London and the construction of identity

Vol.37,No.2(2016)

Abstract
This paper is concerned with those novels – related to black British Literature – that portray the formation, the transformation and the reformation of personal, cultural, ethnic and national identities within London, a urban space that is multiformed, heterotopic and diasporic. London – that is a character and not just the scenery of those novels – suggests an implosive disorder related to the coexistence of immovable dichotomies – such as identity/plurality, freedom/oppression – that frustrate the protagonists' struggle to define their identities and to construct a place to call home. The post-colonial trans-formation novels by Samuel Selvon, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi and V.S. Naipaul – investigated in this study – outline a complex and fragmented process of de-construction and re-construction of identity, whose determining factor is the interaction between the urban space and the individuals. The struggle, performed to be themselves or to find their authentic selves, emphasizes the fluidity of identity, revealing it as almost infinitely changeable, erratic, negotiable and unpredictable.

Keywords:
identity; city; transnational; formation / transformation; bildung; postcolonial

Pages:
107–118
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