaps it is not so inexplicable then, that when Clara Bowden met Archie Jones at the bottom of some stairs the next morning she saw more in him than simply a rather short, rather chubby middle-aged white man in a badly tailored suit. Clara saw Archie through the grey-green eyes of loss; her world had just disappeared, the faith she lived by had receded like a low tide, and Archie, quite by accident, had become the bloke in the joke: the last man on earth. (Smith, 2001, p. 45, our italics). Liquid life demands changes. Life changes and so does Clara. In her process of identity, she feels more comfortable in stopping being a Jehovah's Witness. However, she still has some remnants from her mother's religion, which happen to reflect in her new relationship and in the way she sees her new partner. These were some practical examples of how we see contemporary life through the glasses of Smith’s first novel. As we have said, these are lives lived in multicultural London, a city that properly represents this dynamism, and so, the second novel that we are going to scrutinize is quite connected to White Teeth , but not in terms of the plot; the story is completely different. However, it is a novel that also shows the many facets of modern urban life, this time giving a higher emphasis to the inner matters of the characters. It is, then, to a certain extent, more inclined to psychological elements as opposed to social elements, but also bringing the latter to several discussions. 61 2. NW Elsewhere in London, offices are open plan/floor to ceiling glass/sites of synergy/wireless/gleaming. There persists a belief in the importance of a ping-pong table. Here is not there. Here offices are boxy cramped Victorian damp. Five people share them, the carpet is threadbare, the hole-punch will never be found. (Smith, 2012, p. 31). Hardly ever is work expected to 'ennoble' its performers, to make them 'better human beings’, and rarely is it admired and praised for that reason. It is instead measured and evaluated by its capacity to be entertaining and amusing, satisfying not so much the ethical, Promethean vocation of the producer and creator as the aesthetical needs and desires of the consumer, the seeker of sensations and collector of experiences. (Bauman, 2000, p. 139-140) Smith’s novel NW (2012) connects to Bauman’s Liquid Modernity in different ways in comparison to White Teeth (2000), as the book depicts other subject matters. With that said, we will be focusing now on themes such as work, capitalism, and social inequalities and how this can possibly interfere with human behavior socially and psychologically. When the narrator states that “here is not there”, it is highlighting these inequalities at the same time as it shows that the desire to have a better job can many times be entirely financial due to consumerism, as opposed to working with the goal of evolving ethically and as a human being. In this sense, Marcus (2013, p. 70) states that “while set in the same neighborhood as White Teeth, NW is no longer concerned with the ambiguities of identity but with the clear, determined aspects of inequality: those determinacies born out of where we live and what we do.” The Irish writer Anne Enright (2012, n.p.) also makes a comparison not only with her debut but with all her earlier work. She points out that “Smith’s previous novels have been exuberantly plotted, and were resolved in a highly ‘novelistic’ way. This book is much more tentative and touching in its conclusions.” In this sense, the novel brings an innovative component, not only in its plot but also in language, style, and reflections. What is similar to her other novels is her brilliant “ability to absorb philosophical ideas.” ( Ibidem ). Another difference is the geographical scope. The whole story is set only in a specific part of London, and multiculturalism is there but more as a common fact. Although we also see elements of immigration (such as the character of Michel who’s French-Algerian, Leah’s parents who are Irish, or 62 Natalie's parents who are Jamaican), this is not the only focus. As Smith (The Guardian, 2018, n.p.) has once stated, “a lot of things that happened in England over the past three centuries can be found in north-west London in miniature: enclosure, industrialisation, suburbanisation, immigration, gentrification…” This is not only about how it is the be an immigrant as it is more preoccupied with the matters of characters as individuals , that is to say, with depicting the inner battles of these human beings, regardless of where they come from. As Kristian Shaw (2017, p. 3) underlines, “while the older generation of White Teeth continued a tradition of postcolonial displacement, characterised by a lack of agency and belonging, the protagonists of NW enjoy a more bounded and abiding relationship with the spaces of their locality.” NW is experimental and depicts the lives of four adults living in the urban and poor reality of London, the North West of London. Leah, Natalie (who used to be Keisha before changing her name), Felix, and Nathan are portrayed by using different writing styles, narratives, and techniques, alluding to the multiplicity of modern life and the individuality of the characters. All four figures have in common the place they come from: The Council Estate of Caldwell. What they do not have in common is their paths in life. In this sense, we are able to capture a sort of infinite gap between them, highlighting the idea that inside each person there is a whole unique world. The book is divided into five parts: Visitation, Guest, Host, Crossing, and again Visitation . The first chapter is about Leah Hanwell, a woman who is deceived by a scammer who takes thirty pounds from her, showing her naivety but also her good heart. In addition to this event, we get to know that Leah does not want to get pregnant but keeps this information in secret from her husband Michel by taking contraceptive pills. Besides narrations and dialogues, this first part is also filled with her thoughts which are presented through stream-of-consciousness. Guest is focused on the life of Felix Cooper. He used to be a drug addict but since he met his new girlfriend Grace, a very positive person, he now wants to live a new life that is filled with plans and ambitions. However, he is tragically killed in an armed robbery. With regards to the literary style, we could say this chapter is closer to a classical approach, as it is told in third-person narratives and dialogues, however without dashes. The chapter Host displays the life of Leah’s old friend Keisha/Natalie Blake, a very determined and strong-minded woman who has reached all her personal goals, especially in her professional life as a barrister. Natalie is married to Frank, also a successful man, and has two children with him. Her life seems perfect in the eyes of Leah, who secretly envies her social ascension. Nevertheless, Natalie 63 somehow feels a great emptiness that prompts her to betray her husband with online sexual partners. What is perhaps most peculiar in this chapter is the form, as it is all told through small, numbered sections of distinct events from her life. Crossing is dedicated to what happens after Frank finds out about Natalie’s betrayals. Natalie becomes desperate and lost, wandering on the streets of her old neighborhood, worried about what to do next. She is about to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge, but Nathan Bogle, a former classmate who became a drug addict, finds her and avoids it. While interacting with him, Natalie starts to suspect that he is apparently involved in some kind of dishonorable business. Finally, in the last chapter Visitation Leah’s husband Michel finds out about the pills Leah has been taking. He struggles to understand why she did not tell him. He calls Natalie who goes to their home and talks to Leah. In their conversation, besides talking about Leah’s struggle with her husband they also talk about Nathan and the fact that he is probably involved in the armed robbery that killed Felix. In sequence, the story ends when they decide to inform the police about Nathan. It is worth noting a peculiar theme addressed in the book: time. As we read the story, we feel that there is a constant feeling of nostalgia , as the book switches from past and present moments, showing how the past influences the characters’ present life or future perspectives. There is also the idea of how moments in life seem to last in childhood, almost like time would pass more slowly, whereas in adult life, as we get older and consumed by so many obligations and interactions, time seems much faster and more dynamic, to a point in which we feel like we are constantly reminded of our path towards death. As Enright (2012, n.p.) underlines, even the language, especially in Leah’s chapter, is presented with short sentences to give us the notion of our "modernist anxiety about one thing following another, about the ticking of the clock.” Another interesting component in the novel is that, similarly to White Teeth (2000), the story does not present us with a grand finale filled with surprises and mind-blowing plot twists; that kind of ending most readers expect. Designedly, the book holds the postmodern feature of depicting life as it is . Although it is a fiction, the events and themes presented are quite common to ordinary life. It is realistic (and therefore, closer to the modernists’ aspirations of realism) in the sense that life is much more complex than what those classical fictions with predictable beginning, middle, and end show us. And this is not a criticism of any other literary movement, just a statement about their differences. Because of this style, the book brings us closer to social reflections, almost like some kind of sociological novel . Hence, the link to matters brought about by Bauman, Williams, and others. In this 70 “They always say ‘youth’ don’t they?” said Phil and stopped once more, halfway down the stairs, in a thoughtful pose. Felix leaned against the handrail and waited, though he had heard this speech many times. “Never the boys from the posh bit up by the park, they’re just boys, but our lot are ‘youths,’ our working-class lads are youths, bloody terrible isn’t it? They come round here, Felix (…) the police come round here asking after our kids (not our kids, literally, obviously our kids are long gone) but the community’s kids, looking for information, you know. Save their big houses on the park from our kids! It’s shameful, it really is.” (Smith, 2012, p. 114-115) And here we point out two sad ironies related to Felix’s life story. The first is that his brother Devon has once committed a crime. Although he knows that it is a prejudice to call the young boys from his area as youth – a pejorative term in comparison to the term boy – his brother was, in fact, a criminal. However, it is indeed quite shameful to know that the police are selective in this sense. It denounces a reality of prejudice towards all the community’s kids , for they classify them in one single category. As Phil says, they need to save their big houses on the park at the expense of a whole group of young people, often destined to failure. In this sense, we come down to the second fatal irony: Felix himself is killed as a victim of a crime that was committed by a man from his own community. This event displays the vulnerability, built in a cycle. The same way as his brother did not behave properly by breaking the social rules, Felix suffered because of another person from the same area who also did not behave properly. In the end, it is more than clear that people have different opportunities and that everyone is vulnerable, including their peers. He has had his savior Grace (even her name Grace is allusive in this sense), but he has also had his dis grace, which is allegedly connected to a crime in which Nathan Bogle was involved. On the other hand, we could look at this tragedy as the inevitability of the risk. It is not good to die, of course; no one would desire death unless something was wrong. Nevertheless, the modern concept of total freedom is not able to give anyone total security, because this would imply living in a different type of imprisonment, like some sort of closed city where people would have the control of who enters and who leaves (similar to George Hazeldon’s city abovementioned). With regards to community, Bauman (2000) highlights: 71 In the long and inconclusive search for the right balance between freedom and security, communitarianism stood fast on the side of the latter. It also accepted that the two cherished human values are at odds and cross-purposes, that one cannot have more of one without surrendering a bit, perhaps even a large chunk, of another. (p. 182). In other words, to be completely free also means to take risks. Historically speaking, violence has always existed. There was never a period in which people could be certain that they would go out on the streets and come back alive. Therefore, there is no other way to live other than choosing between freedom and security. However, it is also true that when we live in an underprivileged area, the probability of suffering from crime is higher. This is another result of capitalism, a world in which the rich have access to neighborhoods that are more protected by law enforcement (and also by surveillance apparatuses). But although he is a victim, the striking element of compassion (somehow similar to Leah’s) appears when he looks at the robbers. He understands that those people are the result of a difficult life of little opportunities and compares them to his past life of drugs and no perspective: “Listen, I ain’t giving you nothing. Nothing!” He found himself on the pavement. As he got back up on his knees he heard one of them say, “Big man on the train. Ain’t the big man now.” And instead of fear, a feeling of pity came over him ; he remembered when being the big man was all that mattered. He reached into his pockets. They could have his phone. (…) They could have it all. Everything he cared about was elsewhere. (Smith, 2012, p. 171, our italics). After boldly saying that he was not going to give them his belongings, his thoughts denounce the cycle abovementioned; a constant cycle of how it is to be vulnerable. Once he was worried about being a big man working in the film industry, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to ascend. But then he remembers that he has Grace, the woman he so truly loves. He puts a world of consumerism at a lower category of relevance in comparison to his personal realization because everything he cared about was elsewhere. In this sense, he goes through a moment of lightning. Thus, although he is constantly reminded about how destitute he is, at the end of his life he is saved from this stigma, he breaks through this concept and goes beyond, understanding what is really important. The “wealth to which he is denied ” (Shaw, 2017, p. 11) is no longer an issue. 72 2.4. Nathan Bogle: Finitude versus Expectations It is interesting to think that in the two last chapters of the novel, we observe a considerable opposition between two characters: Natalie Blake and Nathan Bogle. Natalie here represents success and ascension whereas Nathan symbolizes failure and despair. Nathan lives such a miserable life that he does not even have the chance to be properly portrayed in the book. The reader does not know much about him, and this may have been done purposefully to demonstrate the idea of how useless he seems to be towards others, towards society. That does not mean, however, that he is not relevant to the story. On the contrary, his role is essential in many ways. Leah, for instance, used to be in love with Nathan when she was a teenager, allowing us to confirm her introspective side since he never knew about. Moreover, Natalie meets him after going out of her home trying to clear her head of her husband's discovery of her secret online affairs. Nathan is also an element of linkage in the plot, as he is potentially related to the crime of killing Felix. Of course he certainly does not know any of these things; what he thinks is that he is not worth the effort. In fact, Nathan himself is constantly denouncing his failure, as when he states: “I’m looking at myself asking myself Nathan why you still here? Why you still here? And I don’t even know why. I ain’t even joking. I should just run from myself.” (Smith, 2012, p. 312). Therefore, if we consider Han’s idea of the society of achievement , he is the utter representation of the opposite of what is the ideal modern lifestyle. For not achieving his goals, for not being productive, he feels guilty and inferior – he did not reach his own (nor the society’s) expectations. Accordingly, the conclusion is that no one is free from this sort of model in which we need to be always and steadily pressuring ourselves to be better and better. Since he does not evolve, he suffers and, as a result, he wants to run from himself . On the other hand, there is also another angle to this aspect, which is the fact that, to a certain extent, “many of us are not able to choose how we want to live.” (Marcus, 2013, p. 72). In other words, people have different opportunities in life and this is often decisive to establish whether one is going to be successful or not. One of these elements is certainly the social position. The underprivileged are always and inevitably, one way or another, going to be at a social disadvantage. The only relief is that we are all going to stop this running at some point when life ends. Indisputably, Nathan is in the most miserable reality. But he does not die in the story and this prompts us to think that being alive is not the only thing that matters; it is more important to live well. 73 Although Felix dies, he has lived a better life in comparison to Nathan’s. He knew better how to enjoy his time . In this sense, the novel brings this notion of how fleeting and fragile life is. In modern times, Smith addresses the fact that we may sometimes feel that nothing matters and that people are just people, some of them we know, some we don't. In a city like London, one could look at hundreds of different faces, all connected in a way, but also disconnected in the sense that they do not actually have any bond. With that said, Lauren Elkin (2015, p. 2) highlights the modern frivolity stating that “Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan’s lives intersect like the lines on the map of the Underground; like commuters, they pass each other in the street and only dimly register each other’s presence.” In the liquid modern life of acceleration, constant mobility, and superficial relations, "it is the flow of time that counts, more than the space they happen to occupy: that space, after all, they fill but 'for a moment'”. (Bauman, 2000, p. 2). This is, in fact, a constant idea throughout the novel: that it is important to be aware of the passage of time. The bright side is that this consciousness is exactly what prompts us to make the best out of this finite period. 74 CONCLUSION White Teeth and NW are indeed two novels that, in different ways, show many elements from Bauman's Liquid Modernity . In fact, Zadie Smith's literature portrays modern life in many layers and indisputably, some of these are directly related to discussions from contemporary Sociology. Moreover, her stories are political but also psychological, building a great balance between what is fundamentally human and what is historically social. Her first book is about family and tradition, but also (and perhaps even more importantly) about the inevitable challenges of disrupting and reframing old traditions and dogmas. The search for a new life model is characteristic of a liquid life: a reality of constant attempts of change and dynamism. As a consequence, the story also depicts the difficulties of building one’s identity, a term that is, for many scholars, in a period of crisis. Bauman and others highlight the difficulties of understanding who we are in a world of so many options, and this is certainly addressed in characters such as Millat Iqbal, Clara Bowden Jones, Joshua Chalfen, and others. The idea of creating a chart with characters of predominantly solid or liquid features was a natural consequence of finding such striking associations with the analyses presented in Bauman’s modernity. In this sense, White Teeth portrays the difficulties between different cultures, but also between different generations. Time is a vital theme in Smith’s novels as it is in Bauman’s studies. Similarly, we observe the overt relation of her book with, for example, Stuart Hall’s observations on identity or Raymond William’s considerations on community. Accordingly, the novel underlines the modern notion of territory , that is to say, a notion that takes into consideration that the physical place where we are is not always so decisive when it comes to social interaction. With this statement, we are not implying that there is not any difference between one place and another. What we are highlighting here is that the cultural barriers among different nationstates do not operate in the same manner as they used to before globalization. In this sense, the characters from different countries and different cultures live experiences that would not be possible in other times before modern industrialization. NW’s relation with Liquid Modernity is different. As we have pointed out, the novel is about what it is like to live in a poor and cosmopolitan area of London, but also addressing the inner issues and peculiarities of the characters as individuals , prompting us to remember that no one is the same. Hence Leah’s famous sentence “I’m the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.” (Smith, 2012, p. 3). 75 Therefore, while White Teeth often displays the search for identity in a process of identification with others, NW underscores the challenges of identifying with their own selves. In this sense, the latter acquaints us with the character’s inner issues with a more psychological approach. Leah is compassionate and introspective whereas Keisha/Natalie is focused and practical. Felix has a good heart and many dreams and Nathan is charming and mysterious. All these peculiarities then, display the complexity of a cosmopolitan geography that is built through all these diversified minds, all these individuals. The novel underlines that the ways in which money, capitalism, and consumerism operate in different levels of society do not only affect their purchasing power but also their thoughts, their visions of reality, or even, to some extent, their personality. Their professional paths and interactions with the community are also related to their social class. In this sense, after the solid Fordism of big companies wanting to be fixed on the ground, we are faced with liquid models which are more dynamic; that is to say, people change their jobs, money is not only physical but virtual, and companies are developing worldwide in unimaginable scales. In this sense, NW also highlights Byung-Chul Han's idea that we are now our own bosses, constantly pressuring ourselves to be more and more productive, as it is clear, for instance, in Natalie's path. On the other hand, we observe that as Bauman pointed out, the increase of devices that feed our individualism is resulting in a re-signification of community. At the same time, the novel brings us hope to this matter; a positive scenario of what it is to be part of a group and to maintain the human components of empathy, care, and the desire to evolve, despite modern adversities. Zadie Smith's postcolonial and desegregated novels depict this sense of territorial breaking but at the same time the local specificities of small places. With great skill and precision, her writings prove how social matters can be presented in contemporary literature, denouncing that one way or another, we are all living "the art of 'labyrinthine living'". (Bauman, 2000, p. 153). In this sense, her work is social, personal, psychological, and modern. The relation between time and space, the tragicomedy of life, and the urban post-industrial reality are all diversely present and blended. White Teeth is ambitious and chaotic; NW is vertiginous and complex. Both are liquid. 76 BIBLIOGRAPHY Alam, R. (2019). The Urge to Be Good. Nation , 309 (12), 42–44. Retrieved in <h ttps://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=566438f5-a07e-4a4f-8 67cf9c48671300d%40sessionmgr4006>. Access on June 4, 2021. Appadurai, A. (2019). 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