Zadie Smith and Postcolonial Trauma: Decolonising Trauma, Decolonising Selves 2021001429, 9780367460693, 9781003187387, 9781032034638

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Zadie Smith and Postcolonial Trauma

This monograph analyses Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, On Beauty, NW, The Embassy of Cambodia, and Swing Time as trauma fictions that reveal the social, cultural, historical, and political facets of trauma. Starting with Smith’s humorous critique of psychoanalysis and her definition of original trauma, this volume explores Smith’s challenge of Western theories of trauma and coping, and how her narratives expose the insidiousness of (post)colonial suffering and unbelonging. This book then explores transgenerational trauma, the tensions between remembering and forgetting, multidirectional memory, and the possibilities of the ambiguities and contradictions of the postcolonial and diasporic characters Smith depicts. This analysis discloses Smith’s effort to ethically redefine trauma theory from a postcolonial and decolonial standpoint, reiterates the need to acknowledge and work through colonial histories and postcolonial forms of oppression, and critically reflects on our roles as witnesses of suffering in global times. Beatriz Pérez Zapata is Lecturer of English for Primary Education at the Valencian International University and Assistant Lecturer of English for Specific Purposes at Tecnocampus (Pompeu Frabra University). She obtained her PhD from the University of Zaragoza. She has published extensively on Smith’s work in international journals. She has also published articles on the representation of shame and trauma of diasporic subjects, and postcolonial subjects and refugees in video games. Her research interests are trauma, black British writing, diasporic literature, and the representation of refugees in literature and media.

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Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature

46 Masculinities in Austrian Contemporary Literature Strategic Evasion Matthias Eck 47 Transcending the Postmodern The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern Paradigm Edited by Jean-​Michel Ganteau and Susana Onega 48 The Politics of Literature in a Divided 21st Century Katharina Donn 49 All Along Bob Dylan America and the World Tymon Adamczewski 50 The Fact of the Cage Reading and Redemption in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest Karl A. Plank 51 The London Object Writing London at the End of Capitalism Grant Hamilton 52 Zadie Smith and Postcolonial Trauma Decolonising Trauma, Decolonising Selves Beatriz Pérez Zapata 53 Memory and Nation-​Building World War II in Malaysian Literature Vandana Saxena For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge. com/​Routledge-​Studies-​in-​Contemporary-​Literature/​book-​series/​RSCL

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Zadie Smith and Postcolonial Trauma Decolonising Trauma, Decolonising Selves Beatriz Pérez Zapata

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First published 2021 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Beatriz Pérez Zapata to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Pérez Zapata, Beatriz, author. Title: Zadie Smith and postcolonial trauma: decolonising trauma, decolonising selves / Beatriz Pérez Zapata. Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge studies in contemporary literature | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Using the frameworks of trauma and memory studies, this monograph analyses Zadie Smith’s work to foreground postcolonial redefinitions of trauma that challenge universal methods of coping with suffering in global times”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021001429 | ISBN 9780367460693 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003187387 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Smith, Zadie–Criticism and interpretation. | Psychic trauma in literature. | Postcolonialism in literature. | Collective memory in literature. Classification: LCC PR6069.M59 Z63 2021 | DDC 823/.914–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001429 ISBN: 978-0-367-46069-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-03-203463-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-00-318738-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK

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Contents

Acknowledgements 

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Introduction: Postcolonial Traumas: Theories and Narratives 

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1 Origins, Original Trauma, and Transgenerational Trauma: The Obsessions and Revelations of History 

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2 The Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma: The Ambivalences of Forgetting and Remembering in White Teeth, On Beauty, and NW 

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1.1 The Roots that Drown and Save: The Excessive Attachments of Samad Miah Iqbal 27 1.2 The Routes to Vengeance and the Fight against History: The Case of Millat Iqbal 38 1.3 Secrets and Roots: Transgenerational Trauma in the Bowden Women 49

2.1 Confronting the “Deeper Malaise” of Being Other 70 2.2 On Beauty and the Uses and Ambiguities of Forgetting 81 2.3  NW: The Ambivalence of Trauma and Self 90

3 Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory: Dialogic Histories of Slavery in The Embassy of Cambodia and Swing Time 

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Conclusion: The Forms, Complexities, and Contradictions of Postcolonial Trauma 

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Index 

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3.1 Genocide in the Suburbs: Trauma and Multidirectional Memory in The Embassy of Cambodia 113 3.2 Multiple Ancestries, Violent Memories, and the (Im)Possibilities of Multidirectional Memory in Swing Time 127

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude, first and foremost, to Professor María Dolores Herrero Granado for her guidance, support, kindness, and expertise. Special thanks to all the members of the Excellence Research Team “Contemporary Narratives in English” at the University of Zaragoza, the director of the group, Professor Susana Onega Jaén, and all the members at the Department of English Studies for providing the space, time, and feedback for my research. Special thanks to Dr Pablo Gómez Muñoz, Dr María Pilar Royo Grasa, Dr Jessica Aliaga Lavrijsen, and Dr Silvia Pellicer-​Ortín. I am indebted to Professor Janet Wilson and Dr Sonya Andermahr at the University of Northampton and Professor Bénédicte Ledent at L’Université de Liège for making my research stays possible. Thanks as well to Dr Larissa Allwork, Borcha Benaissa, Dr Miriam Lamara, Dr Daria Tunca, Dr Carole Guesse, Valérie-​Anne Belleflamme, and Giulia Mascoli for making these two experiences even more enjoyable. My gratitude as well to Professor John McLeod, Professor Belén Martín-​Lucas, and Dr Elena Oliete for their questions and insightful observations. Thanks to Dr Alberto Fernández Carbajal for his feedback and shared enthusiasm about Zadie Smith’s work. I extend my gratitude to Teresa Carbayo López de Pablo, Dr Justine Séran, Dr Merve Sarikaya-​ Şen, Dr Amy Rushton, Dr Jenni Ramone, Dr Sam Holland, Dr Irene Pérez Fernández, Dr Jennifer Leetsch, and Dr Veronika Schuchter. Gratitude is also due to the members of the Department of English Studies at the University of the Balearic Islands. Special thanks to Dr Astrid Schwegler Castañer and Gabriel Dols Gallardo. I am extremely grateful to Jennifer Abbott and Mitchell Manners at Taylor & Francis for their support and comprehension in the writing of this book. Finally, all my gratitude to Víctor for all his support and motivation. This book would not have existed without his constant encouragement.

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Introduction Postcolonial Traumas: Theories and Narratives

The concept of trauma, in its widest and most popular understanding, has permeated contemporary ways of seeing and thinking about the world, so much so that as Lucy Bond and Stef Craps (2020, p.142) point out it is now used as a “catchword of our time”. Since its emergence in the mid-​ 1990s, and springing from the ethical turn of the 1980s, trauma studies have become one of the most common and powerful frameworks used to understand contemporary culture and its narratives. Cathy Caruth’s seminal works on trauma, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995) and Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (1996) analysed recent history and laid bare the traumatic Zeitgeist of the twentieth century. Nancy K. Miller and Jason Daniel Tougaw (2002, p.1) in fact identify our time as “the age of trauma”, one in which trauma has come to include a wide array of experiences of suffering. The complexities of contemporary global contexts and the anxieties derived from the sense of living in a permanent state of crisis have continued the traumatic Zeitgeist of the previous century. However, trauma and diagnosing others and even oneself as traumatised has become common practice in neoliberal, Western cultures, especially with the rise of popular psychology and the self-​help industry in the last decade or so. Although there have been attempts at the democratisation of trauma and the dismantling of the hierarchies of suffering, this new century has seen the homogenisation of trauma as well as the entanglement of psychology and capitalism.1 Given this context, contemporary discourses on trauma must be scrutinised and we must give preference to historically and politically situated readings of suffering that avoid totalising views and that provide answers to why and how individuals and collectives experience trauma. The need for a situated analysis of trauma has been a common concern in trauma studies in general and in postcolonial trauma studies in particular. This entails a constant renegotiation and redefinition of what constitutes a traumatic experience. Psychological trauma has been traditionally understood as an event that cannot be processed and harms the psyche of the individual. Caruth (1996, pp.3–​4) defines trauma as “the wound of the mind –​the breach in the mind’s experience of time, self, and the world”, as “an event that […] is experienced too soon, too unexpectedly,

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2 Introduction to be fully known”, and is characterised by belatedness, repetition, and the burdensome struggle between forgetting and remembering. Caruth, as most theorists of trauma, bases her study on post-​traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the experience of Holocaust survivors, and psychoanalytical theories derived from, amongst others, Freud, Laplanche, and Lacan. Thus, in general terms, trauma has been characterised by belatedness, the impossibility of knowing fully what happened at the moment of the traumatic event, unconscious repetitions, anxiety, repression, fragmented memory, the splitting of the self and development of multiple personalities, dissociation, a fraught relationship with communities, and shame, all of which may deprive trauma victims of any sense of agency and/​or capacity to cope with and adapt to the world they are confronting. Despite the heavy emphasis on individual experience given by these symptoms, Caruth (1995, pp.5–​11) expands the view of trauma from “pathological symptom” to a “symptom of history”. Trauma thus becomes the entanglement of truth, history, and survival, one which even though at an individual level may alter –​or destroy –​the relationship between self and world could potentially forge a “link between cultures” when shared. Around the same time and over the next decades, the works of authors, such as Dominick LaCapra (1994, 2001), Kai Erikson (1994), Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (1992), Laurie Vickroy (2002, 2015), Kali Tal (1996), Laura S. Brown and Mary Ballou (1992), Jeffrey C. Alexander et al. (2004), Anne Whitehead (2004, 2009), E. Ann Kaplan (2005), and Roger Luckhurst (2008), to name but a few, have redefined and expanded the notion of trauma, which has thus become more inclusive in its collective, cultural, and insidious facets, taking into account as it now does the experience of victims of rape and other forms of sexual abuse, the experience of enslavement, and, to a lesser extent, the experience of diasporas other than the Jewish. The different theorisations of trauma have explained what has been called trauma fiction, a genre that started as a form of marginal literature (Tal 1996, p.17) but has gained momentum in the last few decades. As Laurie Vickroy explains: Concurrent with greater public awareness of trauma, trauma narratives have emerged over the past thirty years largely as personalized responses to the late twentieth century’s and early twenty-​first century’s coalescing awareness of the catastrophic effects on the individual psyche of wars, sexual and physical assaults, poverty, and colonization. (2015, p.1) Vickroy thus highlights the connection between trauma narratives and the need to understand recent history in its relation to politics and economy, and the ethical possibilities that trauma fiction may bring to readers.

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Introduction  3 In more literary terms, Anne Whitehead (2004, p.81) illustrates how trauma fiction arises from the intersection of “postmodernism, postcolonialism and a postwar legacy or consciousness”. Whitehead (ibid., pp.82–​ 4) associates postmodernism with the problem of memory, postcolonialism with yet more problematic and complex memory issues and the silencing of oppressed voices, and post-​war legacy with the difficulty, and even impossibility, of representing war in general, and the Holocaust in particular. More specifically, Whitehead (ibid.) refers to the use in trauma fiction of experimental narrative techniques derived from postmodernism, “figuration and indirection”, as well as “intertextuality, repetition and a dispersed or fragmented narrative voice”. Similarly, Vickroy (2002, p.29) mentions other frequent techniques such as “textual gaps […], repetition, breaks in linear time, shifting viewpoints, and a focus on visual images and affective states”. These narrative strategies have defined trauma fiction in the last few decades and, together with more theoretical and psychoanalytical explanations, have shaped a specific manner of understanding trauma. Despite the popularity of trauma studies in literary and academic circles, in the last few years some critics have firmly questioned such specificity and, in particular, some of the dictums established by the founders of the discipline as well as its limited scope. Their main objections have been the ubiquity of a Western approach to trauma, the prevalence of an event-​based model inherited from the theorisation of PTSD and the prescriptions of the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the focus on the effects of trauma as limited to the individual psyche, the universalisation of a trauma aesthetics, and trauma’s inability to genuinely create an ethical bridge across cultures. What is being criticised is, therefore, the Anglo/​Eurocentric vision of trauma which, in spite of its attempts to reach and include others, has left many subjects out of its focus of study or simply imposed inappropriate methods to analyse and heal them. Within the feminist criticism of otherness, Laura S. Brown (1995, p.101) denounced early on the centrality of a specific Western way of being. She argued that: The range of human experience becomes the range of what is normal and usual in the lives of men of the dominant class; white, young, able-​bodied, educated, middle-​class, Christian men. Trauma is thus that which disrupts these particular lives, but no other. Similarly, Susannah Radstone (2007, p.25) has criticised the way that “it is the sufferings of those, categorized in the West as ‘other’, that tend not to be addressed via trauma theory”. This perspective reveals, as Judith Butler (2009, p.4) explains, the normative forces that enable us to recognise who counts as “being” and how those who do not fit into this

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4 Introduction category are not seen as susceptible to being traumatised because their existence is not fully recognised. Bearing this in mind, it is no wonder that a similar criticism should have arisen in the field of postcolonial studies. The conflation of trauma studies with postcolonial theories and narratives has given rise to more problematic issues concerning the way trauma theory has been generalised, thus launching a revision process that aims at new and more complex ways of examining postcolonial identities. While some critics such as Whitehead (2004) and Vickroy (2002) already pointed to the need to explore (post) colonial contexts as sites of trauma, it is only recently that others have requested a revision of the normative Anglo/​Eurocentric take on trauma, and have queried its applicability to such contexts as well as the project of an ethically appropriate trauma theory which might account for the experiences of suffering in a postcolonial world. One of the critics with the most radical approach to this issue is Stef Craps, who writes on “trauma theory in crisis” (2010) and calls for the urgent need to redefine trauma in its relation to non-​Western and oppressed subjects. He revises the founding texts of trauma, mainly Caruth’s, and argues that her claim that trauma is able to “bridge” cultures fails because this conception of trauma does not include non-​ Western subjects, it relies on definitions and therapies that are exclusively Western, and sees the “modernist aesthetic of fragmentation and aporia” as the most appropriate form to narrate and share trauma (2014, p.46). Thus, Craps (2010, p.53) denounces trauma theory’s “one-​sided focus” and warns that it could ultimately perpetuate difference. In a similar manner, Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman (2009, p.19) argue that, when one relies on either Caruth’s model of trauma or the model that sees trauma as an inherent human condition, “the universalization of trauma results in its trivialization”. Furthermore, they (ibid.) conclude that, through the aforementioned model of trauma, “every society and every individual suffers the traumatic experience of their past. Not only do scales of violence disappear, but their history is erased”. The work of Ewald Mengel and Michela Borzaga has also paved the way for a renewed understanding of trauma. Although their research focuses mostly on the representation of trauma in South African literature (2010, 2012), their analysis provides a broad enough theorisation of the state of trauma studies. In the introduction to Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in South Africa: Interviews, the editors –​Mengel, Borzaga, and Karin Orantes (2010, pp.vii–​viii), warn against the way in which both trauma and postcolonialism “have been heavily debated, torn apart, abused, and misused”. They conclude nevertheless that the concept of trauma is a very much needed “category from an epistemological, cultural –​and above all –​human standpoint”. These scholars, as Craps is, are also concerned with the way in which existing systems and structures of oppression can perpetuate trauma. For trauma to be a productive category that enables better understanding and change, it must

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Introduction  5 be reconfigured so that it can incorporate “complex notions of time, of collectivity, and of material conditions: racial inequality, abject poverty, and unemployment” (ibid., p.x). It is clear then that, as Mengel, Borzaga, and Orantes confirm (ibid., p.xi), trauma cannot be explained outside its political, cultural, and socio-​economic contexts. The inclusion of a postcolonial perspective in trauma studies has, therefore, brought politics to the forefront, especially through questions of representation and exclusion, recognition, and the imposition of a Western way of understanding the self and its relationship with the world. One of the first matters to consider, faced with this broadened perspective and encouraged by the words of Mengel et al., is how postcolonial contexts and narratives challenge the idea of individual psychological trauma as isolated from its political and socio-​cultural environments. Dolores Herrero and Sonia Baelo-​ Allué (2011, p.xi) explain that in postcolonial trauma one should consider the “blurring” of the cultural and the individual. Cultural, collective trauma is understood as that which “occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways” (Alexander 2004, p.2). Neil J. Smelser (2004, p.38) similarly defines cultural trauma as that which “refers to an invasive and overwhelming event that is believed to undermine or overwhelm one or several essential ingredients of a culture as a whole”. Both Smelser and Alexander (ibid, pp.24, 41) further remark that one of such events that may affect collectives is coloniality and that, even if they have not been the focus of most studies of trauma, “the victims of Western traumas have disproportionately been members of subaltern and marginalized groups”. Although Smelser and Alexander’s definition of cultural trauma is valid and expands earlier, more restrictive definitions, their view could benefit from a study of cultural trauma that is more focused on insidiousness than on specific events. Nevertheless, it is true, too, that Alexander (2012, p.4) seems to have subsequently moved away from the centrality of the event, only to move towards more abstract, vaguer terms in his redefinition of collective traumas as “reflections of neither individual suffering nor actual events, but symbolic renderings that reconstruct and imagine them”. At times, he also seems to establish a dichotomy between the effects of individual and collective traumas, a distinction which may hinder the approach to trauma studies in general and postcolonial trauma in particular. Herrero and Baelo-​Allué (2011, p.x) conclude, in reference to Caruth’s claim of trauma’s bridging possibilities, that “if trauma is to be seen as a link between cultures, there is a need to study cultural trauma and its effects, not just on specific individuals but on whole societies that have seen their sense of identity shattered by a traumatic experience”. Borzaga (2012, p.75) goes several steps further and affirms that the failure to consider individual trauma without acknowledging its cultural component

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6 Introduction may have catastrophic consequences for the victims of postcolonial traumas, because it is always reductive and stigmatizing (and potentially re-​ traumatizing) to speak about stories of trauma while drawing only on psychiatric vocabulary. What is needed is an approach to trauma that takes into account both the historical and cultural syncretisms as well as the everydayness of people’s lives and their unique psychic textures (italics in original). Thus, the study of individual and cultural, collective traumas cannot be conceived separately, especially so in postcolonial contexts, which should closely examine the social and political components of trauma. In fact, one of the most recurrent criticisms among contemporary scholars of trauma studies, and not exclusively postcolonial,2 has been the excessive focus on the event, which draws attention away from the context in which trauma is occurring. But this criticism is by no means new. Frantz Fanon, who according to Homi Bhabha (2008, xxxii) exposes “the traumatic tradition of the oppressed”, already dismissed the focus of European psychiatry on the event in The Wretched of the Earth: As a general rule, clinical psychiatry classifies the different disturbances shown by our patients under the heading “reactionary psychoses”. In doing this, prominence is given to the event which has given rise to the disorder, although in some cases mention is made of the previous history of the case (the psychological, affective, and biological condition of the patient) and of the type of background from whence he comes. It seems to us that in the cases here chosen the events giving rise to the disorder are chiefly the bloodthirsty and pitiless atmosphere, the generalization of inhuman practices, and the firm impression that people have of being caught up in a veritable Apocalypse. (2002, p.251) Colonial and postcolonial traumas have indeed long been defined by the insidiousness brought about by continuous oppression. But it was not until some decades ago that Maria Root coined the term “insidious trauma” within the context of feminist criticism. Root’s concept was popularised by Laura S. Brown (1995, p.107) as that which “refers to the traumatogenic effects of oppression that are not necessarily overtly violent or threatening to bodily well-​being at the given moment but that do violence to the soul and spirit”, which recalls Fanon’s denouncing of the traumatic potential of the atmosphere for the individual. More recently, Stef Craps (2013, p.26) has referred to the trauma of the everyday, which alludes to the structural violence that results in “daily micro-​aggressions”. Even if one isolated aggression may not have traumatic consequences, Craps argues that they work by accumulation

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Introduction  7 and progressively intensify the experience of being traumatised over time. Similarly, Irene Visser (2011, pp.275–​6) argues that if a postcolonial trauma theory is ever to work, it “would need to be formulated more comprehensively to account more astutely for the aftermath of colonialism’s systematic oppression, with its characteristics of prolonged, repeated and cumulative stressor events”. Don Foster (qtd. in Craps 2013, p.25) proposes a revision of PTSD in postcolonial contexts and suggests that a term such as “continuous stress syndrome” would be, in fact, more appropriate. As can be seen, there are numerous authors who are tackling postcolonial trauma and have promoted decentring theoretical and aesthetic approaches. Nevertheless, there are still many contradictions in the intersection of trauma and postcolonialism, so many that Irene Visser (2011, pp.270, 275) even questions the possibility of combining the two. Her arguments rest on two main points: first, the fact that in postcolonial narratives there are characters who are “directly traumatized” and others “indirectly affected”; second, and very much in line with the arguments put forward by Craps, Menguel and Borzaga, and Herrero and Baelo-​ Allué, Visser highlights trauma theory’s need to incorporate the “focus on historical, political and socio-​economic factors in processes of colonization and decolonization” which are “intrinsic to postcolonialism’s cultural and political research agenda”. Visser’s questioning does not come, I would argue, from the impossibility of combining trauma and postcoloniality, but rather from the critical viewpoint of the need to consider a more ethical and inclusive approach to trauma that takes into account specific and often forgotten or silenced histories. This need was made evident by the contributors to two issues of Studies in the Novel (40.1 and 40.2), published in 2008 and edited by Stef Craps and Gert Buelens, in which several authors analyse the postcolonial trauma novel. This analysis led Michael Rothberg (2008, pp.226–​7) to conclude that what is needed is a decolonised study of trauma which might provide “a model that can account for ongoing, everyday forms of traumatizing violence”. This study must be ethical and must not result in the homogenisation of victims. Michael Rothberg continues to argue in favour of the decolonisation of trauma studies in the introduction to The Future of Trauma Theory: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism (2014). In this book, he exposes trauma theory’s most pressing problems. He denounces the apparent neutrality of trauma studies and proposes to move beyond the traditional trauma paradigm, clearly acknowledging the need to pay attention to more insidious forms of trauma, other subjective identities, other non-​Western ways of being, alternative ways of narrating trauma, and the need for (self) reflexivity both in trauma and postcolonial studies. Stef Craps reaches a similar conclusion in his book Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma out of Bounds (2013), when he argues in favour of the decolonisation of trauma theory, since he believes that this framework

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8 Introduction can act as a catalyst for meaningful change. By enabling us to recognize and attend to the sufferings of people around the world, an inclusive and culturally sensitive trauma theory can expose situations of injustice and abuse and open up ways to imagine a different global future. (8) These developments in trauma theory have led Irene Visser (2015, p.253) to affirm that there has been a shift in the trauma paradigm since, she argues the invalidity of “the Eurocentric, event-​based model of original trauma theory” has been conclusively proven. For Visser (ibid.), postcolonial studies today lay bare an understanding of trauma “as collective and chronic” and potentially damaging for both “individuals and communities”. Nevertheless, and similar to Caruth’s claim of trauma’s potential to bridge cultures, Visser believes that trauma “can also lead to a stronger sense of identity and a renewed social cohesion”. Visser concludes in her article that, in fact, we have come to a point at which the entanglement of trauma and postcolonial theory has been beneficial, since postcolonialism has enabled a better critique of trauma theory. Nevertheless, one should also consider Abigail Ward’s (2013) warning against seeing trauma in a rather positive note. Ward questions Caruth’s claim, as does Visser in her situated reading against Western perspectives on suffering, that trauma can beneficially bridge cultures and applies Dominick LaCapra’s concept of “empathic unsettlement” to support her argument. Postcolonial texts aptly reflect individual and collective traumas, but they also need to avoid excessive identification with the victim and bring to the fore the impossibility of understanding the other (as well as trauma). Nevertheless, I think that this unsettlement can bring change, as Craps recognised. But this change needs to come from the interrogation of one’s position in global contexts and the ethical and political capabilities of the change we are willing to enact. Any discipline that calls for decolonisation must answer to “Who is doing it, where, why, and how?” (Mignolo 2018, p.108). Decolonial efforts in trauma studies have mostly emerged in Eurocentric contexts to amend the wrongs caused by the systemic underrepresentation and misrepresentation of postcolonial texts and subjects in trauma theory: a decolonised trauma theory should thus acknowledge how the discipline has failed the formerly colonised, to recall Albert Memmi’s arguments in Decolonization and the Decolonized. It is imperative that the discipline of trauma studies continues this ongoing decolonisation: we cannot allow our societies to fall yet again into another colonial framework. This also calls for an interdisciplinary, social, and ethical inquiry that lays bare not only the traumatic consequences of a colonial past but also the traumatising potential of current (neo)colonial systems that is embedded in the everyday lives of postcolonial subjects. Moreover, this would entail an epistemological decolonisation and the understanding

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Introduction  9 of decolonisation as praxis, as Catherine E. Walsh and Walter Mignolo (2018) propose. For Mignolo (ibid, p.130), “decoloniality focuses on changing the terms of the conversation” between cultures, peoples, texts, and theories (italics in original). This decolonial, dialogical epistemology would suit a trauma theory that tries to explain the entanglement of knowing and not knowing that not only comes with trauma but also with the historical amnesia that has been imposed in many postcolonial societies and bring attention to our own silences. Postcolonial trauma novels may be one of the best mediums to start this conversation, since they are able to illustrate postcolonial traumas in all their complexities and give voice to those that the discipline has long ignored. Many studies of postcolonial novels have focused on the traumas of formerly colonised countries. Others have studied the traumas which have unfolded in the old colonial centres now turned postcolonial metropolises. Novels that reflect the latter often portray trauma in relation to what has been termed “the trauma or pain of unbelonging”. Sheila Collingwood-​ Whittick (2007, pp.xiv–​ xv), whose work focuses on Australian culture and literature, attributes the expression “the pain of unbelonging” to Germaine Greer, who sees it as the “psychic pain” derived from the “trauma” of migration and exile in general and from the processes of uprooting and re-​rooting experienced by Aborigines in particular. This pain or trauma of unbelonging has been extrapolated to other postcolonial scenarios and frequently used to refer to the difficulties that migrants face when they encounter a hostile environment in their host societies. Many narratives of migration have been considered to a greater or lesser extent to be trauma narratives. Although this representation has often led to generalisations which regard all experiences of displacement as inherently traumatic, it is true that, more often than not, diasporic novels feature images of loss, characters who develop split identities, a troubled relationship with their past, origins, and place, and the struggle to survive in the recurrently adverse present of their host society. In keeping with this, Vamik Volkan (qtd. in Fassin and Rechtman 2009, p. 236) argues that “since moving from one location to another involves loss –​loss of country, friends, and previous identity –​all dislocation experiences can be examined in terms of the immigrant’s ability to mourn and/​or resist the mourning process”. More particularly, and moving towards a more British social and literary context, Ulrike Tancke (2011, par. 5), has argued that other contemporary migrant narratives, among which she includes Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, “conceptualise migration as an experience that constitutes a fundamental shattering of identity and a threat to selfhood” and further refers to the anxiety that glocality entails, which can ultimately lead to uprootedness and conflicting identities. Tancke (ibid, par. 1) therefore affirms that “migrant identities are often suffused with traumatic experiences and the attempt to come to terms with them”. However, she

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10 Introduction also clarifies in a note that “of course, not every migrant experience is traumatic; the degree to which it has to do with the variables of (in)voluntariness, economic (in)security, linguistic or cultural (in)competence and the like”. Hence, the association of migration with traumatic experience may be analysed through the lens of loss, but should always be applied to particular contexts and lived experiences. Fassin and Rechtman (2009, p.211), in their study of the imperial expansion of trauma, reject the idea that all diasporic subjects are in fact traumatised, and argue therefore against the universalisation of the concept of trauma itself: “People exposed to various forms of oppression and terror, domination and dispossession, have different, complex, and polysemic experiences. […] Their representation of the past and their expectations of the future are not fixed in the landscape of trauma”. In particular, Fassin and Rechtman talk about the “psychology of immigration”, which developed chronologically [B]‌etween two historical eras dominated by two images of otherness: the native, in the colonial era (whether resident in the colonies or the metropolis), and then the foreigner, in the post-​colonial world (whether this foreigner had official status or not, and whether he was seeking work or requesting asylum). Between these two figures stands another who links them chronologically and sociologically –​ the immigrant, a product of the demand for labor. (2009, p.226) Natives, foreigners, strangers, migrants, and diasporans consequently map out different ways of exposing the power relationships and historicities that have defined these last centuries, and which continue to shape our understanding of both historical and contemporary identities, since they are still caught in the social, cultural, and economic consequences of a postcolonial order. Laury Vickroy (2005, p.109) comments on the different cases of displaced subjects and the potentially traumatic consequences that these subjects encounter in a globalised world, since in situations of forced migratory and exile “a lost home can remain not only psychically embedded as a place of origin and identity but also of an anguished dissolution of the self”. Although I agree with Vickroy, as I do with Fassin and Rechtman, about the need to offer a situated perspective and avoid seeing all migrant subjects as traumatised, I would add that it is not only in the case of a traumatic experience of exile that the consequences which Vickroy describes can be seen, but they may also appear in less traumatic separations from home as a consequence, precisely, of the often difficult processes of cultural adaptability. The societies in which these traumas may occur should be considered in their capacity to generate trauma through the repression and silencing of certain histories. Based on Judith Herman’s (1977) approach to

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Introduction  11 trauma, Gregory Bistoen, Stijn Vanheule, and Stef Craps (2014, p.831) explain that “a lot of the problems that trauma sufferers endure are caused by society’s unwillingness to confront the atrocities that it silently harbors in itself”. Herman wrote this in relation to sexual abuse and feminist perspectives, but the issue of society’s silence is also pertinent in the context of postcolonialism, especially in societies which are not ready to admit to the atrocities concomitant with imperialism and their consequences in contemporary times. Paul Gilroy’s arguments in After Empire (2004) prove useful to describe how postcolonial contexts and discourses condition and limit the identities of “others”. Gilroy argues that in postcolonial British society there is a silencing of and around otherness which arises out of what he calls “postcolonial melancholia”, a pervasive mood that is the result of the inappropriate, or rather non-​existent, mourning of the loss of empire. To quote his words: Since then (1945) the life of the nation has been dominated by an inability even to face, never mind actually mourn, the profound change in circumstances and moods that follow the end of the empire and consequent loss of imperial prestige […] Once the history of the empire became a source of discomfort, shame, and perplexity, its complexities and ambiguities were readily set aside. Rather than work through those feelings, that unsettling history was diminished, denied, and then, if possible, actively forgotten. The resulting silence feeds an additional catastrophe: the error of imagining that postcolonial people are only unwanted alien intruders without any substantive historical, political, or cultural connections to the collective life of their fellow subjects. (2004, p.98) Gilroy then explains the loss of empire and postcolonial melancholia as a “multilayered trauma –​economic and cultural as well as political and psychological”. He adds that this trauma precipitated further “shocks”, which made it impossible to accept responsibility towards others so as to build “a multicultural nationality that is no longer phobic about the prospect of exposure to either strangers or to otherness” (p.108). Still nowadays, Gilroy claims, when it comes to the acceptance of otherness, especially in the former imperial centres “where postcolonial settlers are fighting for citizenship and dignity, the silence on these questions is deafening”. This silence pushes away the possibility of a truly convivial culture in which societies “live with alterity without becoming anxious, fearful, or violent” (pp.xi, 18), which is becoming a truly difficult task to achieve both in Europe and the United States in the current social and political climate. Trauma studies have thus been recently redefined within a more complex and inclusive framework that can account for the suffering of individuals

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12 Introduction and collectives not recognised as victims in the earlier stages of the development of trauma theory. This, in turn, has promoted reinterpretations and new ways of approaching colonial and postcolonial processes, which transcend the borders of old colonial territories to include the issues of migration, exile, diaspora, as well as the acute suffering caused by otherness and a generalised sense of unbelonging in a postcolonial world. The combination of trauma studies and postcolonialism can be quite productive if it emerges from an ethical stance that considers all the members and circumstances involved both historically and culturally. Trauma should not be yet another imposition of Western culture on the rest of the world, nor an appropriation of others’ suffering. Bearing this in mind, trauma theory can become a tool for exposing the way in which societies have interacted and still do, as well as the inequalities and injustices that trauma theory itself has sometimes promoted. Only then will trauma be seen as a tool for understanding others and creating the elusive link between cultures.

Zadie Smith and Postcolonial Narratives of Trauma Literature has been regarded as one of the mediums that best could reflect trauma. Traditionally conceived as an event that is not registered in memory, experienced belatedly, and one that altered the traumatised person’s sense of self and time, literature seemed appropriate to articulate that which cannot be properly put into words. During the twentieth century, numerous narratives testified to the atrocities of war, the Holocaust, and genocide. In the last few decades, the analysis of trauma in literature has expanded to include the representations of suffering beyond Anglo-​ centric frontiers and the historical and collective traumas of oppressed subjects within these borders. For Stef Craps and Gert Buelens (2008, pp.2–​3), postcolonial trauma novels do not only lay bare the oppressive discourses of colonialism, but they also Consider the specificity of colonial traumas and of the act of postcolonial literary trauma representation in relation to the dominant trauma discourse and attempt to arrive at alternative conceptions of trauma and of its textual inscription that might revitalize the field of trauma studies by helping it to realize its self-​declared ethical potential. In this manner, postcolonial novels become a vehicle to “denounce the pathologization and depolitization of victims of violence, critique Western complacency in dealing with non-​Western testimony, and call for the development of alternative modes of address” (ibid, p.5). In addition, for Rothberg (2008, p. 226), the project of decolonising trauma studies necessitates “an alternative cannon of trauma novels” that displays the

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Introduction  13 multiplicity of traumatic experiences, that is global in its aim, and that establishes connections between cultures in the juxtaposition of histories of trauma and ways of remembering. Therefore, a postcolonial trauma novel will uncover the traumatic consequences of colonialism as well as the traumatic potential of societies that still rely on (neo)colonial systems and structures. For these scholars, postcolonial trauma novels would, in addition, portray this systemic violence in aesthetic modes that challenge the way in which trauma has been depicted in Western contexts. Within the context of black British literature, two of the most studied authors have been Andrea Levy and Caryl Phillips, who have engaged with the traumatic legacies of colonialism, slavery, and migratory movements and brought to the fore the transmission of historical and collective traumas through different generations and the traumatic inhospitality of host societies in the twentieth century. Postcolonial trauma novels can thus become a place for articulating painful memories against the historical amnesia enforced in these host societies and a collective working through that could lift up the burden of traumatic memories and prompt a situated, critical, and ethical reflection. Postcolonial trauma novels in general and black British postcolonial trauma novels in particular interrogate the politics of (un)belonging in allegedly multicultural societies that are still very much based on the dichotomy us vs. them. This scenario has resulted in the depiction of split rather than plural diasporic identities, of failures of representation, of the tensions of glocal generations, the tensions of rooted and rhizomatic subjects, the tensions that emerge in the space between forgetting and remembering colonial pasts and postcolonial presents. Although the above considerations could be applied to the work of Zadie Smith, the study of her fiction through the lens of postcolonial trauma has been rather limited. Her youth, her ethnicity, and the success of her first novel, White Teeth (2000), established her as one of the writers who could best represent the multicultural milieu of Britain at the turn of the twenty-​first century. The novel sparked optimism about the possibilities of multicultural Britain and, as Louise Doughty (2013) explains, throughout Smith’s career, there have been many “who have stereotyped her as a poster girl for tales of cheery multiculturalism in a particular corner of north-​west London”. Despite these claims, the marketing campaign failed to see that the “Happy Multicultural Land” the novel refers to (p.465) was not that happy because, behind its humoristic and ironic turns, White Teeth reveals a dramatic undertone in its depiction of the experiences of the two protagonist families, the Iqbals and the Joneses. Citizens of a supposedly multicultural metropolis, they nonetheless have to face the traumatic consequences derived not only from diasporic displacements, but also from the fact that they feel unwelcome by the host society and have to overcome a number of obstacles to integration. The novel deconstructs the alleged homeliness of London as regards “otherness”: the heterogeneous groups of Asian and Black

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14 Introduction characters in Willesden are defined by pervasive racial and ethnic stereotypes, and must confront racist and assimilatory attitudes. What is more, these characters will establish complex relationships with their past and retrieve the memories of a history that is often neglected in their host societies and new homes. Smith (Gerzina 2004, pp.270–​1) explained that White Teeth is an attempt to “order the past […] not really my past but the past of the place I’m from … maybe even of England”. The past is a main concern in Smith’s ouvre because, as can be read in White Teeth, “this is the other thing about immigrants (‘fugees, émigrés, travellers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow” (p.466). Not only do characters struggle to come to terms with their pasts, but the past of colonial history and its mark upon modern metropolises also come to the fore, thus making it clear that, as Smith asserts, when one “order[s]‌the past”, one realises that the practice of colonialism, which establishes “a natural order of things”, “do[es]n’t disappear” (2016b). Her subsequent fictions have explored individual and collective traumatic histories in more or less overt ways: The Autograph Man (2002) explores mourning and the trauma of loss of Alex Li-​Tandem after the early death of his father; On Beauty (2005) narrates histories of unbelonging through the intersectional portrayal of class, race, and gender in the fictional town of Wellington in the United States; NW (2012) consciously explores the traumatic intersection of class and race in contemporary London, especially through the split identity of one of its protagonists, Keisha/​Natalie, and exlicitly refers to the struggle between remembering and forgetting; The Embassy of Cambodia (2013) narrates the life of Fatou, a woman from Ivory Coast with a traumatic past who is a modern slave in London; Swing Time (2016a) presents the traumatic history of the transatlantic slave trade and problematises black Atlantic identities in a globalised context. Through these fictions, Smith explores the shame and trauma that may arise from feelings of (un)belonging, the development of hybrid and split selves, the claim to an “authentic” identity, the pervasiveness of colonial practices, the deterministic nature of race, and class limitations, loss and mourning. The façade of a happy multiculturalism has turned into a cruder picture of the reality of those who remain vulnerable to neocolonial discourses and practices and the pervading racism still present in British and North American societies. Smith’s novels have seldom been regarded as trauma narratives, despite the fact that there are numerous explicit and implicit references to trauma in her work. Trauma in Smith’s fiction has in fact often been overlooked or inadequately dealt with in comparison with other novels written by other British and black and Asian British writers. Some scholars such as Ulrike Tancke (2011) used the concept of “original trauma” that appears in White Teeth and briefly presented a general account of trauma for diasporic subjects, to then apply it to Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and Leila

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Introduction  15 Aboulela’s Minaret; Philip Tew has a few scattered references to trauma in his monographs on Smith (2010, 2013), and attempts to read space in NW as traumatological alongside Will Self’s representation of place in The Book of Dave (2014); Jorge Berástegui Wood (2014) directly tackles trauma in The Autograph Man, seeing it in a rather existential light, and Andrew Furman saw the trauma of loss in The Autograph Man as both an individual and collective trauma connected to the protagonist’s Jewish roots. Other studies of Zadie Smith’s work offer vaguer references to trauma, understood as an umbrella term that signals the suffering of the characters and the difficult reality that the novels depict, which strips trauma from its political and ethical possibilities. The first reference to trauma is made in White Teeth in connection with the diasporic experience of the Iqbal family, of Bangladeshi origins, now living in Willesden, London. The Iqbals present symptoms of what the narrative labels as “original trauma”, namely, the migratory movement from ex-​colony to (post)colonial centre, and the repetition of this traumatic journey and the feeling of unsettlement that it entails throughout different generations. Although such experience is called “trauma”, White Teeth affirms that “there is no proper term for it –​original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better. A trauma is something one repeats and repeats” (p.161). “Original trauma” thus implies a rather general understanding of trauma as repetition but, more importantly, it seems that the term “trauma” has been chosen for lack of a better one to encapsulate the suffering of postcolonial subjects. This clearly echoes the problems that early trauma theories have posed in the last few decades, particularly as regards their imposition of a Western methodology to understand the suffering and the development of the self of non-​Western subjects/​“others”. This reference to trauma is accompanied by reference to psychoanalysis and more particularly to the criticism of its inadequacy for postcolonial subjects. Alsana Iqbal in a conversation with Neena, her lesbian “Nice-​of-​Shame” who embraces Marxist feminism and its psychoanalytical variants. Alsana opposes psychoanalysis as a means to reveal the truth and deal with anxiety and suffering: My Niece-​of-​Shame believes in the talking cure, eh? […] Talk, talk, talk and it will be better. Be honest, slice open your heart and spread the red stuff around. But the past is made of more than words, dearie. We married old men, you see? These bumps […] they will always have daddy-​long-​legs for fathers. One leg in the present, one in the past. No talking will change this. Their roots will always be tangled. And roots get dug up. (p.80) Alsana regards the popular and traditional version of psychoanalysis as a useless method for approaching some diasporic identities, especially

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16 Introduction those of the second and third generations. As will become clear, no words can possibly help these generations to understand the complex socio-​ cultural and political discourses that shape their lives. White Teeth is not only suspicious of the predicaments of traditional trauma theories based on psychoanalysis, it also mocks the white, upper-​ middle classes who embrace them to understand themselves and others. Joyce Chalfen, the wife of an academic, proud mother, and author of a book on nurturing in the mid-​seventies, will use psychoanalytical theories to analyse her family as well as the Iqbals and the Joneses, an approach which is repeatedly parodied and questioned: Their [the children’s] only after-​ school activity (they despised sport) was the individual therapy five times a week at the hands of an old-​fashioned Freudian called Marjorie who did Joyce and Marcus (separately) on weekends. It might appear extreme to non-​ Chalfens, but Marcus had been brought up with a strong respect for therapy (in his family therapy had long supplanted Judaism) and there was no arguing with the result. Every Chalfen proclaimed themselves mentally healthy and emotionally stable. The children had their oedipal complexes early and in the right order, they were all fiercely heterosexual, they adored their mother and admired their father, and, unusually, this feeling only increased as they reached adolescence. (pp.313–​4) In addition to the humour that dismantles the validity of such views, this passage depicts a certain alienation of the Chalfen family –​“individual”, “separated”, “non-​Chalfens” –​, which is opposed to the alienation experienced by the diasporic characters in the novel. Moreover, this passage implies psychoanalysis’ predisposition to regard as orderly and complete only those subjects who possess a stable and single identity, which clearly excludes the possibility of multiple selves that so often transpire in diasporic narratives. This combination of explicit references to trauma, together with implicit traumatic identities and events and a general suspicion of the way in which Western trauma theory and psychoanalysis have been forced upon postcolonial subjects as the only way to deal with their suffering is not only found in White Teeth but expands in a myriad ways throughout Smith’s work. Alex-​ Li Tandem in The Autograph Man, a Chinese–​ Jewish–​British subject who has not dealt with the death of his father, rejects therapy as a method of healing his suffering and any possibility of being read through the lenses of psychoanalysis: all possible psychological, physiological and neurological hypotheses (including the mixed race people see things double theory, and the fatherless children seek out restored symmetry, and especially the

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Introduction  17 Chinese brains are hardwired for yin and yang dualistic thought) made him want to staple his eyeballs to a wall. (p.88; italics in original) Alex is very much aware of the workings of psychoanalysis and how these have been used to read and “dissect” otherness and loss. The Autograph Man is also rather critical of the reliance on the prescriptions set by the American DMS, one of the texts that traditionally has promoted the pervasiveness of trauma as PTSD. When Alex is still a child and goes to see a wrestling match with his father in the Royal Albert Hall, the narrator elaborates on the grief of Queen Victoria, which is prolonged for 40 years. She is therefore diagnosed with what the narrator classifies as “Excessive Grief Syndrome (EGS)” and points out that “a lot of things that are syndromes now had simpler names back then. It was a simpler time. That’s why some people like to call them the good old days” (p.18). The Autograph Man presents grief as a common human experience that has been complicated by its pathologisation as well as through the fear of death and ageing installed in Western societies. And through Alex, mourning is depicted as a complex process that cannot or should not (only) be read through the fixed definitions presented in manuals such as the DMS. In On Beauty, psychoanalysis is shown as popularised and yet again as pertaining the more privileged sectors of society. Zora Belsey, the daughter of the protagonist family, explains that Claire Malcolm, a white lecturer who is known for bringing into her classes talented poets who cannot afford to attend college, suffers from “ADD”, “Attention Dick Deficiency […] If it doesn’t have a dick, it’s basically deficient”. Zora reworks and mocks the Freudian idea of penis envy. Claire, similarly to the Chalfens, heavily relies on psychoanalysis, which seems reserved for the more privileged classes. These narratives portray psychoanalysis as a privileged method of healing and, more importantly, as one that has been further imposed as a tool to attempt to understand otherness and that has become part of our everyday vocabulary, being included in popular culture as well. Even if as a cure, psychoanalysis may prove valid for some of the mostly white and upper-​, middle-​class characters in Smith’s fictions, psychoanalysis establishes a sort of safety barrier from which they engage with difference and otherness and, more worryingly, a place from which to subdue it. Trauma in Smith’s fictions goes beyond the mere or casual reproach to psychoanalysis and its rather assimilatory praxes. The narration and aesthetics of postcolonial trauma in Smith’s narratives encourage us to analyse the individual, collective, and historical wounds that diasporic characters show and move beyond considering the traumatic event on its own because socio-​economic and political variables can often trigger off traumatic experiences. This monograph will therefore explore how Zadie Smith brings to the fore the complex, and sometimes conflicted, relationship between postcolonialism and trauma. Moreover, Smith’s fictions will

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18 Introduction be shown to focus not only on the articulation of the suffering of postcolonial, diasporic subjects, but also to have a clear decolonising aim in mind since they expose the pervasiveness of Western trauma theories and the need to depart from this way of seeing others and perceiving the self as inherently whole and stable. Smith’s fiction brings to the fore a new framework that can create a new epistemology of trauma that is in line with the decolonising efforts of the discipline. This monograph is divided into three chapters that explore different facets of postcolonial trauma and show how Smith’s fiction has evolved in its political engagement with traumatic realities and the multiple ways of narrating trauma. Despite their differences, many of the characters throughout her fiction are bound together by their traumatic relationship in terms of origins, shame, the traumatic histories of colonisation, slavery, loss, and the persisting tension between remembering and forgetting individual and collective histories of suffering. The first chapter, “Origins, Original Trauma, and Transgenerational Trauma: The Obsessions and Revelations of History”, focuses on White Teeth and takes the concept of “original trauma” as a departure to analyse how Samad Iqbal, Millat Iqbal, and Irie Jones act out and work through this diasporic experience of trauma. This chapter will explore in depth the concept of transgenerational trauma and postmemory, following the theories proposed by Marian Hirsch and Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. This chapter explores the development of traumatic identities and the varying degrees of attachment to the past of different generations. The analysis of Irie further provides grounds for the explorations of other female characters of the Bowden family and other coping mechanisms as well as the exploration of the intersection of postcolonial trauma and gender and how this reads against the experiences of the male characters. Thus, this chapter discusses how these characters’ attachment to their past and the continuous retrieval of memories that belong to past generations are a form of working through that ambiguously allows them to cope with past and present traumatic experiences and concludes that their attachment replicates the haunting of traumatic experiences, which is regarded in Smith’s fiction as a drawback in the path towards a more resilient future. If the first chapter studies the attachment to origins, the second one, “The Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma: The Ambivalences of Forgetting and Remembering in White Teeth, On Beauty, and NW”, closely analyses those characters from different generations in Smith’s fiction who radically want to forget their pasts. For this purpose, this chapter will focus on the processes of erasure developed by Magid Iqbal in White Teeth, Howard and Levi Belsey in On Beauty, and Keisha Blake in NW. This chapter sets to draw a detailed picture of the circumstances that lead these characters to actively forget their pasts. Thus, attention will be paid not only to race and ethnicity, but also to class, a concept that is closely tied to colonialism and postcolonialism in Smith’s fiction.

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Introduction  19 This chapter will also reveal how some of these characters seek to forget the burden of their past as a coping mechanism and as a question of survival. This chapter will delve into the connection between trauma and the affect of shame and will study how the complete obliteration of one’s past does not constitute a working through of postcolonial traumas but rather an acting out. These acts of forgetting will also be contextualised within the historical amnesia (Hall) and the postcolonial melancholia (Gilroy) of contemporary Britain, because postcolonial subjects may need to integrate their pasts but the host societies cannot forget their colonial past and elude the neocolonial turns in the present. In addition, this chapter contemplates the relationship between intertextuality and trauma and considers NW as a parodic take on trauma fictions. The last chapter, “Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory: Dialogic Histories of Slavery in The Embassy of Cambodia and Swing Time”, reads The Embassy of Cambodia and Swing Time as transnational examples of trauma fiction that incorporate multidirectional ways of remembering. Relying on Michael Rothberg’s theory of multidirectional memory, the first part of this chapter will elaborate on how this form of remembering and working through collective traumas alongside individual ones works efficiently towards narrating postcolonial trauma. The second part of this chapter explores Swing Time’s references of the traumatic history of slavery and the traumatic violence of racism in the twentieth and twenty-​ first centuries and discusses the ambiguities and contradictions of the first-​ person unnamed narrator and the superficial’s explanations of processes of acting out and working through trauma, her sudden awakenings, and her frequent blindness to the realities of others pose a threat to the transnational ways of coping. This chapter makes evident the traumatising mechanisms of neocolonial practices and the more or less successful ways in which Smith portrays them. Furthermore, the contrast between these two works brings to the fore some dissonances in Smith’s political trajectory and will open up the discussion of her ideological progression. Diasporic traumatic experiences in Smith’s fiction motivate the exploration of problematic relationship to origins, the complexities of forgetting and remembering, and the uncertainties of the ambiguities and contradictions that testify to the intersection of trauma and postcolonialism. The narratives analysed here outline Smith’s political and ideological progression and show that there has been a process of working through and opening up about the insidious consequences of historical and collective traumas in her writings. Smith contributes to the ethical and decolonial possibilities of trauma by provoking a certain unsettlement and directing readers to question the contexts in which trauma arises. If, as she contends, colonialism does not go away, the study of postcolonial trauma in her fiction can work towards its deconstruction and the reconstruction of more ethical and critical ways to assess our being, our situatedness, and how otherness and our relation to others operates in neocolonial times.

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20 Introduction

Notes 1 See for example Byung-​Chul Han (2017) Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power and Ron Purser (2019) McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. 2 See Gibbs, A. (2014). Contemporary American Trauma Narratives.

Bibliography Alexander, J. et al., eds., 2004. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Alexander, J., 2012. Trauma: A Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Berástegui Wood, J., 2014. The Autograph Man, By Zadie Smith: The Long Way to Heal Trauma. The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 20 (2), 19–​30. Bhabha, H.K., (1952) 2008. Foreword. In: F. Fanon, ed. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press, xxi–​xxxvii. Bistoen, G., Vanheule, S. and Craps, S., 2014. Badiou’s Theory of the Event and the Politics of Trauma Recovery. Theory and Psychology, 24 (6), 830–​51. Bond, L. and Craps, S., 2020. Trauma. Abingdon: Routledge. Brown, L.S. and Ballou, M., 1992. Personality and Psychopathology: Feminist Reappraisals. New York: Guilford Press. Brown, L.S., 1995. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma”. In: C.Caruth, ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Butler, J., 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London, New York & Calcutta: Seagull Books. Byung-​Chul, H., 2017. Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power. London & New York: Verso. Caruth, C., ed., 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caruth, C., 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Collingwood-​Whittick, S., ed., 2007. The Pain of Unbelonging: Alienation and Identity in Australasian Literature. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi. Craps, S. and Buelens, G., eds., 2008. Postcolonial Trauma Novels [Special Issue]. Studies in the Novel, 40 (1 & 2). Craps, S., 2010. Wor(L)Ds of Grief: Traumatic Memory and Literary Witnessing in Cross-​Cultural Perspective. Textual Practice, 24 (1), 51–​68. Craps, S., 2013. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan Craps, S., 2014. “Beyond Eurocentrism: Trauma Theory in the Global Age”. In: G. Buelens, S. Durrant, and R. Eagleston, eds. The Future of Trauma Theory: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism. London & New York: Routledge, 23–​43. Doughty, L., 2013. The Embassy of Cambodia By Zadie Smith –​Review. The Guardian, 4 November, www.theguardian.com/​books/​2013/​nov/​04/​embassy-​ of-​cambodia-​zadie-​smith-​review [Accessed 15 November 2013].

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Introduction  21 Erikson, K., 1994. A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience of Modern Disasters. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Fanon, F., (1961) 2002. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Fassin, D. and Rechtman, R., 2009. The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Felman, S. and Laub, D., 1992. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gibbs, A., 2014. Contemporary American Trauma Narratives. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gilroy, P., 2004. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? Abingdon: Routledge. Herman, J.L., 1997. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basicbooks. Herrero, M.D. and Baelo-​Allué, S., eds., 2011. The Splintered Glass: Facets of Trauma in the Post-​Colony and Beyond. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi. Kaplan, E.A., 2005. Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. LaCapra, D., 1994. Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. LaCapra, D., 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Luckhurst, R., 2008. The Trauma Question. London & New York: Routledge. Mengel, E., Borzaga, M. and Orantes, K., eds., 2010. Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in South Africa: Interviews. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi. Mengel, E. and Borzaga, M., eds., 2012. Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in the Contemporary South African Novel: Essays. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi. Mignolo, W., 2018. What does it Mean to Decolonize? In: C.E. Walsh and W. Mignolo. On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham: Duke University Press. Miller, N.K. and Tougaw, J., 2002. Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Memmi, A., 2001. The Colonizer and the Colonized. London: Profile Books. Purser, R., 2019. McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. London: Repeater. Radstone, S., 2007. Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics. Paragraph, 30 (1), 9–​29. Rothberg, M., 2008. Decolonizing Trauma Studies: A Response. Studies in the Novel, 40 (1–​2), 224–​34. Rothberg, M., 2014. Preface: Beyond Tancred And Clorinda –​Trauma Studies for Implicated Subjects. In: G. Buelens, S. Durrant, and R. Eagleston, eds. The Future of Trauma Theory: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism. London & New York: Routledge, xi–​xix. Smelser, N.J., 2004. Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma. In: J. Alexander et al., eds. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 31–​59. Smith, Z., 2000. White Teeth. London: Penguin. Smith, Z., 2002. The Autograph Man. London: Penguin. Smith, Z., 2004. Interview with G. Holbrook Gerzina. In: S. Nasta, ed. Writing across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk. Abingdon: Routledge.

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22 Introduction Smith, Z., 2005. On Beauty. London: Penguin. Smith, Z. 2012. NW. London: Hamish Hamilton. Smith, Z., 2013. The Embassy of Cambodia. London: Hamish Hamilton. Smith, Z., 2016a. Swing Time. London: Hamish Hamilton. Smith, Z., 2016b. Interview with J. Eugenides. The Pieces of Zadie Smith. The New Yorker Magazine, 17 October, www.nytimes.com/​2016/​10/​17/​t-​ magazine/​zadie-​smith-​swing-​time-​jeffrey-​eugenides.html?_​r=0 [Accessed 18 October 2016]. Tal, K., 1996. Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tancke, U., 2011. ‘Original Traumas’: Narrating Migrant Identity in British Muslim Women’s Writing. Postcolonial Text, 6 (2), n.p. http://​postcolonial. org/​index.php/​pct/​article/​view/​1238/​1165 [Accessed 2 February 2013]. Tew, P., 2010. Zadie Smith. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tew, P., ed., 2013. Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Tew, P., 2014. Will Self and Zadie Smith’s Depictions of Post-​Thatcherite London: Imagining Traumatic and Traumatological Space. Études Britanniques, n.p. Contemporaines, 47. https://​ebc.revues.org/​1886 [Accessed 11 November 2015]. Vickroy, L., 2002. Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Vickroy, L., 2005. The Traumas of Unbelonging: Reinaldo Arenas’s Recuperations of Cuba. MELUS, 30 (4), 109–​128. Vickroy, L., 2015. Reading Trauma Narratives: The Contemporary Novel and the Psychology of Oppression. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Visser, I., 2011. Trauma Theory and Postcolonial Literary Studies. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 47 (3), 270–​82. Visser, I., 2015. Decolonizing Trauma Theory: Retrospect and Prospects. Humanities, 4 (2), 250–​65. Ward, A., 2013. Understanding Postcolonial Traumas. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 33 (3), 170–​84. Whitehead, A., 2004. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Whitehead, A., 2009. Memory. London & New York: Routledge.

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1  Origins, Original Trauma, and Transgenerational Trauma The Obsessions and Revelations of History

Traumatic accounts have often sought to unearth the original event that triggered individual and collective suffering. Freud’s psychoanalytical model and his exploration of Jewish collective trauma in Moses and Monotheism (1939) are perhaps the most notable examples of this trend. Nevertheless, and especially so in postcolonial fiction, it is difficult to signal a single event as the cause for trauma. Smith’s diasporic narratives reflect on the postcolonial subjects’ relationship with origins and place a heightened emphasis on the connection of those origins with trauma. But far from reinforcing tropes about a single, founding trauma, Smith forces readers to reconsider the connection between trauma and origins and explore a tangled web of traumatic memories that often affect different generations in various ways. This exploration of origins does not attempt to provide answers to the contemptible question “where are you from”, which will often be tentative and ambiguous in diasporic narratives, but rather acknowledges the why of the past and present relationships of diasporic subjects to colonial pasts and neocolonial presents. This may seem contradictory when the first reference to trauma in Zadie Smith’s work is specifically connected to origins. White Teeth (2000) reveals different facets of trauma through the protagonist families in the novel, the Joneses, the Iqbals, and the Chalfens and, as advanced in the introduction, elaborates upon the concept of “original trauma” taking as an example the experience of the Iqbal family, deeply affected by the diasporic movements between homes and cultures: [I]‌mmigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition –​it’s something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you’re still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There is no proper term for it –​original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better. A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals –​that they can’t help but re-​enact the dash they once made from one land to

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24  Origins and Original Trauma another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign. (pp.161–​2) The novel’s definition of original trauma connects with the traditional view of trauma as repetition, in which those traumatised re-​enact the traumatic event in more or less indirect forms, and implies the impossibility for migrants of escaping their past in a country which is still defined by (post)colonial attitudes towards others. More importantly, the term “trauma” is chosen for lack of a better one to encapsulate the suffering of postcolonial subjects, which echoes the problems that postcolonial trauma theories have recently highlighted, namely the ubiquity of a traditionally Western understanding of suffering and self that does not truly allow plural methodologies and identities. In line with postcolonial trauma, the concept of original trauma that White Teeth puts forward challenges the idea of individual psychological trauma as isolated from the political and socio-​cultural environments that typically affect diasporic experiences and challenges the idea of a single event triggering trauma while pointing to the historical ramifications of imperialism and colonialism. Ulrike Tancke believes that the migrant characters’ trauma in diasporic British fiction in general and in White Teeth in particular emanates from the characters’ “struggle to connect to their origins and construct their identities in the face of new cultural contexts and expectations” (2011, par. 1). The complex experience of migration and diaspora, Tancke goes on to argue, results in the impossibility of integrating the characters’ past narratively and in the impossibility of working through in supposedly glocal societies that often disregard the global. Several characters in White Teeth will attempt to work through their original trauma by turning to their past and history in order to achieve some “comfort”, as Tancke puts it (par. 13). It is undeniable that the search for origins or return to origins will be the sine qua non for some of these characters to work through their traumatic experiences and achieve integration, rather than assimilation, in their societies. However, as John McLeod (2005, p.41) points out, the relationship to the past in White Teeth frequently ends up in either “ossification” or “erasure”. Why do these characters turn to colonial pasts that are doubtlessly traumatic? And why, if the turn to the past provides comfort, do these characters develop an excessive attachment to the past or try to obliterate their origins? Some answers may be found in Dominick LaCapra’s (2004, p.55) definition of traumatic experience, which as opposed to punctual historical traumas, “has an elusive aspect insofar as it relates to a past that has not passed away –​a past that intrusively invades the present and may block or obviate possibilities in the future”. These characters live in a present in which the traumas of colonialism persist and turning to a traumatic past may seem like the only viable solution to understand a traumatic present that reveals that colonialism has equally not passed away.

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Origins and Original Trauma  25 Following LaCapra’s argument of trauma’s obstruction to future possibilities, the obsession with the past and origins that Samad, Millat, and Irie display will be shown to be often paralysing. Nevertheless, against (or rather, alongside) this stagnation, there are shifts in the traumatic experiences of different generations, especially in the ways they act out their traumas and the possibilities of working through them. Thus, original trauma, as defined in White Teeth, also calls for the exploration of the transgenerational transmission of trauma and how some colonial traumas are relieved through repetition and re-​enactment by generations that did not directly experience them. This is a “tragedy” that not only affects the Iqbal family but also the other families in the novel because, as the narrator of the novel claims at one point: “this is the other thing about immigrants (‘fugees, émigrés, travellers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow” (p.466). Trauma is indeed an exploration in memory, in history, and the exploration of trauma in the narratives of Samad, Millat, and Irie will reveal their attempt to alleviate the burden of the ever-​present history of colonialism and the insidiousness of historical and collective traumas that persist through multiple generations. Trauma may thus live in the memories and psyches of different generations. People who have not directly experienced the traumatic event that has marked their individual and collective contexts may nevertheless present symptoms of being traumatised themselves. This is referred to as the transgenerational transmission of trauma, the process whereby the traumatic psyche of an already traumatised person and/​or generation is continued in the following ones. Relying on psychoanalytical theories and the unconscious transmission of affects down through the generations, Marianne Hirsch theorised this transmission as “postmemory” and Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok as “phantom”. For Hirsch (2008, p.106), postmemory describes the relationship that the “generation after” bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before –​to the experiences that they “remember” only by means of the stories, images and behaviors among which they grew up. Hirsch refers to both the material and immaterial ways in which traumatic memories are transmitted from generation to generation. Thus, objects such as photographs and the silences present in family histories gain relevance when members of the post-​generations try to figure out their past. According to Nicolas Abraham, transgenerational transmission is produced by “the existence within an individual of a collective psychology comprised of several generations”. Taking this hypothesis as their starting point, Abraham and Torok put forward the theory of the “phantom”, whereby “some people unwittingly inherit the secret psychic substance of their ancestors’ lives”. In this way, the individual is linked

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26  Origins and Original Trauma to the collective because, in transgenerational trauma, the “symptoms do not spring from the individual’s own life experiences but from someone else’s psychic conflicts, traumas, or secrets” (1994, p.166). Anne Whitehead (2004) relies on Abraham and Torok’s concept of the crypt to analyse traumatic memories. The crypt encapsulates the burying of shameful family pasts kept secret deep in the psyche. This crypt is built within the subject after a failed process of mourning, in which loss is interred alongside “the actual or supposed traumas” (1994, p.130) that have not undergone introjection, that is, the subject has rejected trauma/​ loss and the deep transformation of self and world that they might entail. This process is one of the defence mechanisms often associated with traumatic experiences, and recalls the repetitions and contradictions inherent to trauma and the paradoxical relation of “knowing but not knowing” that Caruth suggested because, ultimately, “the crypt is enclosed within the self, but as a foreign place, prohibited, excluded” (Abraham and Torok 2005, p.xxxv). Whitehead (ibid., p.14) concludes that transgenerational trauma then “suggests that symptoms are transmitted from one generation to the next when a shameful and therefore unspeakable experience is barred from consciousness or kept secret”, and that the crypt becomes the “container that houses the seemingly unthinkable and unrepresentable residue of the past”. Most theories of transgenerational trauma and postmemory have been developed in relation to the Holocaust and some specific clinical cases. Nevertheless, examples of transgenerational transmission can also be found in postcolonial contexts and literatures, as well as in the theorisation of postcolonial trauma. Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman (2009, p.16) argue that the slave, the colonized, the subjugated, the oppressed, the survivor, the accident victim, the refugee –​these are concrete images of the vanquished whose history, far from disappearing along with their experience of defeat and misfortune, is reborn in the memory of subsequent generations. Fassin and Rechtman’s apparently deterministic and bleak vision has been countered by Irene Visser (2011, p.275), who argues that the vision of trauma as historical and transgenerational may lead to a conception of it as “an atemporal human (universal) trauma”. Furthermore, she adds that “this transgenerational, psychohistorical, timeless model of trauma can […] only be sustained if a discursive relation is enabled with the historical particularity that is intrinsic to postcolonialism’s cultural and political research agenda”. In other words, Visser calls for a historically situated analysis of trauma in the postcolony that places transgenerational transmission within specific cultural, political, and economic relations, considers both the individual and collective facets of trauma, and rejects generalisations.

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Origins and Original Trauma  27 In White Teeth there are characters for whom transgenerational trauma will coalesce with the individual traumatic experiences derived from their struggle to integrate and their pain of unbelonging, which further complicates the impact of trauma in postcolonial subjects. The female characters in the Bowden family, from Ambrosia to Irie, share a complex history that started in colonial Jamaica and the transgenerational transmission of trauma in this family must be traced throughout the twentieth century and examined in consonance with the transition from colonial to postcolonial times. In the Iqbal family, Samad’s obsession with his great-​grandfather, Mangal Pande, could indeed be a sign of generational trauma: the failed confrontation of Pande against the English is relived in Samad’s rejection of Englishness. However, the novel details more clearly how the effects of this transmission can be felt more pressingly in the second generation. Samad’s sons, Magid and Millat, grow under the shadow of his unresolved split identity, pain of unbelonging, and subsequent rejection of the West and attachment to the Muslim faith. Magid, who is sent back to Bangladesh, will identify with Englishness and forget his origins while Millat, who remains in England, develops a radicalised version of his father’s split identity and belief in Islam. The analysis of transgenerational trauma in the Bowden and Iqbal families reveals new facets of original trauma and exposes how the particularities of each family’s traumas are entangled in broader cultural and historical ones, with multiple origins that speak both of past and present and the need to work through individual traumas as well as through history.

1.1  The Roots that Drown and Save: The Excessive Attachments of Samad Miah Iqbal Samad Iqbal appears at the beginning of White Teeth as a rather cheerful companion to a depressed Archibald Jones, who rather comically fails to commit suicide. Samad and Archie are presented as Second World War companions, but war does not traumatise them as much as a different yet shared feeling of being “tiny and rootless” (p.11). Whilst Archie experiences some shame and restlessness on account of his lower-​class origins, Samad struggles with class, race, and the anxieties that arise out of his double colonial identification as both Bengali and British and, later on, with the consequences of diasporic displacement. Samad’s life will be marked by his fight for the British in his youth and an increasingly bitter fight against the British later in his life. After migrating to London in 1973, Samad finds a society that fails to fully recognise him and he blindly turns to the past –​and especially the revolutionary image of his ancestor Mangal Pande –​and to a rather questionable adherence to the Islamic faith. Even if war per se does not constitute Samad’s main trauma, it is during his participation in the Second World War that he is psychologically wounded, an addition to the accidental physical wound in his wrist

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28  Origins and Original Trauma caused during a previous fight for the Indian army. As one of the many colonial subjects who took part in the war, fighting for their mother country, Samad moves from being a highly accomplished soldier in Bengal to being part of a “Buggered Battalion, a travelling circus of discontents” (p.90) in which he experiences difference, a story which he repeats every day to Archie. Esra Mirze (2008, p.189) argues that “during his service in the military, his racial difference marks Samad as an atypical soldier, but not as an outsider”. Nevertheless, and even though the context of war provides a scenario of relative sameness –​a common cause, identical clothing –​Samad is singled out because of his race and otherness: Archie gazes at him for a week and he is repeatedly insulted as “sultan”, “poof”, and “Indian Sultan bastard” (pp.84–​5). This experience makes Samad realise that colonialism has split his identity and turned him into an “in-​ betweener” who does not fit anywhere, a feeling that is more explicitly manifested after Archie and Samad learn that the war is over. Samad collapses, admits his “self-​hatred” (p.111), reclaims his name, rejecting “Sam” or “Samuel”, and confesses his despair about what will happen to him after the war, for he is too English for Bengal or India and too Indian for England. If Samad had regarded himself as a cripple because of his hand, after the war he endures a multi-​layered crippling, adding his split, in-​between identity as well as his shattered faith. This crippling results then, not from his experience of war, but rather from his confrontation with the reality of colonialism. While it is true that during the war Samad drinks heavily and takes morphine, allegedly to combat “loneliness” and “melancholy” (p.100), and that he longs “for the man he once was” (p.111), the end of the war, far from being a relief, aggravates his feelings of uncertainty and pessimism. The novel seems to suggest that it is not the trauma of war, or rather the trauma of surviving war, but colonialism that has wounded Samad’s psyche and generated a sense of abandonment and unbelonging prior to the experience of war. In fact, the feelings of numbness and melancholia that war may precipitate are paralleled by the identity-​formation process of the colonial subject and further accompanied by a sense of uncertainty and shame. His crippling becomes a projection of the loss which results from the dismantling of the self, which is effected by colonialist discourses and imposes on him two potential identifications, without allowing them either to fully develop or to merge fluidly. Samad will not be able to belong either in Bengal or in England, since his encounter with colonialism has turned him into a traitor, a “turncoat” (p.113), whose allegiances are bound to shift continuously, thus rendering any attempt at reconciliation impossible. There is no resolution to Samad’s confrontation with his origins and the injuries they inflict on his psyche, because even when locations and temporalities change, his conflict remains. The dynamics of colonialism are repeated and perpetuated in the different macro-​and microcosms that the novel offers, be it Bengal, London, or a tank in the warfront. After all, as Samad himself explains to Archie: “one strong man and one weak

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Origins and Original Trauma  29 is a colony” (p.92). The recurrence of these power dynamics throughout his life, together with his inability and refusal to accept his split identity, seems to make up his personal experience of original trauma. The repetition that comes with trauma in general, and with original trauma in particular, finds expression in Samad’s continuous allusions to his family’s past as embodied in the figure of Mangal Pande, and in the perpetuation of his split personality through the transgenerational transmission of trauma onto his twin sons. This repetition is allowed, or rather enforced, as the result of the continuous exposure of colonial and postcolonial subjects to such power dynamics and their social and political consequences within and across borders. If the postcolonial era inaugurated the easing off of physical borders, it also maintained and deepened psychological ones. During the war, Samad wants to retrieve an identity that was prior to the one exposed in war, even a pre-​occupied-​India identity, and his fixation with a more heroic vision of the past finds expression in his narration of the supposedly heroic past of his great-​grandfather, Mangal Pande, who, according to Samad, started the Indian Mutiny and rebelled against the English –​a story that is later dismissed by Archie’s research on the topic, leading him to conclude that Pande was, in fact, a traitor/​coward within the upper-​caste of Indian soldiers. Once in England, Mangal Pande becomes a touchstone figure for Samad, which anchors him to his past in Bengal against the flux and confusion of his life in England. Indeed, the narrative elements that frame Samad’s story direct readers to the past as embodied by Mangal Pande, and also to the conflictive context of adaptation that Samad faces at present in England. The second part of White Teeth, (Samad’s story), is set between 1857, the year of the mutiny, and 1984. Samad’s obsession with the figure of his great-​grandfather is paratextually echoed in the subchapters of this second part, titled “Mutiny!” and “The Root Canals of Mangal Pande”. Even when the narrative is dealing with the present, Samad can only understand his life as and through the past. Moreover, although the titles may evoke a heroic tone, this is neither the story of a hero nor of the redemption of a failed hero. This is the decline and fall of Samad Miah Iqbal. There is yet another paratextual element, the epigraph, which contributes to framing Samad’s narrative. This epigraph is a quote from Norman Tebbit’s definition of the cricket test: “The cricket test –​ which side do they cheer for? … Are you still looking back to where you came from or where you are?” (p.123). Tebbit’s test of allegiance was to measure the level of integration of immigrants in England: one that revealed a politics of assimilation rather than integration, and the implausibility at the time (1990) of thinking of subjects who could maintain both allegiances and reconcile different cultures and temporalities. With a mocking tone, Amartya Sen (2007, pp.153–​4) explains that the cricket test “has the enviable merit of definiteness, and gives an immigrant a marvellously clear-​cut procedure for establishing his or her integration into British society” that contradicts the way in which “cultural

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30  Origins and Original Trauma contacts” are producing “hybridization”. This hybridisation will be possible in the case of subjects of subsequent generations, but not in the character of first-​generation immigrant, Samad Miah Iqbal. In the face of the difficulties he encounters in his life in England and the impossibility of merging his identities and resolving his contradictions, Samad favours an apparently consistent Bengali and Muslim identity and can only look towards where he came from. It is no surprise then that, once he moves to England, he continues to be “the foreign man in a foreign land caught between borders” (p.178). These borders are not only geographical, but also structural and psychological and, while they can (and should) be porous places of encounter, the increasingly multicultural milieu of London that Samad encounters from the 1970s onwards is still divisive. Samad will also play a part in creating these borders in order to cope with his diasporic existence in London. Benito and Manzanas (2000, pp.1–​2) explain that borders “territorialize our thinking, our world vision, and provide parameters we need to live safely within” and that they give way to “grand narrative[s]‌” that ultimately define identity. Faced with racism and the impossibility of integration, Samad opts exclusively for his Bengali-​Muslim identity, thus proclaiming his difference from the host society and setting up a border which allows him to feel relatively safe and comforted. Against the narratives and realities that borders impose on diasporic subjects like him, Samad narrates his traumatic past and fences off any trace of his double identity and its implicit anxiety. In London, having grown weary of his job at a restaurant, he wishes to wear a sign (p.58) that explains who he was in the past and that defines him through his feeble faith, his close relations, and a rather unconvincing sense of manliness. Unable to wear such a sign proclaiming who he was and who he is now, he develops “the urge, the need, to speak to every man, and, like the Ancient Mariner, explain constantly, constantly wanting to reassert something, anything” (p.58). The impossibility to be fully recognised, to fully exist, in the present makes Samad caught not only between lands, but also between temporalities, for trauma is said to halt time, making the traumatised person relive and live in the past. As K.M. Fierke (p.120) explains, “the experience of trauma […] becomes fixed or frozen in time. It refuses to be represented as past, but is perpetually experienced in a painful disassociated traumatic present” (italics in original). This passage also points to a sense of repetition and a certain unspeakability, both of which might be taken as signs of trauma. And Samad’s unspeakability may not come so much from his inability to explain narratively his traumatic experience, as trauma theories would require, but rather from the impossibility of locating his trauma in either past or present. But unable to assert himself in the present that London offers him, Samad can only reassert his identity of origin and the figure of Mangal Pande and the part he played in colonial history, even if it might be mere fabrication or ended badly.

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Origins and Original Trauma  31 The story of Pande is told many times, before and after Samad’s arrival in England, and it undergoes numerous changes. Pande’s story is a failure, according to sources other than Samad. But, to him and others in his family, he is a successful historical figure without whom India would still be under English dominion (p.259). The (hi)story of Pande thus becomes fictionalised and its veracity questioned. Nevertheless, accuracy in this story is not particularly relevant. As Anne Whitehead (2004, p.3) remarks, in trauma fiction what prevails is “the importance of how and why the past is remembered and not exactly what”. For Samad, the repetition of the tale of Pande and his mutiny encapsulates larger collective and historical traumas and provides him in the present with a political identity that serves as a counterpoint to the diminished sense of self caused by diasporic unbelonging. Having Mangal Pande, to whom he bears a physical resemblance, as a heroic reference figure that stood up against the English brings some comfort to Samad. But these two figures seem drawn to failure and the narrative draws a parallelism between Pande’s failed mutiny against the English colonisers and Samad’s failed rebellion against Englishness. The analysis of Samad’s suffering and repetition in light of the definition of original trauma thus suggest that he might be acting out, rather than working through, the trauma of colonialism and its traces in contemporary times. Kai Erikson (1995, p.184) argues that “trauma involves (above all) a continual reliving of some wounding experience […] in a compulsive seeking out of similar circumstances”. This more traditional view of trauma seems to fit the description of Samad’s suffering since his rejection of Englishness in his present contexts makes him repeat Pande’s fight against the English in colonial times. But it is not the story of Pande’s mutiny per se that is seen as traumatic but rather the continuous sense of oppression and fight to assert a sense of self that colonialism imposed and that continues under different guises in contemporary times, which responds to trauma’s contention of not conceiving of the past as past. There are times in the novel when Samad manages to voice his anxiety of unbelonging and his disappointment at his life in England, which may point towards a possibility of working through. Three notable examples are his confessions to Shiva, a colleague, Mad Mary, a neighbourhood character, and Irie, Archie’s daughter. In his conversation with Shiva (pp.144–​5), he admits that he “[has] been corrupted by England” and so have his sons. Shiva deduces that Samad is merely suffering a “mid-​life crisis”, to which Samad responds: “I wish to live as I was always meant to! I wish to return to the East! […] I should have never come here –​that’s where every problem has come from”. Samad regards his own misbehaviour and moral contradictions as an indictment of Western corruption. His wish to return to the homeland, so common among diasporic subjects, is expressed here alongside his regret for the path taken, even though he had acknowledged that

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32  Origins and Original Trauma his existence in Bangladesh would have been difficult on account of his double colonial identification and that the corruption he talks about started much earlier than his arrival in England. One of Samad’s many contradictions is his affair with Poppy Burt-​ Jones, his sons’ teacher. Poppy is depicted as a white woman that embodies the acceptance of multiculturalism as exoticism and who fetishises difference, which Samad flaunts before her and others in school. Soon he dismisses his misconduct convincing himself that “to the pure all things are pure”, but his guilt ensues and reveals deeper concerns. When Poppy and Samad are walking down North London, they encounter Mad Mary, a Shakespearean mad woman, who is said to dislike white people (pp.175–​9). Mad Mary confronts Samad, who she recognises as a black man, and asks him what white people had done for them. When pressed for a solution to this historical problem, Samad tells her: I am having difficulties myself –​we are all having difficulties in this country, this country which is new to us and old to us all at the same time. We are divided people, aren’t we? […] We are split people. (p.179) Moreover, he tells her that he still hopes for the day when, according to his faith, he will be “struck unconscious. Deaf and dumb”. Samad does not foresee any solution to their split identities other than death, which is the only thing that will relieve him from his verbosity and the repetition provoked by his original trauma. However, it is in a conversation with Irie that Samad exposes his suffering more clearly: [I]‌t feels to me like you make a devil’s pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-​in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started … but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers –​who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-​trained. Who would want to stay? But you have made a devil’s pact … it drags you in and suddenly you are unsuitable to return, your children are irrecognizable, you belong nowhere […] And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems like some long, dirty lie. (p.407; italics in original) Samad’s words recall Achille Mbembe’s (2010, p.35) view of the emotional effects of decolonisation, who refers to “the entanglement of desire, seduction and subjugation; not only oppression, but its enigma of loss” and to the fact that postcolonial subjects will come to see that they

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Origins and Original Trauma  33 “have often allowed themselves to be duped, seduced, and deceived”. This community, in which he had deposited his hopes for a better life, has ultimately dehumanised him, and his traumatic experience of migration and diaspora have created a continuous sense of crisis which remains unresolved. Thus, the repeated question of “who would want to stay?” cannot be answered in a simple or straightforward manner, especially so when the train of thoughts here exposed by Samad explicitly refers to the pain of unbelonging and implicitly reveals a sense of entrapment. Samad speaks of a collective suffering in which the migrants’ process of adaptation is complicated by the traumatic loss of confidence and break with the community previously trusted as well as by this sense of deceit and defeat. Samad’s traumatic wound exemplifies the recurrent impossibility of distinguishing between individual and collective trauma. Individual trauma may lead to isolation and moving away from society, but collective trauma has similar, if not worse, consequences. According to Laurie Vickroy (2002, p.13), “although trauma damages the individual psyche, collective trauma has further destructive consequences in that it breaks the attachments of social life, degrades the sense of community and support from that community”. Vickroy further adds that “traumatic experience can inspire not only a loss of self-​confidence, but also a loss of confidence in the social and cultural structures that are supposed to create order and safety”. Similarly, Kai Erikson (1995, p.187) argues that collective trauma provokes a “shock because the community no longer exists as an effective source of support and that an important part of the self has disappeared”. This argument would explain Samad’s conflicting thoughts during the war –​the fact that neither the English nor the Bengalis will accept them –​as well as his mistrust of the community he currently inhabits, which has failed to fulfil a promise of belonging. Samad’s tragedy is that his original trauma closes the door for a return to his original homeland and he is trapped in a host society that is hostile towards him and that he can barely trust. England has the power to traumatise him and do away with his sense of self. Therefore, in London he feels increasingly alienated and progressively moves away from public spaces and retreats into the private sphere. He particularly seeks refuge at O’Connells, the men-​only pub he frequents with Archie, where you could be without family […], without possessions or status, without past glory or future hope –​you could walk through that door with nothing and be exactly as everybody else in there […] Nothing changes here, things are only retold, remembered. (p.244) The isolation and alienation that the public sphere enacts is willingly replicated in this space. It may seem that here, Samad eludes his struggles with society, with himself. Yet, this limbo that O’Connells seemingly

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34  Origins and Original Trauma recreates is one that is saturated with the symptoms of original trauma. This is a place where everybody is equally powerless and where locals, unable to change their present, are caught in their memories and can only tell versions of their pasts. This space of equality by negation could provide a relatively safe space in which Samad could work through his original trauma, but the stasis and seclusion that he finds at O’Connells do not provide a listener, and it becomes another space in which Samad acts out his attachment to the past and the undesirability that he finds in his host society and that ultimately reveals the ubiquity of a larger collective trauma from which he cannot, does not, want to escape. This episode corroborates Samad’s wish for immutability, which finds continuation in his desire for the unbreakability of the different generations of migrants in the novel. He can only conceive of “one generation! Indivisible! Eternal!” (p.289), which he sees as something mythical, almost sacred. His desire for undivided generations, however, is unmaterialisable in the multicultural and hybrid cultures generated by diaspora. As a colonial subject and, later on, a migrant, he has undergone profound changes. Yet he denies any possibility of change in himself or the others because he represses the fluidity and instability –​and flexibility –​that the double condition of the diasporic subject may imply. This further attachment responds to his need to create a united, collective “us” which can oppose the still imperial other, which perniciously perpetuates the binary Self/​Other. He refuses dialogue between selves and between generations. His obsession with unity could also be interpreted as his refusal to work through his original trauma, which ultimately stops him from creating new links and power relations in the host society. During the war Samad had asserted that “one strong man and one weak is a colony” (p.92), a hierarchy of power that has been translated into his postcolonial society. Knowing himself to be the weaker man, he is surpassed by a feeling of inferiority. His fixation with the past, the repetition of original trauma, and the transmutation of colonial relationships of power keep him trapped within the world order –​colonialism –​which forged his identity. Thus, he remains locked within his own trauma. Samad’s original trauma is also related to the concept of trans­ generational trauma, which is transmitted to generations that have not lived the traumatising event, but which inherit the absences, the shortcomings of memory, the fragmentation, and the silences of older generations. Samad, as has been suggested, seems to have inherited his great-​grandfather’s desire to rebel against Englishness and the English as well as the failed sense of mutiny of a man that wants fight a whole Empire. This transmission is continued by Samad himself when he forcefully tries to impose the accentuation of difference upon his twin sons, Magid and Millat. White Teeth discloses the conflict between these two generations by contrasting the rejection of assimilation of the first with the rather more integrational path followed by the second. Samad’s anxiety increases as he observes how Magid and Millat are growing up in

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Origins and Original Trauma  35 England neglecting their Bengali past and adopting Western traits. His solution to such offence would be to preserve the past, generation after generation, by imposing his constructed single-​identity. Samad becomes a man that is tied not only to a restricting and restrictive religious and identitarian views but also to a strong though contradictory sense of tradition: to Samad […] tradition was culture, and culture led to roots, and there were good, there were untainted principles. That didn’t mean he could live by them, abide them or grow in the manner they demanded, but roots were roots and roots were good. […] Roots were what saved, the ropes one throws out to rescue drowning men, to Save Their Souls. (p.193) He imposes on himself and others like him the weight of tradition and religion. He often repeats that he wants his sons to become good Muslims, but his efforts are only directed towards his own salvation. He is a drowned man that can only throw ropes to rescue a past that can never be recovered and that is more than likely suffused with traumatic realities. Locked, as he is, in his own trauma and in his attachment to roots, he can only (re)create suffering for him and his family. Samad eventually makes “a choice of morality” to save his sons and redeem himself but, due to his financial limitations, he decides to save only one, Magid. He justifies his choice to his eldest son by telling him: “you’ll thank me in the end. This country’s no good. We tear each other apart in this country” (p.201). However, this is neither a choice of morality nor an attempt at redemption; this is Samad’s attempt “to counter the trauma of being homeless by sending his sons back ‘home’ ” (Mirze 2008, p.194). He does not know –​cannot know –​how to better counter his trauma of exile and unbelonging. Thus he can only re-​enact it and consequently he transmits his trauma to the already potentially traumatising experience of the second generation. As the novel progresses, the ironic outcome of Samad’s decision is made clear: Magid turns into the perfect embodiment of Englishness and Millat into a rather imperfect religious fundamentalist. Both sons become the ultimate amplification and parody of his split identity. Samad is punished for his single-​handedly taken decision to separate his sons, as well as his attachment to roots, highlighting the fact that such fixation with origins is, in fact, injurious to the specific space and time which he and his family inhabit. Philip Tew (2010, p.64) argues that although Samad mourns the loss of his original culture and home from exile, one senses that he enjoys his dissatisfactions, creating the monstrous schism in his family as a result, alienating his wife until the return of Magid, but dividing his sons in perpetuity.

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36  Origins and Original Trauma But Samad, rather than a mourner, is a melancholic subject, one that cannot let go of the object he mourns. If Samad’s reactions to trauma are to be analysed in terms of loss, Dominick LaCapra’s differentiation between loss and absence could be rather productive in order to better understand it. LaCapra (2001, pp.49–​50) defines losses as those which “are specific and involve particular events” at a “personal level or broader scale”; absence, on the other hand, alludes to “what one never had in society or culture”. These categories do not stand in binary opposition, but can be seen, in fact, as complementary processes. When it comes to “converting absence into loss”, he explains, one assumes that there was (or could be) some original unity, wholeness, security, or identity that others have ruined, polluted, contaminated and thus made “us” lose. To regain it one must get rid or eliminate those others or that sinful other in oneself. (ibid., p.58) LaCapra’s description of how absence is transformed into loss goes a long way to accounting for Samad’s experiences throughout the novel. He is one of the few diasporic characters in Smith’s novels who still believes in the idea of a single, authentic identity. After arguing with his wife about the Rushdie affair, Samad defends those who are denouncing the blasphemy of The Satanic Verses by claiming that “it is not a matter of letting others live. It is a matter of protecting one’s culture, shielding one’s religion from abuse” (p.235). Alsana rebukes his approach to culture by questioning his idea of Bengali culture in particular and of culture in general. She supports her argument by researching the origin of Bengali culture and after reading that Bengalis “are largely descended from Indo-​Aryans who began to migrate into the country from the west” concludes that it looks like I am a Westerner after all! […] It just goes to show […] you go back and back and back and it’s still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe. Do you think anybody is English? Really English? It’s a fairy-​tale! (pp.235–​6) White Teeth works against the Western idea of a single, whole, and authentic culture. While it denounces the injurious after-​effects and after-​ affects of (post)colonialism in subjects like Samad, who are haunted by continuous threats to their subjectivity and the need to reject that other who is abusing, corrupting, tearing their own selves and their communities apart, it is also true that the novel rebukes the attitude of those characters who professedly refuse to adapt and can only live in the past.

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Origins and Original Trauma  37 White Teeth carefully unearths the reasons why subjects like Samad are trapped in an incessant struggle with their societies and their own selves. However, it also makes it clear that Samad belongs to the past and that new ways –​albeit still traumatic at times –​of understanding culture and accommodating multiple identities are being developed by younger generations. As has been shown, Samad does indeed suffer some of the consequences which trauma theory has laid out for individual and collective traumas, namely, that his sense of self has been shattered and his relationship with both his old and new communities is broken, which makes him live in constant anxiety and fear. During the war, his sense of identity was threatened by the clear split between his Bengali identity by birth and the English identity imposed on him by colonialism. Once in England, Samad resorts to a shielded Bengali–​Muslim identity that is constantly fighting the permanent exposure to English society, which only seems to offer assimilation, the perpetuation of colonial practices, and the splitting of migrant identities. Therefore, there is a continuation and a repetition of identity-​formation issues, which are rendered traumatic. Narratively, Samad’s trauma is reproduced mostly in terms of repetition and constant retelling. Although he voices his anxiety over his split self and his sense of unbelonging at some points in the novel, his testimony –​if one can call it that –​is sometimes lost amongst his contradictions and those other characters in the novel that attempt to keep a more open mind towards the negotiation of different cultures and selves. He fights against the cultural amnesia of British culture, one that wilfully forgets the oppression and atrocities of its colonial past, but the seclusion and solace of his past does not allow for a dialogue with the present that is still imbued with colonial ideas about otherness. Samad’s rejection of his present together with his ossification of the past does not allow for the narrative integration that might have led to a more peaceful, if not stable or whole, identity in a rather more convivial kind of culture. The traumatic experiences of diasporic subjects in postcolonial contexts are hardly ever either individual or collective, but rather a combination of both. White Teeth portrays Samad’s individual trauma, together with what results from the collective experiences of (post)colonialism and migration, the shame of being other and having two seemingly contradictory identities, the continuous sense of unbelonging and alienation, the excessive attachment to the past to make up for the rejection of the present, and living always within borders and yet with a permanent psychological sense of no return. The re-​occurrence of these issues throughout the novel convey a feeling of tiredness, of surrender –​Samad eventually renounces the possibility of ever belonging. His traumatic experience should be regarded as one of accumulation, in which structural and day-​to-​day macro-​and micro-aggressions subdue his sense of agency and render him unable to deal with the exterior forces that seem to control him. It is not only the inherited traumatic experience of colonialism lived by his ancestors, his

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38  Origins and Original Trauma painful split identity as a colonial subject, but also the aching realisation of his difference in the host society, of not being welcomed in “the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign” (pp.161–​2).

1.2  The Routes to Vengeance and the Fight against History: The Case of Millat Iqbal Some generations of postmemory, as Hirsch labels them, grow up surrounded by silences and family secrets that attest to past traumatic experiences which are difficult or impossible to be told. Others, as Fassin and Rechtman argue, are transmitted a clearer version of memories of failure against oppressing powers. The younger generation of Iqbals, Magid and Millat, do not appear to grow up amongst untold stories, but rather under the influence of a (hi)story that is constantly being repeated: Samad’s telling and retelling of the history of their great-​great-​grandfather’s rebellion against the British as well as his vocal rejection of Englishness. Yet, they will also grow up with the more cryptic memory of a split –​for Samad does not discuss with them his double identification as a former colonial subject and his conflictual relationship with a hybrid identity in postcolonial times –​and a memory of failure, since Samad has not been able to integrate into English society and, more importantly, the weight of Pande’s failed deed against the British. The lives of Magid and Millat are defined by original trauma and the repetition cycles it entails through the generations and it forces upon them a transgenerational as well as intragenerational trauma. If Samad’s inner split is progressively repressed as the novel advances and as he is confronted with racism in the postcolonial metropolis, White Teeth chooses to materialise this split through the transmission of Samad’s trauma of origins in the new generation: Magid re-​ enacts the identification with the English and forcibly repeats the movement of migration by being sent away to Bangladesh and then returning to England; Millat re-​enacts first his father’s double identification and his progressive radicalisation of difference and religion in the face of unbelonging. This split is not merely a narrative device since the transmission of the split, the departure, and the trauma is particularly characterised by the development of extreme forms of English and Muslim identities, which not only exposes the continuation of the trauma of origins, but also denounces the impossibility of developing plural identities in postcolonial contexts. The inter-​and transgenerational trauma of the Iqbals is indeed one of origins. Born in England, the origin of the Iqbal brothers is assumed to be foreign: an English origin is neither imagined nor accepted and thus they are forced to constantly re-​assert, even question, their origins and, ultimately, they feel forced to identify with a singular origin in order to cope with the rejection of their multiplicity.

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Origins and Original Trauma  39 The sense of unbelonging, as Ulrike Tancke (2013, pp.31, 33) explains, informs the characters’ experience of original trauma, which must be understood as the shattering of the self amid a failed “multicultural ideal […] in which difference does matter and sameness is sometimes violently pursued”. The multicultural society that had so optimistically celebrated difference was, according to Gilroy (2004, p.1), “abandoned at birth”, thus allowing the emergence and the escalation of xenophobic attitudes towards others and impossibilitating multiple identifications and hybrid identities. Tancke (2011, par. 5) also suggests that Millat is the character who is most affected by trauma because of his exposure to racist stereotyping and his resulting turn to extremism in an allegedly multicultural society that leaves little or no room for difference. Tancke (ibid.) reiteratively labels the stereotypes that affect Millat as “populist utterances of low-​key racism”, a term that should be best understood as “micro-​aggressions”, which Stef Craps (2013, p.26) uses to refer to a type of abuse which takes place in the sphere of the everyday and has a cumulative effect which can trigger off serious traumatic consequences. These micro-aggressions thus represent more insidious form of trauma that can be connected to Judith Butler’s (1997, pp.36–​7) “social forms of trauma” which she contends, “takes the form, not of a structure that repeats mechanically, but rather of an ongoing subjugation, the restaging of injury”. Butler (ibid., p.78) highlights that there is an added difficulty to this social form of trauma because the exercise of power is not only concentrated in the upper apparatus, but has also been diversified into multiple spheres or “centers”, thus making it difficult, even impossible, to locate “the origin and cause of that act of power by which injury is done” (emphasis added). The perception of Millat’s trauma as more acute than others may be derived precisely from this difficulty of pointing to the multiple sources, or origins, of his trauma. Nevertheless, White Teeth presents Millat’s trauma of origins as an amalgamation of stereotyping and racism, the separation from his brother, the transmission of a traumatised identity from his father, and the memory of colonial history as embodied in the figure of Pande. The establishment of hierarchies of trauma has proven to be counterproductive in the analysis of individual and collective suffering (Rothberg 2008). This would also apply to White Teeth since the intricacies of the historical, collective, cultural, and individual traumas in the novel manifest in many ways. Nevertheless, it is true that Millat’s extremism certainly favours such reading and that Millat is the character who is most frequently viewed through the lens of trauma and psychoanalysis. Millat’s trauma is often analysed through the idea of migrants’ split psyche and the split from his brother that Samad enforces. Samad expected Magid’s banishment to the East to vanish his Western sins, but this only results in a further loss that deepens the traumatic consequences of migration and unbelonging within the Iqbal family, and especially so for Magid and Millat. The separation of the two brothers creates an unbridgeable

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40  Origins and Original Trauma gap that renders reconciliation between Magid and Millat, between East and West impossible. The brothers’ identifications are irreconcilable and Millat will ultimately declare that “[he has] no brother” (p.421). The traumatic and psychoanalytical readings of Millat’s experience are detailed in Joyce Chalfen’s understanding of the events that trigger his suffering. In a conversation with Irie, she contends that some of Millat’s problems, including his rejection to see and even acknowledge his brother, originate in the fact that “they’ve been split by their religions, by their cultures. Can you imagine the trauma?” (p.434). Irie, indeed, can imagine such trauma and advises Joyce to focus on her own family, since her oldest son, Joshua, is rebelling against his family in general and his father in particular. Joyce justifies her son’s behaviour by arguing that, given his class status, it is normal that he “act[s]‌up”, a possibility that she denies Magid and Millat. Later on, in an encounter with Alsana, who accuses Joyce of having split her sons further, Joyce tells her that she cannot “understand the trauma” that burning Millat’s things as punishment for his participation in the protests ensuing the Rushdie affair caused her son, who is “very damaged”, “has a lot of mental scars”, and shows clear signs of “serious illness” at a subconscious level –​which Joyce assumes is the equivalent of “karma” in Bengali culture (p.443). Joyce, who is repeatedly mocked for her misconceptions and is presented as a caricature of a white, middle-​class, psychoanalytical woman, finds the origin of Millat’s trauma in his immediate context and blames the parental figures. Joyce lacks a truly historical and contextualised understanding that disregards both the individual and collective circumstances that have led to Millat’s radicalisation and his increasing rejection of his brother and forces the perspective of Western trauma on them. What is more, Joyce tries to bridge the gap between Magid and Millat by imposing a time for the brothers to meet. After complex arrangements, their re-​encounter starts with words but soon turns into a theatrical representation of their history, which stops after the re-​enactment of their separation (p.465). According to most accounts of trauma theory, their verbal ineptitude might point to their impossibility of overcoming the trauma of their separation. Far from bridging the gap between cultures that Magid and Millat represent, Joyce’s scheme only leads to an unresolved restaging of their separation with no productive working through. Caruth (1995, p.11) conceives of trauma as a tool that could indeed bridge the understanding between others and histories, but White Teeth complicates this possibility through the insurmountable distance between Magid and Millat and through Joyce’s Western, psychoanalytical gaze. If we are to fully understand the brothers’ trauma and, more particularly, Millat’s, we need a decolonised view of trauma that can better understand the complexities of the collective, multicultural milieu in which the brothers grow up and the particular history of the Iqbal family. Joyce speaks of Millat’s subconscious rather easily, but she seems to locate his split externally, as represented by the separation from his

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Origins and Original Trauma  41 brother. Although this event deepens the wound of his split, Millat’s uncomfortable in-​betweenness develops earlier on through the position society assigns to him and through the lived experience of his father’s unresolved hybrid identity. After Magid is sent back to Bengal, the narrator explains that Millat didn’t need to go back home: he stood schizophrenic, one foot in Bengal and one in Willesden. In his mind he was as much there as he was here. He did not require a passport to live in two places at once; he needed no visa to live his brother’s life and his own. (p.219) What is more, the narrator later confirms that “Millat was neither one thing nor the other, this or that, Muslim or Christian, Englishman or Bengali; he lived for the in between” (p.351). Sarah Upstone (2007, p.340) argues that “Millat’s status as ‘social chameleon’ does not mean a new way of belonging, but instead signifies alienation and transcultural wandering”. Although Millat claims he is able to inhabit two countries simultaneously, he seems to have lost his sense of home and the illusion of hybridity transforms into a split identity that cannot encompass Western culture and Muslim beliefs. Like his father, Millat is only able to fight rejection and their familiar history of unbelonging by asserting his difference. Repeating his father’s experience, Millat clings to his otherness so as to reclaim a sense of identity that has been disdained and obstructed in their host society. Thus, Joyce’s psychoanalytical reading dismisses a critical analysis of the collective and individual contexts in which the split takes place and does not elaborate on the discourses than hinder hybrid identities and promote the separation of identifications and singularisation of multiplicity. As Millat’s narrative progresses, the split between cultures specifically focuses on the opposition between Muslim faith and the West, one which he finds difficult to maintain, just as his father did. Readdressing and correcting Joyce’s account of his split, the narrator explains that in fact, the problem with Millat’s subconscious (and he didn’t need Marjorie [the psychoanalyst] to tell him this) was that it was basically split-​level. On the one hand he was trying real hard to live as Hifan [the leader of KEVIN, Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation] and the others suggested. On the other hand, he struggles to eliminate everything Western in him and the feeling that religion should not control one’s whole life (pp.444–​5). Millat thus perceives his own split in terms of different views on the role of religion in his life, one that is not only defined by his recent extremist identification but also by his upbringing in the shadow of Samad. If Millat believes that he is distancing himself from

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42  Origins and Original Trauma his father and surpassing his commitment to faith, despite his knowledge that this is, in fact, “contemptible” (p.445), the narrative brings them closer by inserting in this passage two of the sentences that had defined Samad’s conflict: first, the fourth and last of KEVIN’s precepts is “to purge oneself of the taint of the West”; second, when Millat’s Western vices are listed, Samad’s motto “can’t say fairer than that” reappears. Samad had used these words to refer to his need to reject the temptation of Poppy (p.140) and the compromises he made when he swapped one sin for another to keep a certain balance. The novel thus plays with the repetition of original trauma and reverts to the vocabulary of religion: “the sins of the Eastern father” are “visited upon the Western sons” (p.161). Nevertheless, as the definition of original trauma specified, the allusion to sin does not account for the shared experiences of unbelonging and the shared turn to religion as a coping mechanism that cannot satisfy the need for acceptance in a multicultural society. Like his father, Millat turns to the Muslim faith neither to build up a stable identity nor with a true conviction. As Mirze (2008, p.199) argues, for both Samad and Millat “religion is just a front […] a facade”. Nevertheless, Mirze remarks that for Millat, belonging to KEVIN works as an empowering strategy because the group “mentally allows them [its members] to reverse the inferiority they feel about their religious difference”. KEVIN provides some possibility of identification in a society in which racial, ethnic, and religious difference is under-​and/​or misrepresented. Mirze (2008, p.196) further argues, following Modood, that having been denied the right to be British, Millat “responds with anger” and it is this anger that leads him to intensify his difference and turn to extremist religious views. This blind religious belief may have a numbing effect that leaves no space for action and it may allow unjustified actions. Alghamdi (2011, p.128) remarks that “the Muslim persona seems to stymie Millat’s further development, as the movement he eventually identifies with is static and unmoving”. Mirze (2008, p.199) argues that Millat’s involvement with KEVIN “offers no space for moral recognition or individual agency”. Despite its fixity and the fact that KEVIN does not offer the possibility of agency, as the opportunity for rebellion against the English and everything Western comes up, Millat believes that he has the chance to assert the individual agency that can alone help him to be recognised. Millat admits that “he had joined KEVIN because he loved clans (and the outfit and the bow tie), and he loved clans at war” (p.442). More particularly, his connection to KEVIN is the result of his desire to project his violent anger […] [of] a juvenile delinquent, determined to prove himself, determined to run the clan, determined to beat the rest. And if the game was God, if the game was a fight against the West, against

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Origins and Original Trauma  43 the Western presumptions of Western science, against his brother or Marcus Chalfen, he was determined to win it. (pp.446–​7) Millat will ultimately articulate his anger through the Western cinematic reference of gangster films. Although this reference may sound like a juvenile cliché that reflects his anger and highlights the performativity of his religious belief, it should be remarked that, as Steve Neale (2000, pp.76–​7) argues, in the genre of gangster films, “the gangster’s whole life is an effort to assert himself as an individual”. Thus, by turning to the figure of the gangster, Millat subconsciously attempts to regain a subjectivity that has been rejected and which can only be constructed as a fight against the sources of such rejection. Millat’s anger and split can further be explained through the affect of shame, which is often tied to traumatic experiences and which can also be transmitted through different generations. Millat regards his own attachment to faith as contemptible, which reveals his deeper shame of feeling different and inferior. If his attachment to faith can thus be read as self-​contempt, one could apply Gershen Kaufman’s views (1996, p.105) that contempt turned against the self […] creates an actual split within the self: one part becomes the offender while the other becomes judgemental, punitive, or persecutory. A self-​contempt script can reactivate an individual’s original scenes of shame as well as reproduce them. Millat’s shame is not only caused by the rejection of his origins in English society but also by the shame he has inherited from his father and the weight of Pande’s failed mutiny against the English and the impossibility to rebel against the colonisers. Millat’s trauma of origins stems, on the one hand, from having both a Bangladeshi and a British origin but being accepted only as the stereotyped other. On the other hand, his trauma of origins is one transmitted through generations of Iqbals. Millat inherits Samad’s struggles to reconcile his identity as a post/​colonial subject as well as his family’s aspiration to be recognised as subjects of history, which so far remains unfulfilled. If Samad saw with pride Pande’s attempt to rebel against the English, Millat can only see a history of failure that finds its most immediate reference in Samad, who fails to both integrate into English society and later become the Muslim he claims to be. As Alghamdi (2011, p.128) argues, “Samad’s failure seems to mark Millat, to the point where he eventually becomes the one thing that Samad failed to be: a devout Muslim”. In addition, Millat sees his family’s history as “prolonging expectations of failure”, which can in itself be considered to be traumatising (Vickroy 2002, p.13). Therefore, it is no coincidence that Millat seeks to surpass his father’s

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44  Origins and Original Trauma religious attachments as a way to cope with both misrecognition and transgenerational trauma. Millat’s struggle for recognition combines KEVIN’s collective fight and his individual take on the past and present. KEVIN’s religious protests against the West are focalised in their intention to sabotage the presentation of Marcus Chalfen’s Future Mouse and his god-​like alteration of genetics. Their plan is to quote “Sura 52” from the Quran as a protest, but Millat does not think this will suffice and he devises his own attack: Millat is not following instructions. […] His is an imperative secreted in the genes and the cold steel in his inside pocket is the answer to a claim made on him long ago. He’s a Pandy deep down. And there’s mutiny in his blood. (pp.525–​6) Millat wants “revenge”, […] “retribution” (p.501). Shiva, another member of KEVIN who also works in the same restaurant as Samad, explains Millat’s thirst for vengeance by alluding to a burdensome family trait: “classic Iqbal. Can’t let things go” (p.503). But Millat’s vengeful feelings contain more than just a characteristic feature of the Iqbals: he seeks revenge for being (post)colonised, oppressed, and inferior. As Kaufman (1996, p.98) argues, revenge “is a recasting defense […] because its aim is to reverse roles with the perceived humiliator”. In addition, revenge, as Duncan Bell remarks (2006, p.80), “tends to become ressentiment the more it is directed against lasting situations which are felt to be injurious but beyond one’s control”. Thus, “confronted with the [post]colonial order of things” (Fanon 2008, p.52), Millat turns to anger and violence to rewrite history. Millat is most willing to make his mark on history and reverse Pande’s failed attempt to gain power in the mutiny and his father’s failure to become visible in England. Before the members of KEVIN arrive at the presentation of the Future Mouse, they all briefly gather in Trafalgar Square, where they look at the statues in its four corners and ponder about the English’s need to forget and the remains of the Empire as embodied in a few identifiably colonial names (p.504). At an individual level, Trafalgar Square is where place and time merge for the Iqbal family. Firstly, on the south east corner of Trafalgar Square stands the statue of General Havelock, who ordered Pande’s execution. Secondly, Millat sees the mark his father had made on history: his surname scribbled on one of the Square’s benches, first with blood, then with a pen knife. Samad told his sons that he did it because “he wanted to write [his] name on the world”, only to become ashamed soon afterwards because it meant that he was colonising something, that he was becoming English (pp.505–​6). Millat understands this confluence of time and place as a reminder of who is “something” and who is “nothing” in history. Thus, he dismisses

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Origins and Original Trauma  45 his father’s reading of colonisation and resolves to become somebody history will remember: It just meant you’re nothing […] All his life he wanted a Godfather, and all he got was Samad. A faulty, broken, stupid, one-​hander waiter of a man who had spent eighteen years in a strange land and made no more mark than this. It just means you’re nothing […] It means you’re nothing and he’s something. And that’s it. That’s why Pande hung from a tree while Havelock the executioner sat on a chaise longue in Delhi. Pande was no one and Havelock was someone. […] That’s it. That’s the long, long history of us and them. That’s how it was. But no more. (p.506; emphasis in original) Millat is subjected not only to his family’s genealogy, but also to the history shaped by colonialism and perpetuated by postcolonialism, which maintains an us vs. them power dynamics. Trauma’s potential to bridge the gap between cultures remains unfulfilled and will remain so unless all implicated cultures remember. For the time being, Millat remains a subject who embodies the vision of trauma as “a symptom of history”, to use Caruth’s words. Anne Whitehead (2004, p.5) argues that “the traumatized carry an impossible history within them, or they become themselves the symptoms of a history that they can’t entirely possess”. Millat is the recipient of a history of colonial oppression and shame that is passed on to different generations, a history that he cannot control or change with violent revenge. The struggle for representation then permeates the history of the Iqbals and the novel addresses representation both through the difficulty or impossibility of representing trauma and through the fight for recognition. LaCapra (2001, p.42) argues that “trauma brings about a dissociation of affect and representation: one disorientingly feels what one cannot represent; one numbingly represents what one cannot feel”. Millat’s involvement with KEVIN encapsulates his alienation and pain of unbelonging; just as his wish for revenge reveals the shame in his family. His only response is anger because the society he inhabits does not grant the possibility to work through the trauma of (post)colonialism and does not fully recognise postcolonial subjects: they still live in a society built on binary divisions that brings about dissociation and disorientation. Nevertheless, Millat is sure that he, unlike Pande, will succeed in reversing historical power, aided by his thirst for revenge and the perspective of being second generation (p.506). The narrative soon after deems Millat’s endeavour to be rather naïve and directly addresses readers in what could be considered an approximate explanation of transgenerational trauma: “it may be absurd to us that one Iqbal can believe the breadcrumbs laid down by another Iqbal, generations before him, have not yet blown away in the breeze” but “he (Millat) believes

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46  Origins and Original Trauma we live in circles. His is a simple, neat fatalism. What goes around comes around” (p.507). This passage contrasts the ramifications of (post)colonial history for those at the ends of the us/​them dichotomy: those who can and cannot escape history. This acute contrast in White Teeth defies the view of Millat’s thirst for revenge as something illogical. As a subject of (post)colonial history, Millat lives at a time and place that is defined by the silence and the shame within his family, but also within the whole country. However, the tone may convey some pity towards Millat’s unattainable goal: he alone cannot avenge centuries of colonial oppression. Moreover, if this is examined in juxtaposition with the definition of original trauma, Millat’s plan is doomed to fail, for he is condemned to repeat different stages in the history of the Iqbal family. The novel justifies the repetitions concomitant with original trauma by drawing even more parallels between Millat, Samad, and Pande. First, just as Samad was drunk and drugged during the war, so Millat is stoned as he prepares to shoot Marcus Chalfen. In similar fashion, the novel connects them further back to Pande, who, during the mutiny, was “half drank with bhang and wholly drunk with religious fanaticism” (p.254). In addition, both Pande and Millat fail to hit their targets; the former misses, the latter shoots the wrong person. Samad justifies Pande’s drunkenness with a medical condition and refutes this idea of Pande as an inept drunkard, the version of this (hi)story written by W.H. Fitchett, a white, colonial, Englishman. While Samad repeats his version of the story of Pande as one of true rebellion, Millat presumes the tale of failure and is willing to redress the harm it has caused to different generations of Iqbals. As readers connect the different moments in history that bring different generations of Iqbals together, they may realise that time and place have changed, but their struggle for representation and recognition continues. The use of temporality shows that trauma and history haunt the Iqbals, and the parallelisms and repetitions –​with their variations –​serve as “a process of binding” that “allow[s]‌recognition of sameness within difference” (Whitehead 2004, p.125). Even if Millat perceives himself to be radically different from his father and great-​great-​grandfather, he is still fighting the same insidious forces that oppress and subject him: theirs are generations marked by original trauma. On a more specific note, Whitehead (2004, p.86) argues that repetition at a narrative level implies the persistence of the traumatic event, disrupts “narrative chronology or progression”, and brings to the present “trauma’s paralysing influence”. As has been shown, the term “event” fails to encompass the complex reality of postcolonial trauma. Although Pande’s failed mutiny may be considered to be the traumatising event that has marked some generations of the Iqbal family, their struggle against oppression and in favour of representation points to an older origin located in colonial practices. These multiple origins are combined to prevent any possibility of moving forward: the Iqbals are caught in a circular movement that

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Origins and Original Trauma  47 defies usual chronological accounts of self and (hi)story and thus their sense of agency is compromised. Through the use of the image of return and complications in the second generation, the narration thus fulfils the definition of original trauma, which asserts that the second generation will go “round and round” (p.161) and Millat’s belief in circularity (p.507). Although Millat’s case may seem to reflect the (im)possibilities of working through individual, transgenerational, and cultural as well as historical traumas, the repetition and circularity may represent new ways of understanding working through processes, in which even repetition may be considered to be successful. LaCapra’s (2013, pp.162–​3) most recent definition of working through can best explain Millat’s way of coping with his multi-​layered trauma: It is important to understand working through as both a narrative and other-​than-​narrative psychosocial and political practice of articulation. Working through should not be understood, as it often is, in stereotypical ways as purely psychological and as the simple alternative to, or binary opposition of, compulsive repetition, acting out, or even impossible mourning. Nor should it be equated with closure, therapeutic cure, healing all wounds, and dialectical transcendence of a traumatic past or problem. Rather, with crucial differences depending on subject-​positions, it offers the possibility of enacting variations in repetition that may be significant (at times decisive) enough to bring about effective change. Acting out and the repetition of the past may therefore be a necessary step towards working through and moving forward in time and history. As the definition of original trauma stated: “It will take a few replays before they move on to the next tune”. The “endgames” (p.540; emphasis in original) that the novel exposes have an almost Beckettian sense: there is no end, but rather circularity and the idea that “the end is simply the beginning of an even longer story” (pp.540–​1). However, even if repetitions are necessary and leave the door open for change in the future, the novel seems to deliberately punish Millat for being complicit with the repetition and re-​enactment of colonial violence. The fact that he accidentally shoots Archie, instead of Marcus or Perret, is difficult to justify, and he will be remembered as “Bad Uncle Millat” (p.541). The end of the novel does not depict Millat as a character with whom one can sympathise, let alone empathise. But there might be empathic unsettlement to some degree. Empathic unsettlement, according to LaCapra (pp.41–​2), “poses a barrier to closure in discourse and places in jeopardy harmonizing or spiritually uplifting accounts of extreme events from which we attempt to derive reassurance or a benefit” (pp.41–​2). The uplifting tale of multiculturalism fails here and the repetition to which generations of Iqbals are condemned negates a sense of

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48  Origins and Original Trauma closure. They are the “marginal survivors” of colonial history whose “voices [have been] drowned out” (Tal 2004, p.7). It is impossible for these generations to work through the trauma of (post)colonialism on their own. The pervasiveness of difference to which the Iqbals seem, for now, condemned must be addressed collectively. As will be confirmed through the analysis of transgenerational trauma in the Bowden family, White Teeth brings to the fore the idea that confronting and understanding one’s past is the most productive way to move forward and escape the circularity of trauma. Nevertheless, the novel also shows that, far from being affected by individual trauma, diasporic subjects are still struggling in the face of cultural and historical traumas and that the responsibility to work through these traumas must be a collective one that also addresses the role of the colonisers and contemporary societal views on postcolonial subjects. Paul Gilroy (2004) calls for a wider acknowledgement of Britain’s colonial enterprises and analyses how the workings of oppression during colonialism were reworked as racist attitudes in postcolonial times. Gilroy analyses in detail the perniciousness of racism and, using the vocabulary of trauma, takes on Fanon to conclude that “all of that event’s original violence [colonialism’s] was then concentrated in a condensed and suspended but nonetheless traumatic form, inside the language of racial imperatives” (p.45). Corroborating Fanon’s arguments, Gilroy refers to the colonial division of us vs. them and calls for the “repudiation of those dualistic pairings –​black/​white, settler/​native, colonizer/​colonized”, which he sees as “an urgent political and moral task” that can do away with colonialism’s pervasive violence. Gilroy’s arguments then show that working through processes, like trauma itself, are deeply connected to “economic, social and political reasons” (LaCapra 2013, p.xxix). Gilroy’s contentions can be related to Adorno’s claim that “the past will have been worked through only when the causes of what happened then have been eliminated. Only because the causes continue to exist does the captivating spell of the past remain to this day unbroken” (2005, p.103). Although Adorno was referring to how national socialism kept on haunting German society, a parallel can be drawn between this and the true convivial culture that Gilroy hopes for, which will only materialise if colonial racist attitudes cease to exist. Working through history implies, for LaCapra (1994, p.4), a necessary “dialogical exchange”, which cannot take place for Millat. Racial attitudes and the maintenance of the dichotomy us vs. them do not allow for such an engagement with history and, what is worse, prompt Millat’s transformation from victim to perpetrator, from colonised to coloniser. Millat was set out for hybridity and in-​betweenness –​for the both/​ and –​but the hopes the narration had deposited in him are truncated by the internalisation of history as an us vs. them binary. In turn, this dichotomy, together with the restaging and intensification of difference, point, as Gilroy argues, to a still traumatised postimperial society, not

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Origins and Original Trauma  49 yet convivial, which does not fully allow for the existence of hybrid or “other” identities. The silence of postimperial society and the Iqbals’ shameful family history –​a consequence of colonialism itself –​obstruct a dialogical attitude between past and present, and push Millat to develop a violent, twisted sense of agency that keeps him trapped in the vortex of colonial history. History needs to include subjects such as Samad and Millat, but history will not move forward, and neither will they, if revenge and a return to colonial practices are perceived as the only viable means of achieving representation and postimperial society continues to be trapped in its melancholic mood.

1.3  Secrets and Roots: Transgenerational Trauma in the Bowden Women The history of the Bowden women is a complex one that goes back to early twentieth century in Jamaica and expands until contemporary times in London, thus comprising four generations: from Ambrosia Bowden to Hortense Bowden, to Clara Bowden, to Irie Ambrosia Jones. Their history is presented in a non-​chronological and fragmented manner, in which different characters and histories are entangled. White Teeth first describes the journey of Hortense and Clara Bowden from Jamaica to London in 1972; it recounts retrospectively Ambrosia and Hortense’s story in Jamaica to then move forward to the lives of Clara and Irie in contemporary times. Throughout the novel there are hints about colonial connections and secrets in the Bowden family, which will be only partially brought to light in the present generations. Nevertheless, the narrative, through its lack of chronological order, fragmentation, ellipsis, and repetition reveals to the readers a more complete story that sheds some light onto what some Bowdens cannot or do not want to know about their pasts. Clara Bowden arrives in London in 1972, at the age of 17, when her mother, Hortense, decides to rejoin her husband, Darcus, 14 years after he moved from Jamaica to England. Clara’s relationship with her mother is hindered by Hortense’s religious views –​an almost fanatical take on the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ beliefs –​and ends up in rupture three years after their arrival in London when Clara marries Archibald Jones. Hortense disapproves of Archie and stops talking to her daughter upon learning about her marriage. Mirze (2008, p.188) argues that Clara regards her marriage to Archie as a way of detaching herself from the oppressive environment that her mother and her strict religious beliefs create. Clara was looking for a saviour who could take her away from Lambeth, her past, and her oppressive life with her mother –​although she was expecting to be taken further away than Willesden Green. From the moment she marries Archie and breaks ties with her family, Clara hardly ever mentions her past. At first glance, Clara may be considered to be the first character in Smith’s work to consciously

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50  Origins and Original Trauma silence the past and work towards its erasure, in contrast to Samad’s ossification. However, Clara does not display the same traits as other characters in Smith’s work who seek to reject their pasts, transform themselves, and acquire new names. Clara’s silence derives in part from her conscious choice to cut off the relationship with her family. But there is also a silence that seems to emerge out of her lack of knowledge about the past of the Bowden women. Moreover, her silence might be a manifestation of her inability to, or determination not to, transmit their past to her daughter, Irie, for the narrative does not explain how much Clara knows. Although there are some references to the colonial past of the Bowdens in the first parts of the novel, it is only when Irie and, indirectly, Clara get involved with the Chalfens that their history starts to be revealed. The Chalfens, the family of Joshua, one of Irie’s classmates, are given the task to help and supervise both Millat and Irie’s education as part of a school project. Irie is fascinated with the Chalfens up to the point that she wants to “merge with them” (p.328; italics in original) on account of their apparently authentic English identity, constituted by their whiteness, their middle-​class status, and their allegedly untroubled history. As both Millat and Irie spend more and more time with the Chalfens, their mothers grow increasingly concerned: Clara believes her daughter is spending too much time with a family that is not her own, that she is surrounded by “an ocean of pink skins” (ibid.); Alsana believes the Chalfens are to blame for Millat’s estrangement from his own family. Yet, Clara deems it necessary to thank Joyce Chalfen for their help with school (p.353). The meeting between Clara and the Chalfens is dealt with summarily in the novel. The passage that narrates this meeting describes how Joyce shows Clara the Chalfens’ photographic genealogy, and condescendingly proclaims her “belie[f]‌in the Responsibility of Intellectuals”1 when Clara thanks her for helping Irie (p.353). Joyce, who continues to narrate the history of the Chalfens and pride herself on their aptly intellectual genetic pool, quickly enquires about Irie’s intellectual capacities, namely whether she has inherited them from “the Jamaican or the English” side of her family: Clara looked up and down the line of dead white men in starched collars, some monocled, some uniformed, some sitting in the bosom of their family, each member manacled into position so the camera could do its slow business. They all reminded her a little of someone. Of her own grandfather, the dashing Captain Charlie Durham, in his one extant photograph: pinched and pale, looking defiantly at the camera, not so much having his picture taken as forcing his image upon the acetate. What they used to call a Muscular Christian. The Bowden family called him Whitey. Djam fool bwoy taut he owned every ting he touched. (p.354)

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Origins and Original Trauma  51 Clara eventually replies: I guess the English in my side. My grandfather was an Englishman, quite la di da, I’ve been told. His child, my mother, was born during the Kingston earthquake, 1907. I used to think maybe the rumble knocked the Bowden brain cells into place ‘cos we been doing pretty well since then! (ibid.) Joyce’s inappropriate question unveils some distressing inferiority in Clara, who at this moment can only justify Irie’s intelligence by alluding, not to Archie or herself, but to the English ancestry on the Jamaican side of the family, to Captain Charlie Durham. Immediately after Clara leaves the Chalfens’ house, she regrets having asserted that Durham was the possible origin of her family’s intellectual traits and calls him “a no-​good djam fool bwoy” (p.355). There is no real pride in this ancestry. Rather, there is shame. Clara’s “frustration and anger” in particular, and the Bowdens’ in general, is condensed in the description of Durham as “Sir Captain many women raggamuffins ‘Whitey’ Durham” (p.358), the repetition of “fool bwoy”, and the allusion to possession and ownership. This passage already attests to the existence of a transgenerational trauma, understood as that shameful secret that has been kept hidden for generations, and that finds expression in Clara’s anger and the pain of having to justify herself as well as her family through the painful imposition of colonialism. The affect of shame is closely linked to traumatic experiences and, in its historical dimension, it often emerges from the relationship between oppressor and oppressed and the sense of inferiority inflicted upon the latter. If, as Silvan S. Tomkins (1995, p.392) reminds us, shame “arises only in the context of a strong bond with the other”, Clara feels shame in front of this dominant other that Joyce represents. And this shame unearths a distressing colonial past. The section that follows Clara and Joyce’s meeting, “The Root Canals of Hortense Bowden”, reveals the Bowdens’ history in more detail. It starts with Clara and Alsana’s suspicion of the Chalfens and an English education because, as Alsana puts it, “The English are the only people […] who want to teach you and steal from you at the same time” (p.356). Clara is inclined to believe this for reasons concerning her own family history: Clara agreed but for reasons that were closer to home: a family memory; an unforgotten trace of bad blood in the Bowdens. Her own mother, when inside her mother (for if this story is to be told, we will have to put them all back inside each other like Russian dolls, Irie back in Clara, Clara back in Hortense, Hortense back in Ambrosia), was silent witness to what happens when all of a sudden

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52  Origins and Original Trauma an Englishman decides you need an education. For it had not been enough for Captain Charlie Durham recently posted to Jamaica to impregnate his landlady’s adolescent daughter one drunken evening in the Bowden larder, May 1906. He was not satisfied with simply taking her maidenhood. He had to teach her something as well. (p.356) The image of the Russian dolls in the Bowdens’ history, together with their role as “silent witnesses”, encapsulates in a visual manner Abraham and Torok’s concept of the crypt. As explained in the introduction to this chapter, the crypt represents the container of a traumatic and shameful past and its unmourned loss, which will be transmitted transgenerationally. As time goes by, the shameful link of the Bowdens to colonial history is buried deeper and deeper with each generation. Three generations of Bowden women are silent witnesses to this event, concealed in this excerpt under the metaphor of education. Captain Charlie Durham is described as a “bad family memory”, “an unforgotten trace of bad blood” that is linked to colonialism. This account, together with the fact that Clara had previously stated that Durham “never really knew” Ambrosia, and a later instance of abuse which is marked as “educational”, may also suggest that, despite their allegedly ensuing relationship, the first sexual encounter between Durham and Ambrosia was a case of rape, even though the text does not explicitly say so. However, the use of ellipsis and metaphor would fit into the descriptions of trauma that maintain that the event can only be registered belatedly, cannot be narrated, and can at most be referred to indirectly. Taking into account Kai Erikson’s (1995, p.179) claim that “narrative memory distorts truth”, the references to Durham and Ambrosia as lovers could be read as the concealment of a traumatic experience. Only after Durham has “taken Ambrosia’s maidenhood” does he set out to become her teacher and take her as a lover to whom he teaches several subjects, as well as religion and morality and, once Ambrosia’s mother is “safely out of the house, anatomy” (p.357). Ambrosia’s mother insists on her daughter’s need for improvement and, when Ambrosia asks her why Durham wants to teach her, her mother replies that “dere is not required whys and wherefores when a hansum, upright English gentlemen like Mr. Durham wan’ be gen’russ” (p.356). But, as the narrator asserts, Ambrosia knew that “when an Englishman wants to be generous, the first thing you ask is why, because there is always a reason” (p.357), the reason being, in this case, to continue his abuse. Ambrosia becomes pregnant and Durham tells her that they will have “a secret child [who] would be the cleverest Negro boy in Jamaica”. He also asserts that Ambrosia is a lady now, on account of her education, and tells her that she is “a maid no more […] enjoying the pun” (p.357), for Ambrosia remains a servant. He leaves when she is five months into her pregnancy and when he eventually comes back he is ready to defend

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Origins and Original Trauma  53 Ambrosia before the governor of Jamaica as “an educated Negress” and to take her out of Jamaica. However, the governor refuses Durham’s proposal, arguing that “there were no spaces on his boats for black whores or livestock” (p.363). This might sound like an attempt on Durham’s part to do the honourable thing, but it also reminds us of the place of people like him within colonial discourses, and reinforces the view that, even if slaves gained full freedom in Jamaica in 1838, the dynamics of oppression and dehumanisation continued. Durham leaves with instructions for Ambrosia, in his absence, to be taken under the care of Sir Edmund Flecker Glenard, a good Christian, who is also “of the opinion that the natives required instruction, Christian faith and moral guidance” (p.358). The name of Glenard had already appeared in the chapter “The Miseducation of Irie Jones”, where readers learn that this is the same “successful colonial” whom Irie’s school in contemporary London “remember[s]‌as their kindly Victorian benefactor” (pp.303, 304). After having stated his attempts at helping Jamaican subjects, the narrator recalls Glenard’s implication in colonialism and his intention of educating and helping Jamaican people is denounced as a violent colonial act. Back in 1907, Glenard turns Ambrosia out of his house once her pregnancy becomes evident. Sir Glenard knows that the father of Ambrosia’s child is Durham and he drunkenly ambushes her on the street. Glenard tells Ambrosia that “secrets have a price”, leads her to a church he appreciates on aesthetic grounds, and insists that “It will only take a moment, my dear. One should never pass up the opportunity of a little education, after all” (p.360). After which, Glenard starts to abuse her. This second, explicit instance of abuse labelled as “education” forces the reader to rethink the circumstances of Durham and Ambrosia’s relationship, as was mentioned before, a case of rape. Glenard’s abuse is brought to an abrupt end by the Jamaican earthquake of 1907, during which “was crushed to death by a toppled marble madonna while Irie’s grandmother looked on” (p.306). Ambrosia witnesses the crumbling of the church and Glenard’s death and soon after gives birth to Hortense. The violence inflicted on colonial female bodies is condemned to the repetition of traumatic experiences that in this particular case can only be stopped by the coincidental violence of nature. Glenard is condemned by fate but he will be remembered as an educator and benefactor through the rewriting of colonial and postcolonial images of the perpetrators. Durham is mocked when his image of colonial hero –​given his physical attributes, his readiness to help, and his “love” for Ambrosia –​is questioned in the novel. He comes back for Ambrosia but “The Root Canals of Hortense Bowden” ends with Ambrosia’s rejection of Durham and her embrace of religion: she sends him, via her niece, a page torn from the Bible that reads “I will fetch my knowledge from afar” (p.363; italics in original). Although White Teeth works here as a counter-​narrative that unveils the truth of the likes of Glenard and

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54  Origins and Original Trauma Durham and fights against the historical amnesia fostered by past and present hegemonic powers, history and religion condemn the Bowdens to silence. Ambrosia had “accepted the Lord” when in the care of Mrs. Brenton, a Scottish woman who introduces her to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Religion allows Ambrosia to reject Durham and believe that “the Truth” now “flows” from one Bowden to another “through the bloodstream” (p.359). Religion is thus offered as the force that provides an apparent sense of agency that can erase the “trace of bad blood” that Durham had introduced into her family. Nevertheless, religion also provides a rather more obscure meaning for Ambrosia: it means that, above all, she is now ready for the end of the world: “ ‘It soon come, it soon come’ she said, repeating what she had learnt from Revelation; what Durham and then Glenard and then Mrs. Brenton had taught her in their different ways” (pp.363–​4). Religion provides Ambrosia with a survival mechanism that paradoxically turns out to be a death drive that arises out of yet another traumatic imposition. Durham, Glenard, and Brenton can be seen as figures that break Ambrosia’s relationship with her old, known world through the bodily and spiritual impositions of colonialism, which resembles the description of trauma as the “breakdown in meaning and trust in the world” (Bell 2006, p.8). These characters profess the “religion of possession that was [their] birthright” (p.363) and subject Ambrosia to colonial order. Ambrosia’s wish for the end of the world can be interpreted as her wish to escape the life-​long burden that these colonial figures have made her carry upon her shoulders. Her abuse by Durham and Glenard puts an end to a world of relative security –​as far as such a colonial context can possibly provide security –​, which is restored by the reassurance provided by religion. Even if religion is understood as a coping mechanism, it does not provide an appropriate working through process for Ambrosia. The only hope religion provides is the idea that the world is coming to an end, and this new teaching acts as a constant reminder of the so-​called attempts of Durham, Glenard, and Brenton to “educate” her and becomes yet another colonial imposition that silences an individual and historical trauma. This new religious belief is what appears to have been transmitted generationally from Ambrosia to Hortense, who claims that she does not remember anything previous to Ambrosia’s religious conversion, the moment when Hortense believes she “became conscious” (p.359). But it is not only the power of religion Hortense remembers: “she remembers; the events of 14 January 1907, the day of the terrible Jamaican earthquake, are not hidden from her, but bright and clear as a bell”; she remembers “the feel of that fat hand [Glenard’s] landing hot against her mother; she remember[s]‌kicking out at it with all her might” (pp.359–​60). The narrator reveals Hortense’s memories, which she does not admit to anybody else: the shameful and violent history that led to the embracing of

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Origins and Original Trauma  55 religion is hidden and encrypted, and thus caught in trauma’s contradictory relationship between knowing and not knowing. After describing Ambrosia’s rejection of Durham, Hortense reinforces her belief in God and his educational power (p.363). It is not clear whether this is yet another stance of unconscious/​early remembrance or whether Ambrosia was actually able to narrate what had happened. We do not know what story Ambrosia told, what remained unsaid. So far, we only know that Hortense shows a certain reluctance to have sexual intercourse, “her least favourite activity” (p.34), and that Ambrosia’s obsession with religion and the end of the world continues through Hortense. By 1974, Hortense had lived through two failed promises of the end of the world, which leaves her “disappointed” and wounded by the endurance of her everyday life (pp.32–​3). This feeling of being wounded and the desire to be removed from reality, together with the narrator’s reference to the collective “psychosis” among Jehovah’s Witnesses, imbues the description of Hortense’s fervour with the vocabulary of trauma. Nevertheless, as is the case throughout White Teeth, this description is also recounted with humour and irony: Hortense frames the letter announcing the end of the world and gives it a prominent place among other cheap collectables, and the end is described with great violence against others, placing non-​ Jehovah’s Witnesses against Jehovah’s Witnesses who “had waited so long for the rivers of blood to overflow the gutters in the high street” (p.32; emphasis added). Hortense’s beliefs reverse Enoch Powell’s speech against immigrants and lay bare the hope to be among those chosen and saved. Hence, the expectations invested in the end of the world are linked to the hope for a reversal of oppression. If Hortense does not explicitly word the rejection of immigrants in the host society at any point in the novel, she subconsciously expresses it here through her religious views and thus continues with her family’s reliance on religion against colonial subjection. A similar desire for the end of the world is repeated in the next generation. Clara displays the same discontent as her mother’s on previous occasions, in particular when the world does not end in 1974 and there is no one to save her from the reality of life in Lambeth (p.45). Ambrosia, Hortense, and Clara have all wished for the end of the world to take them away from their ordinary lives and suffering, albeit for different reasons. Clara mourns not so much the loss of hope in being saved by the Lord, but rather the fact that she must live in a reality that, much like her mother, disappoints her. Clara puts an end to her mourning when she decides to break with her family’s religious beliefs, but she still longs to be saved from the dullness of her life. More specifically, and quoting from “Revelation”, Clara “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” (p.45; italics in original). The novel plays with the repetition of the narrative of a white hero rescuing a (post)colonial woman that Durham had represented. The times have changed, but the fact that Clara

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56  Origins and Original Trauma feels the need to be saved by a (white) man is still disconcerting since it attests to the persistence of colonial and heteropatriarchal discourses and it echoes Ambrosia’s trauma. Nevertheless, it is Clara who finds, even if by accident, her hero. Archibald Jones becomes her unlikely saviour, a man whom she does not love but who can uproot her from a context in which she no longer wishes to live. Indeed, her relationship to Archie will sever the ties with her family because Hortense rejects him on account of his race: he is a reminder of a trace of bad blood that she has fought to eliminate. Clara is aware of the existence of Durham and the circumstances that surrounded the birth of her mother, as the conversation with Joyce Chalfen exposes. But she remains silent about her past, especially around her daughter, Irie, to whom she refuses to transmit the history of the Bowdens. Most accounts of trauma theory would consider Clara’s silence as a symptom of being traumatised and being unable to narrate her story. However, as Stef Craps (2014, p.55) argues, silence should not be regarded as “merely a symptom of trauma”, but rather as a potential “coping mechanism”. In Clara’s case, the distancing from her family’s history and her silence turn out to be a necessary step to alleviate the burden of the past for herself and future generations. But here, a certain ambiguity emerges: the silence surrounding the origins of the Bowdens could make their memories less pernicious, yet with each generation their secrets become more deeply buried and potentially more injurious. While Clara’s silence should be regarded as an attempt to forget and survive a painful history, it will arouse some uncertainty in Irie, who will struggle to find answers to the painful questions of who she is and where she is from. Irie Jones has been regarded as the character who best encapsulates the hopes and conflicts of hybrid subjects in the multicultural context of White Teeth. While it is important to analyse the complexities of hybridity, it is equally essential to look at Irie’s relationship with her family’s past and the wider history of colonialism, because Irie’s conflict with her sense of self is brought on both by her condition as other within British society and the alienation she feels within her own family. Clare Squires (2002, p.45) situates Irie within the strong “matrilineal line” in the Bowden family, who have suffered the “impact of colonization particularly through Durham”. Additionally, Philip Tew (2010, p.57) argues that Irie’s development runs parallel to the personal and geographical journey of self-​discovery that leads her to “the recognition and coming to terms with her complex genealogy and genetic inheritance”. Thus, Irie’s conflictual identity must be analysed, not only as a consequence of her hybridity, but also as a consequence of a difficult family history immersed in colonial practices. Irie’s problems start to be evident when she cannot recognise herself in “England, a gigantic mirror” in which she has no reflection. She has inherited the Bowdens’ Jamaican frame but longs to become an English

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Origins and Original Trauma  57 rose (pp.266, 267). This lack of recognition, or rather, misrecognition, complicates or renders impossible the relationship with one’s own self. But it is not only her Jamaican physical inheritance that troubles her in the host society. Critics such as Lexi Stuckey (2008, p.166) have argued that “her Jamaican psyche haunts her [Irie] because it sets her apart”. Indeed, Irie is affected by the Jamaican past of her maternal family, one that is mostly surrounded by silence. In addition to this unspeakable past, and following the arguments that draw on Irie’s hybridity, her father’s working class identity must also be considered: she finds herself in a sort of historical vacuum created by the silence that both Archie and Clara keep about their pasts: the history of the Joneses remains untold, perhaps on the grounds of their being “nobody”, “the chaff” (p.99); the history of the Bowdens cannot be fully told. Although the roles and views of the Chalfens are questionable and Irie’s infatuation with the Chalfens is naïve at some points, it is through them that she becomes aware of the burden that the past represents. The Chalfens boast about their history, although they never refer to their Jewish and Irish ancestry, and comparing Marcus Chalfen with Samad Iqbal and her own father, she realises that “there existed fathers who dealt in the present, who didn’t drag ancient history around like a chain and ball” (p.326). Even if this comment could be considered a criticism of Samad and Archie’s belonging to an older generation which cannot keep up with the times, it also reveals a larger concern with her parents’ conflictual relationship with their pasts, pasts they do not or cannot share with others. And this is more painful in the history of her mother’s family. The details of the Bowdens’ history are revealed partly through Clara and Hortense, and partly by the omniscient narrator, which creates some doubts as to how much each character actually knows. Moreover, the involvement of Clara and Irie with the Chalfens further unveils their complex affective relationship with the past: Clara confronts her shame and Irie becomes increasingly frustrated with not knowing, because while she rejects Samad and Archie’s fixation with the past, she has only been able to grasp pieces of her history and stagger from one impossible identification to another. The year before Irie goes to university (the first one to do so in both families, the Joneses and the Bowdens), a conflict arises because of her wish to spend some time abroad before attending university. The discussion that leads Irie to discover, at 16, that her mother uses a set of false teeth, inspires a stream of thought that ends up with her running to her grandmother’s house: This was yet another item in a long list of parental hypocrisies and untruths, this was another example of the Jones/​Bowden gift for secret histories, stories you never got told, histories you never entirely uncovered, rumour you never unravelled, which would be fine if every day was not littered with clues, and suggestions; shrapnel

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58  Origins and Original Trauma in Archie’s leg … photo of strange white Grandpa Durham … the name “Ophelia” and the word “madhouse” … a cycling helmet and an ancient mudguard … smell of fried food from O’Connell’s … faint memory of a late car journey, waving to a boy on a plane … letters with Swedish stamps, Horts Ibelgaufs, it not delivered return to sender … Oh what a tangled web we weave. Millat was right: these parents were damaged people, missing hands, missing teeth. These parents were full of information you wanted to know but were too scared to hear. But she didn’t want it any more, she was tired of it. She was sick of never getting the whole truth. She was returning to sender. (p.379) Irie represents an example of a generation of postmemory: she has formed an idea of her origins through partial images, incomplete (hi)stories, fragmented memories, and silences. What seems to trouble her most, however, is not the existence of secrets per se but, rather, the scattered information about her past that she cannot piece together and her initial fear of confronting her history. Faced with these gaps, Irie goes back to her grandmother in the hope that Hortense can help to elucidate her story and provide a more coherent picture of who she is as well as a more anchored sense of self. The first encounter between Hortense and Irie, six years after they had last seen each other, is defined by a sense of sameness and recognition, making added emphasis on the generational connection that Irie seems to be missing. Hortense further reassures Irie by invoking their physical resemblance to Ambrosia and reminding Irie that this is her middle name. She also explains to Irie that the distance with her mother grew not because of Archie specifically but because her general belief that “When you mix [black and white] up, nuttin’ good can come […] Except you” (pp.384–​5). Hortense makes a reference to Durham’s trace of bad blood and their conversation ends with a biblical promise of revelations. Shortly after Irie arrives at Hortense’s house, the narrator recapitulates a list of things Irie knows: “Ambrosia Bowden gave birth in an earthquake … Captain Charlie Durham was a no-​good djam fool bwoy … false teeth in a glass” (p.390). But, if Hortense’s house seemingly becomes “an adventure” in self-​discovery (p.399), it is one that still requires some imagination. Irie finds that “in cupboards and neglected drawers and in grimy frames were the secrets that had been hoarded for so long”, including pictures of Ambrosia, Clara, Charlie “Whitey” Durham, and “a bible with one line torn from it” (ibid.). These discoveries are combined with readings on the West Indies she finds at her grandmother’s. The problem remains that Irie finds all of these significant objects that speak of the Bowdens history, but nobody to tell their stories and no version of history that testifies to their experiences.

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Origins and Original Trauma  59 The finding of these secrets and Irie’s new knowledge do not mean that she gets closer to the truth about her family’s story. The history books listed in this section are written by white, male authors, and immediately after they are referenced in the novel, she imagines a “dashing Capt. Durham”, a powerful and respectable man. She places his picture under her pillow and she dreams of slavery, with images of sugar, tobacco and even the smell of plantain. She deems this place in her memory fictional, but this is the past of her family intrusively fighting the rewritten heroic version of Durham and indeed revealing what has been kept unsaid. Irie’s image of Jamaica, and even of Durham, are the consequence of imagination rather than history. Her imaginative investment rewrites the figure of her great-​grandfather, whose image does not bring colonialism to Irie’s mind and thus is no longer remembered as the “fwol buoy” who thought his right to own everything and everyone. On the one hand, her imaginative portrait of her Jamaican history is connected to the way in which diasporic subjects reimagine their homeland. Robin Cohen (2001, p.26) remarks that “diasporic groups will need to do more than to restore or maintain their motherland, but will have to ‘create’ an ‘imagined motherland’ that only resembles the original history in the ‘remotest way’ ”. On the other, it connects with Marianne Hirsch’s interpretation of postmemory, whereby the “connection to the past is […] not actually mediated by recall but by imaginative investment, projection and creation” (2008, p.107). This is the only way in which Irie can reconstruct her past. It is also the only way in which the past is made bearable and can thus bring hope to her present and future. Irie’s identity is therefore inevitably constructed around the pieces of information she gathers and the silences of what she cannot know. According to Hirsch (2008, p.16), the generations of postmemory “remember only by means of stories, images, and behaviors among which they grow up”. In addition, as Schwab (2010, p.14) comments on Hirsch, members of the generation of postmemory need to patch up a history together they have never lived by using whatever props they can find –​photographs and stories or letters but also […] silences, grief, rage, despair, or sudden unexplainable shifts in moods handed down to them by those who bring them up. This is precisely what Irie does in order to fill in the gaps of her Jamaican history, but the silence that still reigns in the Bowden family leaves Irie to imagine her past and rewrite secrets, and subject to dreams and memories that are far from fictional. The silences of postmemory and the imaginative investment of the younger generations are, nevertheless, just one of the pieces in Irie’s conundrum. The place and time from which she is trying to retrace her past and the way in which Britain, as a former empire, remembers and forgets its relationship to colonial subjects, also influence the way she works

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60  Origins and Original Trauma through her family’s traumatic history. Irie does not question her past and seems content with her discoveries: “She laid claim to the past –​her version of the past –​aggressively, as if retrieving misdirected mail. So this was where she came from. This all belonged to her, her birthright” (p.400; italics in original). Irie’s claim to the past is further compared to Columbus’s colonising enterprise (p.402), which points to an inappropriate way to approach the past that has been imbued with the colonisers’ gaze. Furthermore, the emphasis on “belong” and the allusion to Irie’s “birthright” resemble the description of Durham as a colonial character who exercises the “religion of possession that was his birthright” (p.363). Her progressive attachment to Jamaica is also a reflection of her frustration with England, a country which does not seem to recognise her. Therefore, this previous passage should be read in line with a commentary that appears a couple of pages later in which she dismisses England in favour of an imagined Jamaica where things sprang from the soil riotously and without supervision, and a young white captain could meet a young black girl with no complications, both of them fresh and untainted and without past or dictated future –​a place where things simply were. No fictions, no myths, no tangled webs. (p.402) Francisca Aguiló Mora (2009, p.17) deems this “an exaggerated romantic vision”. Indeed, Irie’s vision of the past is naïve and tinted with nostalgia. But this vision might be deliberately ambiguous. This feeling of nostalgia can be paralleled to the nostalgia at the heart of ways of remembering empire in postcolonial, multicultural contexts. Paul Gilroy (2004, p.2) argues that multicultural contexts cannot be understood unless they are regarded within the larger history of empire and colonialism, one which “remains marginal and largely unacknowledged, surfacing only in the service of nostalgia and melancholia”. Thus, Irie’s fantasy of love ties in with a vision of multiculturalism in which “the violence of colonial occupation is reimagined as a history of happiness (a story of hybridity, of mixing and mingling)” that ignores past and present instances of racism. The memory of Durham can be regarded as “a memory of racism” that “gets in the way of happiness”, which “threatens to expose too much” and prevents Irie’s integration of her past into British society (Ahmed 2012, pp.164–​6). Therefore, White Teeth not only exposes the silence that wraps up the Bowden’s traumatic history, but also the silencing and rewriting of colonial history that takes place in British society and which Irie seems to have internalised. Nevertheless, it may seem that rather than being a fixed version of the past and a paralysing emotion, nostalgia for Irie “enables a constructive forgetting” (Su 2005, p.10). John J. Su (ibid., pp.17, 86) argues that in some postcolonial narratives the use of nostalgia, even when it leads to

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Origins and Original Trauma  61 imagined pasts and homelands, can draw potential out of the visions of “what could have been” and “redescribe the struggles facing postcolonial communities and the ongoing legacy of colonization”. Thus, when Irie imagines the relationship of her grandmother with Durham as one of equals without any colonial implications, the narration may point, not to Irie’s naivety, but to an alternative vision of the past that forces readers to reconsider the colonial and postcolonial circumstances of the Bowdens’ history. Ulrike Tancke (2013, p.36) explains that Irie’s relationship to the past is portrayed alongside images of “mastery” and that the above-​ mentioned claims “jar with the reader’s common expectations of the postcolonial subject’s victim status and clear-​cut oppressor-​perpetrator dichotomies”. Thus, Tancke (ibid.) concludes that White Teeth suggests that the search for roots is both a universal need and a profoundly disturbing endeavour expressive of a desire for power and dominance –​a condition that locks people into a cycle of violence and pain from which they seem unable to escape. White Teeth does not present the search for roots as “a universal need”: Joshua Chalfen rebels against his parents and their world view but does not engage in the search for his past. The search for roots of the diasporic characters speaks rather of an imagined reversal of power and dominance. Besides, if these characters in the novel are caught “in a cycle of violence and pain” it is because they are confronted with a history of colonialism that still affects them. Moreover, one might even distinguish between those for whom the search for roots is a question of “power and dominance” (the Chalfens and British society at large) and those for whom the search for roots generates “violence and pain” (Irie and Millat). Towards the end of the novel Irie’s assertion of the past is transformed into her need to forget. Irie, infuriated by the noise her family and the Iqbals are making on a public bus, rants about those other families who “some people like to call […] repressed, or emotionally stunted”, but who are actually “lucky fuckers”. She argues: What a peaceful existence. What a joy their lives must be. They open a door and all they’ve got behind it is a bathroom or a lounge. Just neutral spaces. And not this endless maze of present rooms and past rooms and the things said in them years ago and everybody’s old historical shit all over the place. They’re not constantly making the same old mistakes. They’re not always hearing the same old shit. They don’t do public performances of angst on public transport. Really, these people exist. I’m telling you. The biggest traumas of their lives are things like recarpeting. Bill-​paying. Gate-​fixing. […] And every single fucking day is not this huge battle between who they are and who they should be, what they were and what they will be […] No attics. No shit in attics. No skeletons in cupboards. No

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62  Origins and Original Trauma great-​grandfathers. I will put twenty quid down now that Samad is the only person in here who knows the inside bloody leg measurement of his great-​grandfather. And you know why they don’t know? Because it doesn’t fucking matter. As far as they’re concerned, it’s the past. (pp.514–​5; italics in original) Irie envies the uncomplicated present, and pasts, of some families, even if they have repressed certain memories in order to move forward. The Iqbals and the Bowdens are still subject to history, and the “relishing” of their dysfunctionality indicates that they still need to find an appropriate route to get out of the maze of their pasts: there was no proper term to define the original trauma of these generations, and no proper way of getting out of the repetition loop that this trauma entails. The claim to forget may be a possible yet ambiguous solution. It might seem that Irie is participating in the repression that she mentions in her rant, since soon after she reconnects with her roots, she so fiercely defends her right to forget the past. Her desire to forget may actually reveal that she has discovered the truth about Durham. Nevertheless, the narrative does not provide any conclusive explanation. The novel thus plays with trauma’s dilemma between knowing and not knowing although at different levels: firstly, Irie may know about Durham but refuses to remember such a traumatic event and be defined by colonial history; secondly, Irie may not know about Durham, who nevertheless remains a haunting figure in the history of the Bowden family; lastly, the omniscient narrator reveals in a fragmented manner secrets about the Bowdens that force the reader to question and rearrange the information available in such a way that emulates Irie’s process of reconstruction. What is clear, however, is that she has realised that both remembering and forgetting are “necessary to enable life” (Whitehead 2009, p.121). While Irie embraces Jamaica as a place to which she may belong, she does not want to be defined by the traumatic origin of her family: she longs for a life without the burden of the past. White Teeth seems to imply that forgetting can be necessary to move forward in life, but also that ignoring history is as much a failure as letting it rule your entire life. Irie’s story thus becomes a reflection on the entangled, uncomfortable histories of colonialism, and the way in which colonial history haunts and defines diasporic subjects in contemporary times. Furthermore, the history of the Bowdens calls attention to how traumatised subjects rewrite and distort the truth. And this is the case of both the Bowdens and British society: Irie’s vision of a relationship between equals and the projection of a truly hybrid and plural society somehow puts to the test the discourse of multiculturalism that had tried to conceal the need to work through the history of colonialism in an open and dialogical manner. If this process does not take place, diasporic families will continue to be haunted by history and

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Origins and Original Trauma  63 experience the past as present, while British society continues to forget and evade its historical responsibility. Transgenerational trauma in the Bowden family exposes several key issues of original trauma. It reinforces the view of original trauma as a trauma of origins both because the exploration of the family’s origin is linked to a traumatising event and insidious oppression and because origins still define the identity of diasporic subjects in the postcolonial metropole that the novel depicts: the “pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign” remain the defining features in which Irie cannot recognise herself. Irie’s process of (self-​)discovery is further connected to the return process that original trauma implies. Nevertheless, this return enables her “to recover her roots, to confront her tradition and dilute her occasional estrangement from it, so as to eventually articulate her own fluid identity” (Herrero 2007, p.30). The silences associated to earlier generations of the Bowden family and the historical amnesia of contemporary postcolonial societies had left no place for the articulation of a traumatic history and a complex self. Origins and roots do matter, but they cannot define you entirely. Irie has hope for the future, but still dreads the possibility that her family’s past will, consciously or unconsciously, determine her child’s life, which she imagines as “a perfectly plotted thing with no real coordinates” (p.516). Later on, the narrator specifies that Irie’s child can never be mapped exactly nor spoken of with certainty. Some secrets are permanent. In a vision, Irie has seen a time, a time not far from now, when roots won’t matter any more because they can’t because they mustn’t because they’re too long and they’re too tortuous and they’re just buried too damn deep. (p.527) Although this agenda is fairly optimistic, the fact that “some secrets are permanent” points to the transmission of more or less cryptic secrets throughout the generations. This is a hopeful ending that would imply the successful working through not only of transgenerational traumas but also of Britain’s “postcolonial melancholia”, which as Gilroy (2004, pp.4, 90) argues should consist of “a deliberate engagement with the twentieth century’s histories of suffering” that will lay bare the repetitions of domination and racism and root contemporary attitudes towards others in “the multilayered trauma” of empire and its loss. Irie’s inclination towards forgetting and her rejection of the importance of roots signal her desire to decolonise her self and her mind. Similarly, the depiction of transgenerational trauma in White Teeth brings to the fore the need for a decolonised vision of trauma that considers all the historical contexts as well as individual and collective hi/​stories. The outcome is not a clear one: Irie’s account and hopes for a future that has worked through its traumas is still filled with ambiguities and contradictions,

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64  Origins and Original Trauma but this may suit rather well the understanding of hybrid identities. As Gillian Whitlock claims if binaries, thinking in terms of origins and authenticity, centre and periphery, and the separation into consistent and homogeneous identities are fundamental to colonizing discourses, then the work of decolonization is to return ambivalence and duplicity, and to look to intersubjectivity in cultural formations and texts. (2000, p.6) And these ambivalences and contradictions will remain a constant in Smith’s work, which play with knowing and not knowing, with remembering and forgetting, reversing the myth “that the past is always tense and the future, perfect” (p.541). Original trauma is a trauma. Original trauma should not be considered a sin, even if religion has been proved to play an important part on the acting out and working through processes. Moreover, conceiving original trauma as a sin places individual guilt and responsibility at its core and the original trauma White Teeth presents is the consequences of collective, historical, and cultural issues. A new term or label that would further narrow down the concept of trauma would not do. Rather a broader, more politically and historically conscious understanding of it must be brought to the fore. The analysis of original trauma and transgenerational trauma in this chapter has shown that it is impossible to disentangle individual and collective histories and that trauma in the specific context of postcolonial British society must pay attention to the construction and the dismantling of empire and to how certain colonial discourses have shifted so that the control over others can continue to be exerted. In this sense, White Teeth puts forward a decolonising view of trauma, one that lives up to the particular experiences of the decolonised and that could promote a more convivial dialogue in postcolonial times. If the full history and insidiousness of colonisation and the aftermath of decolonisation are not tackled, several generations are going to be potentially traumatised and brought up in an apparently multicultural and diverse society that does not fully recognise their plurality or their history. In a similar way, the analysis of original trauma in this chapter has shown that reading otherness only through the lens of psychoanalysis and more limited and limiting understandings of trauma has equally insidious consequences. The psychoanalytical accounts found in the novel shift the responsibility of working through the trauma of (post)colonisation to (post)colonial subjects themselves, and reveal how traditionally these have been regarded as an individual rather than a collective effort that must address the roles in history of all the members of the alleged multicultural society portrayed in the novel. A split can be acknowledged but

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Origins and Original Trauma  65 it cannot be read as a mere individual matter. Joyce Chalfen asks Irie in reference to Magid and Millat to imagine the trauma of being separated by culture and religion. For her, the Iqbal brothers must talk and overcome their differences, but the blindness of her Western psychoanalytical view does not allow her to question the origin of those differences. As happened with their reunion, the imposition of a psychoanalytical trauma perspective will only lead to repetition, thus perpetuating the very same thing that it is trying to vanquish. Similarly, this way of working through trauma seeks the narrative integration of one’s traumatic memories and experiences and, while Smith favours some integration of difficult pasts, White Teeth lays bare that narrative integration will fail as long as the imposition of a whole, coherent, and linear account of the self is promoted and as long as those traumatic histories that affect whole nations remain unspoken. There is no possibility to work through in a society where migratory subjects feel the dialogue required to open up and work through transgenerational wounds cannot be held in a truly convivial culture. White Teeth, far from being a celebratory tale of multiculturalism, becomes a cautionary one: it is a wake-​up call to revise the history of both colonisers and colonised so that their traumatic relationship can be worked through and some dialogical convivial culture may arise instead. The history of imperialism is often remembered with nostalgia and it has wilfully forgotten those who were subjected to oppression and those who are still facing its consequences. The in-​depth analysis of original trauma and transgenerational trauma shows that while the discourse of the (post)colonisers promote forgetting, postcolonial subjects may find themselves forced to remember a painful history that ends up causing a temporal or even a permanent attachment to the past that will not allow subjects to move forward. It is not ethical to remain on the surface of simplistic psychoanalytical accounts nor is it ethical to silence the historical, cultural, and political discourses that sustain (post)colonial societies. History, and the history of trauma, must recognise those subjects that have been excluded by dominant discourses. The only way to advance is not through revenge, which only leads to a replication of colonial attitudes, but rather through a collective working through that works towards equal representation. Samad and Millat need the constant repetition of their family past, albeit with some variations, in order to survive the context of difference they face in English society: they cannot conceive of any other way fighting their lack of recognition and the inclusion of their point of view in the larger history of England. Irie can only turn to find comfort from the difference she encounters in contemporary society. Even if her search for her family’s roots first leads her to naively rewrite her family’s colonial origins and she clings to this past (re)construction, she eventually realises how the past of diasporic families haunts and defines them in the present

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66  Origins and Original Trauma as opposed to other English families. Moreover, towards the end of the novel she refuses to be defined by a traumatic family history. She is thus determined to break the circularity of original trauma and the silence that has for so long prevailed in her family. Second-​generation characters have to construct new routes out of the entanglements of the multiple histories they inhabit in the hope that they and British society alike will be able to work through their traumas, no matter how many repetitions this entails. If, as Laura Brown argues (in Vickroy 2002, p.14), the collective context should provide “social support” in order to overcome work through traumatic experiences, the silence of postcolonial societies will push them towards acting out and an unproductive attachment to the past or, as the next chapter will expose, towards a complete rejection of the past and the complicity of silence.

Note 1 The reference to Noam Chomsky’s “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” (1967) intentionally diminishes Joyce’s arguments. She appropriates Chomsky’s term but fails to fulfil “the concern for the truth”, to “see events in their historical perspectives”, and thus positions herself as part of the “privileged minority” that can concern themselves with such responsibility, exposing her own “hypocritical moralism”.

Bibliography Abraham, N. and Torok, M., 1994. The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Abraham, N. and Torok, M., 2005. The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Adorno, T.W., (1959) 2005. The Meaning of Working through the Past. In: Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Translated from German by H. Pickford. New York: Columbia University Press, 89–​103. Ahmed, S., 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, London: Duke University Press. Alghamdi, A., 2011. Transformations of the Liminal Self: Configurations of Home and Identity for Muslim Characters in British Postcolonial Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bell, D., 2006. Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship between Past and Present. London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Benito Sánchez, J. and Manzanas Calvo, A.M., 2002. Literature and Ethnicity in the Cultural Borderlands. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Butler, J., 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge. Caruth, C., ed., 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Chomsky, N., 1967. The Responsibility of Intellectuals. The New York Review of Books, 23 February www.nybooks.com/​articles/​1967/​02/​23/​a-​special-​ supplement-​the-​responsibility-​of-​intelle/​ [Accessed 7 March 2016].

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Origins and Original Trauma  67 Cohen, R., (1997) 2001. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Craps, S., 2013. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds. London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Craps, S., 2014. Beyond Eurocentrism: Trauma Theory in the Global Age. In: G. Buelens, S. Durrant, and R. Eaglestone, eds. The Future of Trauma Theory: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism. London & New York: Routledge, 23–​43. Erikson, K., 1995. Notes on Trauma and Community. In: C. Caruth, ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 183–​99. Fanon, F., (1952) 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press. Fassin, D. and Rechtman, R., 2009. The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gilroy, P., 2004. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? Abingdon: Routledge. Herrero, M.D., 2007. Meena Alexander’s Transgressive/​ Diasporic Female Characters: Healing Wounds and Fracturing the Iconic Feminine and the Language of the Colonizer. South Asian Review, XXVIII (2), 27–​48. Hirsch, M., 2008. The Generation of Postmemory. Poetics Today, 29 (1), 103–​28. Kaufman, G., (1989) 1996. The Psychology of Shame: Theory and Treatment of Shame-​Based Syndromes. New York: Springer. LaCapra, D., 1994. Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. LaCapra, D., 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. LaCapra, D., 2004. History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. LaCapra, D., 2013. History, Literature, Critical Theory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Mbembe, A., 2010. The Colony: Its Guilty Secret and Its Accursed Share. In: E. Boehmer and S. Morton, eds. Terror and the Postcolonial. Oxford: Wiley-​ Blackwell, 27–​54. McLeod, J., 2005. Revisiting Postcolonial London. The European English Messenger, XIV (2), 39–​47. Mirze, Z.E., 2008. Fundamental Differences in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. In: T.L. Walters, ed. Zadie Smith: Critical Essays. New York: Peter Lang, 187–​201. Mora Aguiló, D., 2009. Simply British: Structured Trauma and Colonial Past in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Grove Working Papers on English Studies 16, 9–​26. Neale, S., 2000. Genre and Hollywood. London & New York: Routledge. Sen, A., 2007. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. London: Penguin. Schwab, G., 2010. Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma. New York: Columbia University Press. Smith, Z., 2000. White Teeth. London: Penguin. Squires, C., 2002. Zadie Smith’s White Teeth: A Reader’s Guide. New York: Continuum. Stuckey, L., 2008. Red and Yellow, Black and White: Color-​ Blindness as Disillusionment in Zadie Smith’s “Hanwell in Hell”. In: T.L. Walters, ed. Zadie Smith: Critical Essays. New York: Peter Lang, 157–​69.

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68  Origins and Original Trauma Su, J.J., 2005. Ethics and Nostalgia in the Contemporary Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tancke, U., 2011. “Original Traumas”: Narrating Migrant Identity in British Muslim Women’s Writing. Postcolonial Text, 6 (2), n.p. http://​postcolonial. org/​index.php/​pct/​article/​view/​1238/​1165 [Accessed 2 February 2013]. Tancke, U., 2013. White Teeth Reconsidered: Narrative Deception and Uncomfortable Truths. In: P. Tew, ed. Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 27–​39. Tal, K., (1996) 2004. Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tew, P., 2010. Zadie Smith. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tomkins, S. 1995. Exploring Affect: The Selected Writings of Silvan S. Tomkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Upstone, S., 2007. “SAME OLD, SAME OLD”: Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 43 (3), 336–​49. Vickroy, L., 2002. Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Visser, I., 2011. Trauma Theory and Postcolonial Literary Studies. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 47 (3), 270–​82. Whitehead, A., 2004. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Whitehead, A., 2009. Memory. London & New York: Routledge. Whitlock, G., 2000. The Intimate Empire: Reading Women’s Autobiography. London and New York: Cassell.

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2  The Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma The Ambivalences of Forgetting and Remembering in White Teeth, On Beauty, and NW As the previous chapter explores, White Teeth (2000) presents readers with the need to redefine the understanding of trauma through the concept of “original trauma” and the complex attachment of some of its characters to their origins. At the same time, the analysis of original trauma has been shown to expose the need of Britain, as a nation, to remember its colonial past and face the grave consequences of historical amnesia in postcolonial times. Amid such context, first-​and second-​ generation characters in White Teeth develop an excessive attachment to the past or “ossification”, to use McLeod’s terminology (2005), that complicates the relationship between self and world and does not allow for a forward movement. While there is no easy solution to this predicament, Irie, who herself displays her attachment to the past for a large part of the narrative, seems to be inclined towards forgetting: British people strike her as sound and functional, even if, in a rather Freudian manner, they have repressed their past. The past can, as shown, become a burden that does not allow individuals or collectives to move forward. To counter this, forgetting may undeniably provide individuals with some relief. As the previous chapter already examined, there are certainly dangers in forgetting, especially when its collective form verges into historical amnesia. Similarly, several of Smith’s narratives also explore the consequences of wilfully forgetting one’s past and origins. McLeod (2005, p.41) has identified this process as “erasure” and this obliteration may be taken as another side to original trauma, for the erasure of one’s origins and the complete assimilation, rather than integration, into English culture and the adoption of preconceived identifications with the dominant culture are a response to the unbelonging caused by ethnicity and, more acutely in this case, by class and place. These characters do not have much choice in what they forget, and they believe the only possible way to escape the constraints attached to lower class, race, and place is to avoid the memories that connect them to marginal contexts. The memories of what are perceived as shameful histories and identifications must be dismissed in face of the lack of recognition and accommodation into dominant discourses and institutions.

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70  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma Therefore, this erasure and necessity to forget will further expose the ideologies of postcolonial societies. The erasure of origins is studied in this chapters in three several characters in three different novels: Magid in White Teeth, Howard and Levi in On Beauty (2005), and Keisha in NW (2012). These characters share the need to leave behind their lower-​ class origins, the shame attached to them, and the embodiment of this affect in their respective places of origin. Magid rejects his Bangladeshi origins both while in England and Bangladesh and aims to fulfil his aspiration to belong to an English, middle-​class family like the Chalfens. Howard, an English professor in the United States, is ashamed of his English working-​class origins and develops a conflicting relationship with the places that contain them while his son Levi rejects his upper-class, US origin. Keisha tries to erase her past through her metamorphosis into Natalie and by moving away from the councile state where she grew up and into a more accommodated upper-​ middle-​ class life, developing in her transformation one of the most conflicting relationships to identity and place in Smith’s work. While the contexts and times may vary, there is a common confrontation with a fixed understanding of class, race, ethnicity, and gender as well as with the limitations of a fixed, Western understanding of trauma. Moreover, both On Beauty and NW will continue with the vocabulary of psychoanalysis and trauma, even intensifying it in the latter up to the point of becoming a pastiche trauma novel. Forgetting and erasure, however, are never complete processes and the resulting identities and relationships to origins are often painfully ambiguous and/​or contradictory. As this chapter argues, the ambiguities and contradictions of these characters also speak of sites of resistance to the way of understanding others and the way in which trauma theory and tropes are used to depict these others. Therefore, the rejection of the past, while seemingly grounded in the workings of original trauma, may also be regarded as a mode of survival, as well as something that can be reified to one’s advantage or to justify questionable moral choices. This intrinsic ambivalence thus contributes to decolonising the discourses of both identity and trauma. This obliteration will thus not only reveal further aspects of original trauma in its connection to collective and historical contexts, but it will also play with the in/​visibility of trauma and how it is used to narrate both individual and insidious, systemic suffering.

2.1  Confronting the “Deeper Malaise” of Being Other The generational conflict and the transmission of trauma in the Iqbal family runs through White Teeth. Both Magid and Millat inherit Samad’s split self and while Millat embodies his father’s attachment to the past and radicalisation of his difference and faith, Magid incorporates the English identity that was imposed upon Samad in colonial times, and

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  71 then denied in postcolonial ones. In keeping with the intensification of difference down the generations, Magid will discard any connection to the past and adopt what is considered to be a “purely” English identity, thus opposing ossification and laying bare the construction of identities and, by extension, their inauthenticity. From an early age, Magid Iqbal shows signs that hint at a disconnection, if not yet an erasure, of his origins. The first disconnection is described after Samad expresses his opposition to celebrating the Harvest Festival, or any other pagan festivity, at his sons’ school (p.129). Magid and Irie protest and speak out in favour of it, since they want to take part in the celebration together with everybody else. Upon witnessing this protest, Samad recriminates Magid: “I told you already. I don’t want you participating in that nonsense. It has nothing to do with us, Magid. Why are you always trying to be somebody you are not?” (p.150). Magid rebels against his father’s imposition of a Muslim monoculture and prefers his culture of birth to his inherited one and dismantles his father’s us vs. them mentality through an apparent act of integration. This scene awakens some “silent anger” between father and son, which manifests the unspeakability of a previous “painful incident” that reveals more overtly Magid’s desire to be other than a Bangladeshi Muslim: on his ninth birthday, Magid announces his Englishness when some white friends come to pick him up and ask for “Mark Smith” and he leaves the house referring to his mother as “Mum” instead of “Amma” (pp.150–​1). While this episode saddens Alsana, it puts Samad in a rage, because Magid rejects the Muslim name his father gave him, Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasimi Iqbal. Yet, both Samad and Alsana’s responses speak of a generational gap and the fear that their Bengali culture should be (further) impoverished when contrasted to the more positively described English culture. Unable to escape the constraints of ethnicity and difference in his society, Magid tries to give himself a new name. This change of name is significant but not uncommon for migrants and diasporic subjects, who respond to a perceived sense of unbelonging and being defined not only by race but also by name. Saul Kripke (1980, pp.1, 21) argued that proper names are “rigid designators”, that is, one name implies the same things in all “possible worlds”. In his analysis of music and black culture, Paul Gilroy (2000, pp.203, 211) refers to “the condition of being in pain”, which he regards as the “profane equivalent” of “the spiritual […] black suffering”, and which “encompasses both a radical, personalised enregistration of time and a diachronic understanding of language whose most enduring effects are the games black people in all western cultures play with names and naming”. Although Gilroy’s arguments here refer to music, I would argue that the association between “being in pain” and “naming” allows for another way to understand Magid’s change of name. In fact, these episodes –​the protest and his renaming –​are the result of wider and more acute causes:

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72  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma [T]‌his was just a symptom of a far deeper malaise. Magid really wanted to be in some other family. He wanted to own cats and not cockroaches, he wanted his mother to make the music of the cello, not the sound of the sewing machine; he wanted to have a trellis of flowers growing up one side of the house instead of the ever growing pile of other people’s rubbish; he wanted a piano in the hallway in place of the broken door off cousin Kurshe’s car; he wanted to go on biking holidays to France, not day trips to Blackpool to visit aunties; he wanted the floor of his room to be shiny wood, not the orange and green swirled carpet left over from the restaurant; he wanted his father to be a doctor, not a one-​handed waiter; and this month Magid had converted all these desires into a wish to join in with the Harvest Festival like Mark Smith would. Like everybody else would. (p.151) Magid wishes to overcome the differences that keep him apart from the larger part of English society. He longs to belong to a white, middle-​class English family, which stands in opposition to his lower-​class Bangladeshi family, who lacks professionalisation, respectable property, and appropriate leisure options. Magid, therefore, already has a lived-​in experience of inequality, and takes it that English culture is the only one worth identifying with. Magid’s trauma of origins is thus intrinsically connected with class difference and it is his desire to belong to the ordinary, middle-​class English population, to the “everybody”, that drives him to reject and subsequently erase any trace of his Muslim, Bangladeshi origin. Assimilation seems the only possible route to belonging. Samad expressed his fear of the in-​between when he was a soldier in the Second World War –​too English for Bengal and too Indian for England. As time passes by, and given the rejection he experiences in English society, he comes to fear even more that he or somebody in his family should show sympathy for such an oppressing force. Analogously to his complete repudiation of Englishness, Samad can only conceive of sending Magid away from the culture that is polluting him in the hope that Bangladesh will provide a good Muslim education for his son, and that he will not have to face the struggle, the split, the “tearing apart” (p.201) that migrants suffer in England. However, more selfish reasons are also at work. Esra Mirze (2008, p.194) argues that Samad hopes that in Bangladesh Magid will be able to refashion his identity in the absence of Western corruption and devote his life to God without being subjected to discrimination. What Samad does not understand, however, is that Magid is not at home in Bangladesh, but rather has been sent into exile.

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  73 Samad’s reasons stem from his fear of Englishness, both at a private and public level. But oblivious to the repetition of patterns, Samad does not contemplate the possibility that Magid’s Englishness might be strengthened in Bangladesh, after all, his difference was strengthened in England. Samad prompts a forced migration that perpetuates the repetition compulsion process and enacts the potentially traumatic separation of Magid from his closer family and known environment. Therefore, rather than working through original trauma, Samad not only unconsciously transmits the Iqbals’ transgenerational trauma, but he also consciously replays the original “dash” (p.161) he undertook decades ago. Samad sees in Magid his only hope for return and the development of a coherent and strong Muslim faith and identity, unpolluted by the forces of the West. Alsana, on the other hand, fears for Magid. Her anger at Samad is justified, not only by the fact that he kept his plan secret, but also by her anxiety about the effects that living in Bangladesh will have for Magid. She fears that Magid should learn to hold his life lightly […] that Magid should be as she had once been: holding on to a life no heavier than a paisa coin, wading thoughtlessly through floods, shuddering underneath the weight of black skies. (p.211) Her arguments contrast with Samad’s belief that members of the second generation are “too safe” in England (p.219), which does not provide them with the correct environment to thrive as men. For Alsana, living in an unsafe environment has an effect on the psyche that resembles numbing and depression. She questions the lack of safety and vulnerability of some people in certain environments and reveals the psychological consequences of being exposed to such vulnerability. Alsana thus classifies precarious lives as “volatile, “threadbare”, “carefree”, “losable”, “lethargy”, “disaster”, “chaos”, because “There is nothing to stop you –​or rather anything could stop you, any hour, any minute. That feeling. That’s the real difference in a life. People who live on solid ground, underneath safe skies, know nothing of this” (pp.210–​ 1). She fears that her son, back in Bangladesh, will encounter destruction and fragility, which may condemn him to an almost existential dread, and which do not let him escape a traumatic context, even if it is different from the one his father alleged to justify his choice. Alsana’s arguments resemble those of Kai Erikson, who maintained that trauma “at its worst, can mean not only a loss of confidence in the self, but a loss of confidence in […] family and community” as well as “in the ways of nature itself” (1995, pp.197–​8). Thus, Bangladesh, for her, is a potentially traumatological space because of its nature, which has the ability to psychologically paralyse her son and render his life meaningless, contrary to Samad’s belief. However, more importantly, her fear of

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74  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma the destructive power of nature contrasts with the man-​made, discursive threats found in England, which bring about a destruction of the self through their rejection of otherness. The outcome of Magid’s experience in Bangladesh is none of those his parents expected or feared. He lives through a cyclone, which he survives, and is only harmed by a vase which falls on his nose. As a result of this minor accident, his looks are transformed to the point that, in a photograph that he sends out afterwards Clara comments that: “he’s got a Roman nose, now. He looks like a little aristocrat, like a little Englishman” (p.216). Moreover, this is also when he realises that he would like to study law instead of religion, much to his father’s disappointment (p.215). His transformation will go beyond looks or being career-​driven, since he will soon start to display some traces of colonial attitudes. Years later, for example, Magid sends out a letter to his family in which he narrates his meeting with a famous writer after he wins a prize with his essay “Bangladesh –​To Whom May She Turn”. In his letter, Magid reaffirms his intention to study law in order to “make the Asian countries sensible places, where order prevail[s]‌, disaster [is] prepared for” and ultimately forestalls “[their] unlucky fate”. He also repeats the teachings of this writer: “many of us (Indians, Bengalis, Pakistanis) are uneducated, many of us do not understand the world. We must be like the English. The English fight fate to the death. They do not listen to history unless it is telling them what they wish to hear” (pp.287–​8; italics in original). There is some criticism towards the English way of confronting history, but what this letter brings to the fore is the fact that Magid is ready to oppose his destiny even if it means dying. Thus, he erases/​kills his difference in order to belong within England’s post/​colonial spaces. The “turn” in Magid’s essay title rather points towards a return: the return implicit in the novel’s conceptualisation of original trauma veers here towards the return of colonial discourse and emphasises the idea of “rerun” that permeates its definition. Thus, Magid’s case further highlights the difficulty to escape from colonisation and the traumatic consequences it triggered through time. This “colonial self” is also enhanced by Magid’s increasing contact with the Marcus Chalfen. While in Bangladesh, they engage in a pen pal friendship, an episode that is reported in the chapter “More English than the English”. Their exchange is seen as a continuation, or rather perpetuation, of “the great tradition of British education” (p.365). Structurally, this chapter comes after “The Root Canals of Hortense Bowden”, which, as the first chapter in this book has shown, denounces the misconception of education that some colonial characters had in the early twentieth century. Moreover, this previous chapter starts and ends with the words “A little English education can be a dangerous thing” (pp.356, 364) and thus the chapter “More English than the English” is framed by a tone of suspicion as to the educational promises of the English.

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  75 In his letters to Marcus, Magid confirms his intention to study law “to improve the lot of [his] poor country”, expresses his admiration for Marcus’s efforts to “delve into the mysteries of inherited characteristics”, and thanks him for his general involvement with the Iqbals (pp.366, 367). Marcus, for his part, sets up a path for Magid to return, attend university, and become his lawyer (pp.367–​8), while he continues to disregard and objectify Millat and Irie, who he does not consider to be clever or civilised enough. For Marcus, Magid, having erased as many traces of his inherited identity as possible, becomes someone worthy of his attention and efforts. One could argue that Magid’s erasure of his origins, as his epistolary shows, is connected to the ossification of English society. And his return to London, as orchestrated by Marcus, will be tainted with the traditional power structures of colonialism. Upon Magid’s return, it is Marcus that goes to greet him at the airport. Marcus has certain expectations about their encounter: It would be just the two of them, then, meeting at last, having conquered the gap between continents; the teacher, the willing pupil, and then that first, historic handshake. Marcus did not think for a second it could or would go badly. He was no student of history […], he had no stories to scare him concerning a dark man meeting a white man, both with heavy expectations, but only one with the power. (p.422) In spite of Magid’s education and Englishness, their relationship is still marked by colonial difference and the power of race and class, with which Marcus has been vested, whether he is conscious of it or not. Within this ideological frame, the narration continues to describe their relationship in terms of colonial education and the neglect of history. More worryingly, perhaps, is the fact that Marcus presumes that he is bridging a “gap between continents”. Very much like his wife, Joyce, Marcus perceives a split and heralds himself as the one working towards addressing the “dash” enforced by original trauma. Yet, his privilege allows him to sustain the repetition of oppressing hierarchies. Stef Craps (2010, p.53), in his criticism of Caruth’s claim of trauma’s possibility to bridge cultures, argued that a “one-​sided focus” “risks assisting in the perpetuation of the very beliefs, practices, and structures that maintain existing injustices and inequalities”. Marcus’s unilateral vision and Magid’s erasure of his inherited culture testify to the continuation of such system. Magid then returns not to his family of origin but rather to the Chalfens, to the middle-​class, English family he had dreamed as a child. In fact, the years of separation and his transformation into an Englishman make it difficult for his own family to recognise him. For the Iqbals, Magid had become a static existence that served as an anchor against the changes they have to face up to in England and especially so for Samad, who

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76  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma had deposited all of his dreams of recognition. Furthermore, Magid even becomes a haunting presence, described as “A ghostly daguerreotype formed from the quicksilver of the father’s imagination, preserved by the salt solution of maternal tears” and “silent [and] distant […] like one of Her Majesty’s colonial island outposts” (p.217). Magid’s exile belongs to the realm of the unspeakable and the Iqbal’s memories of him are imbued with the vocabulary of British Empire. The Iqbals are indeed still going “back and forth” in their traumatic journey of dislocation and (post)​ colonial histories complicate Magid’s return. Once back in London, Magid, in fact, becomes a stronger haunting figure for his family: Alsana cannot truly identify his son, Samad rejects the possibility that he still belongs to the Iqbal family, and Millat declares that “[he has] no brother” (p.421) and forces him to live with the Chalfens (pp.424–​5). Thus, Magid acts as a sort of reverse haunting figure that affects the previous generation as well as his own, and that further points to Samad’s unresolved split self and the unattainable reconciliation of East and West. Samad, who expresses his desire to hide and banish his son forever (p.424), adds his failure with Magid to his crypt, laying bare the cumulative effect of shame and trauma. Magid’s experience of (un)belonging, his separation from his family, his excessive Englishness, and the overall presence of original trauma in the Iqbal family may condition readers to regard Magid as a traumatised subject. However, I would argue that White Teeth, while acknowledging the potentially traumatic force of a racist context, also works against making easy assumptions about diasporans’ traumatised selves. This deconstructive effort is particularly noticeable through the focalisation on the psychoanalytical view of Joyce Chalfen. While Millat had become an obsession for Joyce, who saw him as a lost soul who could be fixed by means of therapy and inhabiting the right environment (hers), it is no surprise that Magid gives her another chance to implement her methods of diagnosis and healing. In this regard, the most significant episode comes when Magid is already living with the Chalfens, and after Joyce tells Irie, who contends that neither Magid nor Millat are traumatised, that she must help them to overcome their psychological suffering. In Magid’s case, she explains: “I just walked past the bathroom and Magid is sitting in the bath with his jeans. […] I should think I know a traumatized child when I see one” (p.436). The novel mocks once again Joyce’s misguided diagnosis of trauma. If one could indeed question that being in a bath with jeans may not be indicative of trauma, even if odd, the narrative previously recounts how Magid had asked Irie how the white shrink-​to-​fit jeans that Joyce’s sister gave him work. After inquiring about the shrinking process, she suggests that he should “get in the fucking bath with the fucking jeans on and see what happens” as a scientific experiment of sorts (pp.428–​9). And so he does. The use of these shrink-​to-​fit white jeans may allow for a metaphorical reading of Magid’s assimilation into English culture, since

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  77 he has done away with the culture of his family, of his country, in order to fit into a culture and class that may enable him to escape the limiting circumstances into which he was born. He seems to reject the double identity often attributed to diasporic subjects in favour of a rigidly, and diminished, single English identity. During the above conversation with Magid, who enquires endlessly about “shrinking”, Irie realises that, in addition to an apparently excessive sympathy, he has unconsciously revealed something strange that was obscured by his youth, his looks, his clean clothes and his personal hygiene. Now she saw it clearly. He was touched by it […] Prophecy. And Magid had it in his face. He wanted to tell you and tell you and tell you. (pp.429–​30; italics in original) Irie’s reference to Magid’s excessive talking, based on the descriptions in psychoanalytical manuals such as DMS-​5, could be taken in itself as a symptom of trauma. Furthermore, this behaviour could be a sign of transgenerational trauma, since Samad, upon his arrival to England, is reported to have “the urge, the need to speak to every man […] explain constantly, constantly wanting to reassert something, anything” (p.58). Thus, Magid may be following suit in his need to make his self known and accepted amongst English society and negating the possibility of a plural self. However, Irie further compares Magid to the characters of Mad Mary and Mr. Toupee, who in Willesden “announced their madness […]. They were properly mad in the Shakespearean sense, talking sense when you least expected it” (p.174) and are, moreover, endowed with a “schizophrenic talent” (ibid.). Irie’s references to madness and schizophrenia, far from confining him to the realm of trauma, turn Magid into a rather more ambiguous character than it may seem because Irie’s pronouncement endows him with such double self and confirms Bhabha’s contention that “the truest eye may now belong to the migrant’s double vision” (1994, p.5). What is more, his empathic capacity may not only counter definitions of trauma that contend that it leads to disconnection from others and self (Vickroy 2002, p.23), but may also corroborate that it has been acquired thanks to a double vision through which he is able to relate to both coloniser and colonised. Magid’s relationship to his cultures of origin, birth and inherited, is also sketched in the aforementioned conversation between Irie and Magid, through his insistence on the double meaning of the verb “cleave”. Soon afterwards, Irie, during her discussion with Joyce about the Iqbals’ trauma, wonders which of the meanings of “cleave”, “pulling together or tearing apart”, is “more traumatic” for Magid (pp.434–​5). This question is posed as Joyce insists on an immediate meeting between the two brothers, on their “pulling together”, which as the first chapter discussed,

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78  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma only leads to a re-​enactment of their traumatic separation. Irie’s concern undermines Joyce’s conclusiveness and points towards the inner conflict that Joyce cannot appraise. In the context he inhabits, clinging to his family’s collective identity may be traumatising, as can be seen in Samad and Millat’s reaction to difference and subsequent attachment to the past and tradition. Magid’s distance from his family’s past may be regarded as a defense and survival mechanism in a postcolonial society. Thus, it is not a question of either being pulled together or torn apart but rather being both at the same time. Homi Bhabha (1994, p.224) explaines that the migrants’ in-​betweenness reframes issues of assimilation and moves “towards an encounter with the ambivalent process of splitting and hybridity that marks the identification with culture’s difference”. Following this argument, Jenni Ramone (2011, p.114) explains that hybridity means that the migrant cannot be assimilated and be made visible in London, but neither are they ejected in a racist othering process. Instead the migrant reveals the hybridity of Britain as a culture made up of multiple cultural identities, and this multiplicity exists within the individual. Magid becomes an ambivalent character in his conflation of Bengali inheritance and English identification, in his schizophrenic talent. White Teeth does actually show that Magid’s double vision has the potential for change. Upon his return to England, he disrupts the Chalfens, and particularly, Marcus: he changes his preconceived ideas and reverses the power dynamics of teacher–​student that Marcus had assumed before their encounter. The narrator observes that, in the presence of Magid, Marcus admits to “faults” in his character, “small ones [...] but still faults. He had been too insular […] And the genius of it, the master stroke, was that Magid never for a moment let Marcus feel that Chalfenism was being compromised in any way whatsoever” (p.427; italics in original). Magid, who speaks the language of the coloniser, is able to introduce subtle changes that disturb the insularity and fixity of the Chalfens. It is this potential for subversion and agency that reveals some aspects of subversive mimicry, contradicts the view of Magid as simply either coloniser or colonised, and diminishes Joyce’s view of him as a traumatised, passive subject that needs the help, and condescension, of the Chalfens. Magid’s identification with Englishness and the erasure of his origins can thus be read in light of Homi Bhabha’s definition of colonial mimicry as “the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite”, which he later paraphrases as “not quite/​not white” (1994, pp.85, 92). Magid can therefore be considered to be a hybrid subject, who is recognised as other because of his race and class but thinks and behaves in resonance with a more traditional view of

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  79 Englishness. Such mimicry, according to Bhabha (1994, p.114), is subversive because it reveals the identity of the colonisers to be a construction, which is not fixed, and which therefore diminishes their authority. As David Huddart (2005, p.39) concludes, mimicry in Bhabha is “repetition with difference” that subverts the destructiveness of stereotypes. The definition of mimicry as modified repetition recalls the image employed in the description of original trauma as well as in processes of working through. While I do not want to suggest that all cases of mimicry are processes that enable others to work through a traumatic experience of unbelonging, in Magid’s case, mimicry may become the strategy that allows him to tackle his suffering. Yet, because of the ambiguity surrounding his character, this mimicry may be regarded as a defence mechanism, a way to avoid the trauma of origins and the conflictual identity developed by his father, whose effects may not be as disruptive as it may seem. Magid’s Englishness represents a static and fixed identity, because he adopts what Nick Bentley (2007, pp.498, 500) classifies as “retro-​colonial Englishness” and “old colonial sensibilities”. Moreover, the novel seems to concede that Magid’s mimicry is rather a “self-​ colonization” (Huddart 2005, p.50) and that this is the only way to be fully recognised and accepted. In keeping with this, Huddart (ibid., p.41) asks, in reference to Bhabha’s discourse of mimicry, “is the colonized choosing to be a mimic, adopting mimicry as a deliberate strategy?” and concludes that although there exists a potential to transgress and resist colonial attitudes, the choice and power in mimicry may be, in fact, rather limited. Thus, White Teeth draws attention to two questions respectively posed by Huddart (2005, p.39) and Andreas Huyssen (2003 , p.74). The first one is: “Who benefits from mimicry?”; the second is related to cases in which colonial mimicry shows racist connotations: “Does mimicry of racism invariably imply its reproduction or can such mimicry itself open up a gap, a difference that depends on who performs the mimicry and how?”. While the novel makes it clear that Magid is able to change and dismantle the narrow-​mindedness and insularity of Marcus Chalfen, who is a representative of the white, middle-​class Englishman Magid aspired to, this instance of mimicry seems to turn a blind eye to history and conceals the current discourses that maintain racism and otherness in place. Magid’s trauma of origins does indeed speak of a “deeper malaise”. The novel demonstrates that a Bengali origin is not recognised in the British society it depicts, and as Samad and Millat’s experience also shows. Magid is seen by the Chalfens as the most valuable member of the Iqbals and Joneses because of his Englishness and his departure from the negative stereotypes they attribute to other members of these families. Thus, if the “original trauma” of the Iqbals is to be considered, this must be done in relation, not only to the repetition of departure and return forced by Samad, but also in the light of those racist attitudes which

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80  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma operate through stereotyping. Such discourses leave little or no space for the development of hybrid identities and, ultimately, ensure that otherness is subdued and the binary of us vs. them is maintained. Mark Stein, in his study of diasporic writing and his analysis of Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara, explores the notion that “a color conscious society is likely to make self-​conscious those whom it regards and treats as other”, which exerts “a homogenizing and normalizing power” (2004, p.85; italics in original). Consequently, it could be argued that Magid’s mimicry of Englishness is the result of a homogenising attempt that represses otherness and preserves binaries. Stein puts great emphasis on the connection between diaspora and memory, and asserts that “memory constitutes the basis for the diaspora condition, and at once delimits that very condition”. In addition, he sustains that “diasporic identities […] thrive on difference and are marked not by constancy but by ongoing self-​transformation” and takes on Gilroy’s argument that “culture needs to be ‘remembered and remade’ ” in order to fulfil its potential for change (ibid., pp.64, 66). Without remembering the colonial history of England and analysing how this affects postcolonial subjects, there will be little or no change and thus, Magid’s mimicry will end up in failure. Magid is portrayed as somebody who has chosen to forget in order to survive in the postcolonial society he inhabits. But, as Anne Whitehead (2009, pp.121, 122) remarks, both forgetting and remembering are key for survival. Whitehead also affirms that forgetting may “work against the solidification of narratives into too static or monumentalized a form”. Nevertheless, she observes that forgetting must not neglect the ethics and duties of remembering. Forgetting his Bangladeshi identity can therefore be said to attack the fixedness of stereotypes, but the unethical consequences that the active forgetting of colonial history may have in postcolonial contexts should not be underestimated either. Magid’s identification with Englishness remains a contradictory question. His ethnicity marks him as belonging to Bangladesh, and the only way to belong in English society is by assuming a colonial frame of mind that erases his diasporic history. The dangers of repetition here thus work in parallel to the wilful historical amnesia that is present in English society. Magid asserts at one point that Bangladesh is his country, but does not seem to incorporate any traces of that culture. Rather, he adopts the position of the coloniser: one that can educate and save it from itself. Magid turns and returns to England in order to survive, but the erasure of his family’s origin and of the diasporic history, rather speak of stasis, of silence, of another form of ossification. His identification with Englishness provides him with a relative freedom to escape the deterministic constraints often attached to migrant, lower-​class subjects. Nevertheless, this freedom seems to imply a denial of his family’s history and a compliance with the silence of amnesiac contemporary culture. White Teeth imbues Magid’s character with ambiguity and a potential for subversion, but they fall short as a remedy against the consequences

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  81 of original trauma because the repetition is not only played out by Magid, but also by the English society portrayed in the novel. The imperial sovereign to which the definition of original trauma referred repeats its history of subjection and rejection of difference and the collective responsibility to remember is dismissed and the erasure of otherness is favoured. Memory is key to work through trauma and while some forgetting may indeed be necessary for some subjects to move forward, the collective silence that reigns in the case of Magid speaks volumes. As Paul Gilroy argued, England must still work through their loss of empire. Otherwise, it will continue to encourage the erasure of origins, histories, and multiple identifications and it will lead others to assume that belonging lies only within the limits of the English, (upper) middle-​class, within the realm of “us”, that “everybody else” to which Mark Smith, rather than Magid, could aspire.

2.2  On Beauty and the Uses and Ambiguities of Forgetting The conflictual relationship with one’s origins in terms of class and race present in White Teeth finds its continuation in On Beauty. Smith’s third novel revolves around the lives of two families, the Belseys and the Kippses, with the confrontation between the paternal figures, Howard and Monty, at the centre. The disagreements between these two art professors at Wellington, a college town outside Boston, occur both at the public and private spheres, bringing to the fore two seemingly opposing views on life that nevertheless share some commonalities. Set mostly in a North-​American context –​although still maintaining a connection to north London –​the novel depicts societies that are painfully dichotomised and live under the aggressions of structural and everyday racism. In this respect, On Beauty reveals how race and class differences and the active and passive forgetting of the histories of oppressed collectives make it difficult, even impossible, to connect with one’s origins and others. The novel, conceived as a rewriting and homage to E.M. Forster’s Howards End, has been regarded an inheritor of Forster’s ethical view of the imperative to connect. Fiona Tolan (2013, p.143) contrasts the abstractedness of academic discussion with “the importance of being in and of the world”. Similarly, Peter Childs (2012, p.522) highlights “the importance of connection between people, between actions and consequences, between culture and economics”. On Beauty’s intertextuality with Howards End, which has been regarded as a response to the colonial attitudes of its times (Chrisman 2003, p.54), underlines questions of memory, return, and the transformation and continuation of neocolonial and neoliberal attitudes in contemporary global times. Moreover, the novel stresses experiences of unbelonging and disconnection that lay bare the systemic barriers that isolate certain members of society, which recalls the capacity of traumatic experiences, cultural and historical rather than individual, to tear apart the social fabric of some

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82  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma communities. On Beauty also exposes very ambiguous attitudes towards origins, with partial erasures, reification, and ambivalence taking centre stage. As shall be explained, the novel foregrounds conflicting acts of remembrance that stand in contrast with the impossibility to ignore history and its present repercussions. The complex entanglements that On Beauty advances can be discerned through several members of the Belsey family, particularly through Howard and his youngest son, Levi. Theirs seems to be a history of shame and unbelonging, albeit in very different circumstances, and their relationship to class and race inside and outside their family poses difficult questions in regard to trauma and identification and their affective reactions to their places of origin. It should be recalled that, as the introduction to this monograph explains, On Beauty, similarly to White Teeth, explicitly references trauma and psychoanalysis and, at points, with an akin mocking tone. Such references are centred, again, around a white, upper-​middle-​class woman, Claire Malcom, a lecturer who has an affair with Howard Belsey and who is known for bringing to her poetry classes talented men and women, mostly black, who cannot afford to attend college. Claire’s case formally recalls the Chalfen’s psychoanalytical routine in White Teeth: she goes several times per week to her psychiatrist in order to “seek out personal insight” and unearth “the traumas of her girlhood”, since her problems seem to originate in an accommodated, secure, yet apparently unloving childhood (pp.223, 226). On Beauty restricts the vocabulary of trauma and psychoanalysis to the realm of the privileged, who are said to have acquired a certain “worldliness” (p.211) that separates them from less privileged others, and thus as a practice demarcated by social and class barriers. Although this may confirm Susannah Radstone’s contention that there are certain subjects who are excluded from the possibility of being addressed through trauma theory, Smith also depicts trauma and psychoanalysis as a form of institutionalised cultural capital (Bourdieu 1973) that has been commodified to signify belonging to a higher status. Class is ever-​present in Smith’s work. It was one of the key factors that drove Magid to reject his origins and it is also the root of many of Howard Belsey’s problems. A white, English lecturer, husband to Kiki Simmonds, an African American woman, and father of three children, Howard seems to enjoy a life of privilege in the campus and suburban environment of Wellington. Yet, the shameful memory of his working-​class origins keeps returning rather intrusively throughout his life. Even if he has distanced himself from north London and his family home, the shame of being born to a working-​class family and a father that rejects otherness haunt him. Rather early in the novel, the narrator describes the photographs of the family displayed on a spiral staircase in their Wellington residence, which appear to be “following each turn that you make”, thus suggesting the impossibility to escape the past. The history of Kiki’s family, the Simmondses, is more present than Howard’s, and proudly displays “Four

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  83 generations of the Simmondses’ maternal line […] placed in triumphant, deliberate sequence: Kiki’s great-​great-​grandmother, a house-​slave; great-​ grandmother, a maid; and then her grandmother, a nurse” (p.17). Kiki’s family history is one of emancipation and pride that does not hide the larger history of oppression in the United States, even if the novel will later on infer that there is silence around it inside and outside the Belsey family home. Howard’s family, however, is described as “petty, cheap and cruel” (p.18), a family with which it is not worth keeping any ties or remembering. The only picture that is exhibited is of Howard’s father, Harold, which though large, is deliberately placed almost out of sight. With a tone of detachment, the narrator describes the portrait’s judging presence: “his eyes are cast downward, as if in despair at the exotic manner in which Howard has chosen to continue the Belsey line” (p.18). Harold’s racist view are here disclosed but, what stands out, rather, is the absence of a maternal figure. We know that Howard inherited this picture after his mother’s death, but nothing else is mentioned about her and this passage thus hints at Howard’s potential unresolved grief, which will add another layer to his trauma of origins. Despite this bleak description, the narrator remarks that even if of little value, the picture has “lifted itself out of its low origins, like Howard” (ibid.) and has come to be admired. Nevertheless, the final commentary expressing Howard’s hate for “representational painting –​and his father” (ibid.) point towards an unresolved relationship with his origins. The physical and temporal distance does not ease Howard’s pain, which is first articulated through the affect of shame. Given his own history, Howard has grounds to suspect Levi is ashamed of him, for “shame seemed to be the male inheritance of the Belsey line. How excruciating Howard had found his own father at the same age! He had wished for someone other than a butcher, for someone who used his brain at work rather than knives and scales –​someone more like the man Howard was today” (p.24). This desire to belong to a higher, more intellectual class resembles Magid’s frustration in White Teeth and expands Smith’s exploration of the psychological constraints of class. Although On Beauty hints at a transgenerational transmission of shame, it actually delves more into the traumatic and shameful relationships to the place of origin, and more particularly, to specific neighbourhoods. Howard’s preoccupation with Levi’s shame soon turns to his own self and unveils the need to work through his own conflict with his origins. This becomes evident in the description of his two trips back to London: the first one to prevent his eldest son, Jerome, from marrying Monty Kipps’s daughter, Victoria; the second, to spend Christmas with some friends. During his first trip, Howard reflects on the changing nature of Dalston, the area of London where he was born and which some decades ago was “a filthy East End slum […] full of filthy people who had tried to destroy him –​not least of all his own family” (p.28). This episode

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84  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma discloses some resentment as well as a felt memory of danger towards his own self. The latter is increased when he calls the Kippses to ask for someone to pick him up from Kilburn’s tube station. Howard’s plea to Michael, Monty Kipps’s son, is filled with ellipses indicating that he is not only cowered but also disoriented. What is more, the ellipsis at the end of the sentence “because it’s getting dark already and I know I’ll take a wrong turn, and…” (p.31) might point to a traumatic episode that Howard still cannot narrate and so still haunts his present. As if to confirm Howard’s sense of danger, while he is waiting to be picked up, a “rough white boy” tells him off for taking too long to phone, which causes him deep shame and provokes a strong physical and psychological reaction (p.31). His immediate response is to hide, which may suggest that this episode is a replay of more specific events that remain unknown to the reader. The ellipses that precede this episode may then suggest that his memory of this place is connected to another shameful confrontation. Altogether, the insecurity Howard feels recalls Kai Erikson’s (1995, p.197) argument that trauma betrays the trust in one’s most immediate contexts. Therefore, Howard is not only governed by his shameful origins but also by a potential traumatic event that can only be speculated with. In this sense, On Beauty plays with trauma’s theory contention of the impossibility to narrate the traumatic event and transfers to the readers the struggle between knowing and not knowing. Howard’s second journey to London discloses more details about his origins, his relationship with his father, and his unresolved grief. Howard does not plan to visit his father, whom he has repeatedly avoided on past occasions (p.292). However, the sudden death of Monty Kipp’s wife, Carlene, sets in motion a different course of events. At her funeral, which takes place in Kensal Green, Howard cannot help looking at Carlene’s coffin and imagining his own death and the deaths of others, especially Kiki’s. His anxiety over death draws him to tears, although the description of his physical reaction suggests that this emotion is new or, at least, unusual. Even though he has attended many funerals in his lifetime, Howard reportedly distracts himself and does not seem to give much thought to the event of death itself (pp.287–​8). But faced with Carlene’s death, Howard unexpectedly leaves the funeral and subconsciously heads towards the neighbourhood where he grew up and where his father still lives (p.291). The proximity of death motivates a drive to reconnect to his origins and the narrative infers that his escape from origins was, among others, an escape from death and grief. Howard walks back to a neighbourhood that exists between stasis and movement (p.291), for he identifies his childhood and his father as a fixed coordinate that stands in contrast to the changing face of its increasingly plural population. The act of walking offers Howard a new relation to Cricklewood and allows the narrator to further define his dis/​connection to his origins. Firstly, he is described as a “flâneur” that does not engage with the population of his old neighbourhood and he momentarily

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  85 entertains the illusion of good rapport with what he refers as “happy scum”. Yet, he sees himself in light of a more cosmopolitan belonging. From this position he is able to reify his origins, “an ancestry he referred to proudly at Marxist conferences and in print” (p.292). Howard only accesses his origins at a superficial level and evidences an ambiguous relationship that allows him to be close enough to them but never truly engaging with them. The image of Howard as a flâneur further enhances this dissociative return. As James Procter (2003, p.76) argues, the flâneur has become an epitome of “wandering, mobility, arrival and departure”. Howard, then, does not truly belong here since, as a flâneur he is a temporary visitor. Moreover, if as Procter (ibid., pp.96–​7) explains, the flâneur is defined by a “voyeuristic gaze” that observes “the urban exotic within the metropolis”, Howard becomes a privileged subject, a voyeur of his own past. If the act of walking could elicit the connection with more hidden memories, adopting the theoretical position of a flâneur allows him to disengage himself from the working classes and creates a barrier through which he may observe Cricklewood and his past. However, it is the domestic rather than the public space that shapes Howard’s memories and, although the collective shame of belonging to the working classes is still there, his more individual trauma comes to the fore. When he arrives at his father’s door and enters the house, he is confronted with a still life: he (Harry) was in his armchair, as usual. With the telly on, as usual. The room was, as ever, very clean and, in its way, very beautiful. It never changed […] It hurt his heart to note the unchanging details. […] The pictures of Howard’s mother, Joan, were likewise unmoved […] she had been dead for forty-​six years. (pp.293–​4) While Howard is said to be cherishing a glimmer of hope after his awakening at Carlene’s funeral and envisions the possibility of change, Harold resists it. The language of stagnation infers that their shared past cannot be worked through, thus offering no possibilities to the present or future. Moreover, here, Howard cannot remain a passive observer and joins his father in their past behaviour and imagines what it would have been like had he never left “this piss-​poor country” and remained “tied up in the terrible incommunicable grief of Joan’s death. […] Two Englishmen stranded together with nothing in common except a dead woman they had both loved” (p.295). The house ignites a thread of memory of an oppressing home that is defined by grief and the immobility of his father’s racist views. The relationship between father and son is still governed by the unspeakability of Joan’s death. Even if grief remains one of the main causes of disconnection between Harold and Howard, the latter’s trauma of origins is also connected

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86  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma to the shame of being born into an uneducated, working-​class family, and the impossibility of overcoming the differences with his father. The narrator recounts how during Howard’s last visit, four year ago, Harold had told him “that you couldn’t expect black people to develop mentally like white people do” (p.296). Back to the present time of the novel, and after Howard confesses to his marital problems, Harold assumes that Kiki had “found a black fella […] It was always going to happen, though. It’s in their nature” (p.301). Harold becomes the epitome of an insular character that is still not acceptant of others and that must be decolonised. Howard is unable to escape the individual shame that his working-​class, racist father instils in him and the cultural shame attached to the lower classes. He grows up under the shadow of a “learned cultural shame” that develops “over feelings of being different [from] […] the dominant culture” (Bouson 2000, p.13). Howard is othered by the feelings of inferiority caused by class divisions in British society and, while he does not hide them in academic environments where he can play them to his advantage, he largely avoids addressing them. In this context, it is also necessary to look at the way in which Howard also avoids addressing questions of race in Wellington and within his own family. First, he disregards his wife’s reality: Kiki accuses him of being oblivious to the “sea of white” where they live and the structural differences that the intersection of race and class create (p.206). Second, in his now accommodated life, he refuses to talk about race with his children. For example, when Levi tells him that when arriving back home, “someone though I was robbin’ you again”, he dismisses the idea because “he disliked and feared conversations with his children that concerned race” (pp.84–​5). Howard is not ready to admit that there are racist attitudes in the upper-​middle-​class suburb where they live, which testifies to his own contradictions: he rejects his father’s racism and advocates affirmative action in public, but he cannot assess or deal with the consequences of racism in his most immediate context. Although it should not justify such behaviour, shame can weaken the individual’s capacity to relate to others and his fixation with the problematics of class obliterates other forms of oppression. Kiki and their children must confront the intersection of class and race and, particularly through Levi, On Beauty complicates the relationship to and erasure of one’s origins. Levi is aware that he is perceived as a threat and he prefers the streets of Boston to the suburb of Wellington, which he considers a prison of whiteness where he remains a suspect and where his identification with blackness is limited and/​or denied. He uses his wages from the megastore where he works and his pocket money to escape Wellington on weekends, an allowance that he believes is “the only think that kept him half normal, half sane, half black” (p.193). In order to preserve his stability and identifications, he must escape, even if momentarily, his place of origin and establish connections with other black characters outside Wellington. For Levi, nevertheless, blackness is a

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  87 question of performance that contrasts with the lived experiences of other black characters in the novel. Levi impersonates a gangster-​type persona at the megastore where he works. When he tries to organise a strike when he learns the staff will have to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, his manager, an older black man, calls him out: “Don’t –​act –​like –​a –​nigger –​with –​me –​Levi,” […] I see you, acting up, trying to make me look stupid –​thinking you’re all that, ‘cos you’re the only brother any of these kids met in they whole lives. Let me tell you something. I know where you’re from, brother […] I know where you’re from. Those kids don’t know shit, but I know. They nice suburban kids. They think anyone in a pair of baggy jeans is a gangsta. But you can’t fool me. I know where you pretend to be from […] Because that’s where I’m from –​but you don’t see me acting like a nigger. (pp.191–​2; italics in original) After being called out on his upper-​middle-​class origins, Levi walks out of his job. This performance of blackness stands in contrast to Magid’s potentially subversive mimicry, since Levi imitates not the oppressor, but the oppressed. Mimicry reveals an ambiguous relationship between coloniser and colonised, between sameness and otherness, that alters dominant discourses. Even if it retains much of mimicry’s ambivalence, Levi’s mimicry is not subversive. Nevertheless, it reveals the profound disconnections that stem from the consequences of cultural and historical traumas in the United States which imply a “dramatic loss of identity and meaning, a tear in the social fabric” (Eyerman 2004, p.61). When Levi tries to reach out to the black community, he, in fact, sometimes adheres to a rather colonised view. First, he desires to be like Carl, one of Claire’s special students, who he sees “as the template for an authentic black identity” (Childs and Green 2013, p.52) until he immerses himself in college and in the pursuit of an education (p.389). For Levi, an authentic black identity cannot be in tune with the idiosyncrasy of the higher classes. Consequently, he seeks the meaning of blackness in Felix, an immigrant from Angola, and Haitian immigrants like Chouchou, who he meets when they are selling things on the streets. Felix’s dark black skin embodies for Levi “the essence of blackness”, understood as otherness, as “what white people fear and adore and want and dread” (p.242). He not only exoticises the experience of being other, but he also exercises the power of renaming others when he changes Chouchou’s name to Choo because it is more “street” (p.244). As Fischer asserts, Levi “romanticises” what is “street” (2007, p.294) and his discourse on identity puts forward an “emphasis on culture as a form of property to be owned rather than lived” (Gilroy 2001, p.24). He tells Felix’s crew: “you ain’t a brother if you can’t hustle. That’s what

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88  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma joins us all together –​whether we be on Wall Street or on MTV or sitting on a corner with a dime-​bag. It’s a beautiful thing, man. We hustling!” (p.245). The binding force of hustling is depicted as trivial and weak since Levi overlooks the political implications of class and race and thus ignores the reality of these others, who sometimes prefer to see their painful realities through Levi’s imagined and glorified black, global community (pp.245–​6). Their testimony evidences Levi’s disconnection and in addition to erasing his own origins, he erases the lived realities of this community, preferring to create a narrative that, at least at the beginning, does not problematise origins and the root cause of inequalities in Wellington and in the larger context of the United States. Levi’s reification of blackness and poverty recalls Claire’s attitudes towards otherness since she is attracted to exotic “accounts of ghetto life” and “news of lives so different” from her own (p.215). They have a common experience of the more privileged classes. Yet, while Claire remains within the limits of Wellington, Levi will alter his views through his relationship to Choo and the sudden awakening to the realities of others and the weight of histories of suffering. Choo lends Levi a book on Haiti, whose history of suffering, slavery, and class differences leaves an indelible impression upon him. At one point, Levi angrily summarises the history of Haiti, seemingly without realising how much it resembles the history of slavery in the United States. This formative experience, alongside a book about Tupac, is said to “wound[] him” since he “had been raised soft and open, with a liberal susceptibility to the pain of others” and he is now “overwhelmed by the evil that men do to each other. That white men do to black” (p.355). Levi does not seem to be cognisant of the history of slavery inside and outside the United States reveals once again the silence that dominant discourses impose, the historical amnesia around their continuous oppression. Levi’s difficult relationship to Wellington arises then from the silence that he finds both at the private level of his family and at the public level of an unrecognised collective memory of suffering. When Levi goes to visit Choo he finds himself in a black neighbourhood, which for him “was like a homecoming, except he’d never known this home” (p.356). Levi here reveals his “unhomeliness”, the term that Homi Bhabha uses to rework Freud’s unheimlich or uncanny. For Bhabha, the unhomely experience reveals a world up to then hidden, it “is the shock of recognition of the world-​in-​the-​home, the home-​in-​the-​ world” (1992, p.141). Moreover, for Bhabha, “the unhomely moments relates the traumatic ambivalences of a personal, psychic history to the wider disjunctions of political existence” (ibid., p.144). As John McLeod comments, unhomeliness, which implies an “uncanny disruption”, “brings with it trauma and anxiety. It serves as a reminder that exclusive, exclusionary systems of meaning are forever haunted by those who are written out and erased” (2010, p.254). Levi realises that he has been unrecognised and misrecognised in Wellington and feels the erasure of his

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  89 own self and a larger, historical process of neglect. Kanika Batra (2010, pp.1085–​6) describes this change as a “rude jolt” that allows Levi to realise “the inextricable connections between blackness, diaspora, citizenship, and institutions”. Choo, as a diasporic character, often remembers Haiti with a certain melancholy and with the anger of somebody who has had to leave his home and his job as a teacher in order to survive and is met with racism and inequality. He tells Levi how he served white professors in a dinner at Wellington, for which he was badly remunerated and concludes that this is “The same old slavery. Nothing changes” (p.361). Further from being a mere commentary on inequality, the novel brings to the fore that slavery was, and is, “the greatest of the country’s internal traumas” (Smelser 2004, p.274). This is a cultural trauma, that in which “members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their collective consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways” (Alexander 2004, p.1). The slow and sometimes inexistent changes in British and North-​American societies that the novel depicts disclose a struggle with remembering different forms of colonialism and the need to collectively work through the traumas that they caused. From this moment onwards, Levi becomes politically involved in the Haitian community and Choo claims that Levi has become their “little American mascot” in their pursuit of justice and the fight for retribution, for “getting back what is [theirs]” (p.404). This argument recalls Kiki’s discourse against Monty Kipps’s rejection of affirmative action where she stated that in the United States there is a need to restore the “balance” (p.368) that centuries of oppression and segregation have altered. Nevertheless, Kiki will be appalled when she discovers that Levi and Choo understand retribution as stealing back from Monty Kipps a painting which he is said to have stolen from poor Haitians. Despite Levi’s questionable deed, the history of Haiti and the fight for immigrants’ rights allows Levi to articulate a traumatic history of oppression and realise how history continues to silence and erase otherness. On Beauty does not portray the lower-​class, African-​American, and Haitian characters as victims, but, ambiguously, as caught in a system that still exploits others who are in a position of vulnerability because of their class, race, and/​or place of origin. The existence of common origins in terms of place, class, and race provides no guarantee that connections and solidarity will be created, because the novel also shows that individuals who are said to historically belong to the same (heterogeneous) group also oppress one another and can thus replicate the potential danger of traumatising others. As Regine Jackson (2012, pp.866, 868) argues, “the existence of diversity does not mean that belonging can be taken for granted, especially for blacks” and thus, in On Beauty, characters such as Levi “express their alienation and frustration about being in […] Wellington, but not of it”. Howard’s relationship to Dalston, for example,

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90  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma could be said to be the opposite, because his access to education and his mobility have allowed him to “be of it” but “not in it”. Even if Howard’s memories of place are traumatic and his relationship to his origins is defined by shame, he is only defined by class and is able to escape the constraints of the English lower classes in an easier manner that African-​ American and diasporic characters in the United States. The ethical and Forsterian desire to “only connect” can only be fulfilled through a collective effort at remembering and working through collective traumas. It is not only beauty and connection that can bring about justice, but also the acknowledgement that slavery, “as part of the moral history of the West” (Gilroy 2000, p.70) continues to define a global, neocolonial world. On Beauty thus displays the entanglements and ambiguities of the relationship with origins, the view of psychoanalysis and traditional trauma theory as a privileged tool for understanding the self and others, the pervasiveness of collective and historical traumas in the construction and deconstruction of in/​authentic identities, and the confirmation that, as Smith asserts, “colonialism is all about class” (2004, p.275).

2.3  NW: The Ambivalence of Trauma and Self NW becomes a repository of some of Smith’s major concerns in her previous novels, the tensions between forgetting and remembering, class, and trauma being some of them, and perhaps even more consciously so. Through the lives of four main characters from Caldwell, a fictional working-​class estate, NW confronts readers with a distressful sense of place and unbelonging. Leah Hanwell, Keisha Blake, Nathan Bogle, and Felix move around and outside of North West London, but past and place prove claustrophobic, and some of them will find it difficult to sustain a balanced relationship with their origins. This relationship will be particularly painful for Keisha, a second-​generation Jamaican diasporan who, from a very young age, dreams of having no origins and who will transform herself into Natalie Blake during her first year at university and try to erase any trace of her former self. This metamorphosis will become Smith’s most radical and complex attempt at erasure and the de/​construction of self, especially so because of the ambiguity it arises. Although the topics of NW may be already familiar, Smith’s use of form and style stand out in this particular novel. The use of fragmentation, ellipsis, repetition, excessive intertextuality and referencing, as well as techniques such as stream of consciousness place it not only within modernist, postmodernist, and even metamodernist parameters (Knepper 2013; Bentley 2018), but also within more canonical ways of narrating trauma. These narrative techniques and the explicit and implicit references to traumatic events and traumatised selves establish NW as the novel in which trauma is more ubiquitous in Smith’s work, up to a point that, without diminishing the individual and collective suffering it depicts, it almost becomes a pastiche and parody of trauma narratives.

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  91 The first chapter in NW, “Visitation”, starts by narrating the life of Leah Hanwell in her 30s. Despite Leah’s centrality in this section, two different key issues come to the fore: first, the social background of some characters –​Leah and Natalie’s included –​and second Natalie’s conscious obliteration of her past. The first issue comes up as Leah is narrating her encounter with Shar, a woman who went to her and Natalie’s school, and who ends up at her door begging for money. When they are commenting on this episode, a discussion ensues between Frank, Natalie’s husband, and Leah, who represent two seemingly opposing worlds: Leah and Natalie’s is associated with the poverty and criminality of the lower classes and Frank’s with the elite (p.68). Despite the relative success of the two female protagonists, NW paints a rather discouraging picture of their origins, which have produced a variety of fates for people from the same background. Natalie cannot remember or, rather, does not want to remember these origins, to the point that she does not recognise some of the people Leah refers to when she reminisces their school days. Natalie becomes the notable exception to the rule and Leah is rather suspicious of her friend’s ability to forget. Leah conjectures that Natalie has “done too good, maybe, to recall where she came from. To live like this you would have to forget everything that came before. How else could you manage?” (p.70). She signals the determinism associated with class and place and suggests that a complete erasure is the only viable way to move forward, since the memories of their lower-​class origins feel incompatible with Natalie’s current pace of life. In this same conversation, Leah calls Natalie “Keisha”, which prompts a nervous reaction from Natalie because “She dislikes being reminded of her own inconsistencies”, which Leah reframes as “hypocrisies” (p.70). On the next page, Michel, Leah’s husband, clarifies the meanings of these two names when he says to Natalie: “You changed your name. I forget that you did this. It’s like: ‘Dress for the job you want not the one you have’ ” (p.71). Michel brings to the fore the performativity attached to Natalie’s change of name in order to better fit in and not to conform to the accidents of her life –​her ethnicity, her place, and class of birth. The physical and affective distance she has placed between her current self and her origins further discloses an anxious relationship to her past. As the narrative unfolds, NW reveals that such a break is indeed impossible and that Natalie’s past is still very much present in her various identifications and in the way others perceive her. NW does not provide much more information about Natalie until the third section, “Host”, which goes back to Natalie’s childhood and narrates in fragmented numbered sections, or vignettes (Guignery 2013), her process of growing up and transformation from Keisha into Natalie in a sort of Bildungsroman (Marcus 2013; López-​Ropero 2016; Bentley 2018). The beginning of Keisha’s narrative, the moment when she meets Leah, teems with references to trauma:

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92  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma There had been an event. To speak of it required the pluperfect. Keisha Blake and Leah Hanwell, the protagonists of this event, were four-​ year old children. The outdoor pool –​really a shallow trough in the park, one foot at its deepest end –​had been full of kids, “splashing all ways, causing madness.” There was no lifeguard at the time of the event, and parents were left to keep an eye as best they could. “They had a guard up the hill, in Hampstead, for them. Nothing for us.” This was an interesting detail. Keisha –​now ten years old and curious about the tensions between grown people –​tried to get at its meaning. […] It was in this ellipsis that the event had occurred: a child nearly drowned. Yet the significance of the event lay elsewhere. “You rose up with these red pigtails in your hand. You dragged her up. You were the only one saw she was in trouble.” After the event, the mother of the child, an Irish woman, thanked Marcia Blake many times, and this in itself was a kind of event. “I knew Pauline to look at but not to speak to. She was a bit snooty with me back then.” Keisha could neither contradict nor verify this account –​she had no memory of it. However, the foreshadowing could be considered suspicious. (pp.201–​2) Keisha’s life is thus marked by an individual event that nevertheless testifies to the workings of the collective context in which it takes place and foregrounds the impossibility to separate the individual and the collective in her story and in trauma narratives. The acknowledgement of the need to use a specific tense to narrate this event, the fact that this occurs during an ellipsis, Keisha’s impossibility to remember part of it, the contradictory and vague information that surrounds it, clearly allude to the most prescriptive accounts of trauma. But rather than inscribing a black, lower-​class subject within the realm of traditional trauma theory and redress a lack of representation in the field, the repetition of the word “event” throughout this section and the saturation of trauma vocabulary, up to the point that the narration renders them meaningless, bespeak a critique of trauma. The words “trauma” and “traumatic” do not appear in this section of NW, which uses the phrase “dramatic event” instead. Nevertheless, later on the fact that one child is “stung by a jellyfish” is also described as a “dramatic event” (p.277) emphasises the generalisation and banality that interpreting certain episodes from the perspective of trauma theories entail when they are compared with more insidious forces that can affect individuals and entire communities more deeply. The specific, individual event that frames the beginning of Keisha’s narrative and Keisha and Leah’s friendship leaves no apparent psychological mark in the protagonists. However, some attention must be paid to the way in which the narrator progressively directs readers to the “detail[s]‌” of the urban context, which is marked by lack in contrast

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  93 to other areas of London. It is precisely the meanings associated to the place of origin that are potentially traumatising, and this will, in fact, make Keisha avoid the physical space of Caldwell and all the memories attached to it. Moreover, the remark “the foreshadowing could be considered suspicious” may suggest that this dramatic event traps Keisha in the context of trauma from the very beginning of her story. Should this be the case, this suspicion must be taken as a self-​reflexive comment on the way in which some lives will always be considered to be traumatic on account of their backgrounds, especially as regards place, class, and race. This should then work as a warning for the way in which we read trauma and otherness, and the connections between the two. The novel continues to interrogate the im/​ possibilities of trauma throughout this section. The narrator also exaggerates, even mocks, the alleged ability of trauma to unite people, to bridge cultures as Caruth contends (1995). First, Leah is described as the friend “with whom [Keisha] had bonded over a dramatic event” (p.202). Soon afterwards, the two are said to “[be] best friends bonded for life by a dramatic event and everyone in Caldwell best know about it” (pp.203–​4). Later on, Layla, Keisha’s friend from church, is described as a “good[]” but not “close” enough friend precisely because “they had not been bonded by a dramatic event” (p.220). From childhood to adolescence, Keisha flaunts her traumatic experience, but the tone remains trivial throughout. The excessive emphasis on the possibilities of trauma to create an effective link thus create a repetition that is not fraught with trauma but rather laden with parody. The beginning of “Host” therefore presents trauma in a rather ambivalent manner: it uses the vocabulary of trauma theory to criticise some of its aspects, questions the excessive focus on the event, puts the event itself to the test, and brings to the fore the context in which the characters meet and develop. Although this ambivalence may at first be perceived as reinforcing a trauma perspective, the text uses them to reveal trauma and psychoanalysis as “a culturally specific discourse” (Parker 2014, p.158) and forces us to read trauma against the grain. It is not a question of completely dismissing trauma theory, however, but rather of realising, as Mengel, Borzaga, and Orantes suggested (2010, p.xi; 2012, p.75), the impossibility of separating the event from its socio-​economic context and political implications and the negative impact of referring to trauma experiences by only adhering to “psychiatric vocabulary”. The telling of Keisha’s story in subsequent numbered fragments further signals the interplay with trauma theory. Chronology is altered by the intersection of what López-​Ropero (2016, p.132) labels as “forward-​ looking vignettes” in the narration. These intertwining temporalities recall the “breaks in linear time” (Vickroy 2002, p.29), which have often been identified as a trauma narrative strategy. Not only do we find breaks, but also “textual gaps” (ibid.). The fragmentary numbers are also explained by the self-​referentiality that can be found in v­ ignette 138, which includes

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94  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma Kierkegaard’s definition of the “instant” in Philosophical Fragments. As is reflected in NW, he defined an instant as brief and temporal indeed, like every moment; it is transient as all moments are; it is past, like every moment in the next moment. And yet it is decisive, and filled with the eternal. Such a moment ought to have a distinctive name; let us call it the Fullness of Time. (pp.302–​3; italics in original) David J. Kangas (2007, p.4) has explained that The instant is the name for a beginning that cannot be interiorized, appropriated, recollected, represented, or possessed. It is not a work of self-​consciousness, not mediation, but rather the event through which self-​consciousness is first enabled. The instant is the gift or birth of presence. An instant cannot claim to be. Of itself it is nothing, it is nowhere; it neither is nor is not. And yet everything changes in the instant. An instant enters into experience, or becomes present, either essentially too soon or too late. The explanation of what an instant entails resembles the description of traumatic experiences in its impossibility to be registered at the moment it occurs and to be represented. The “Host” section will draw attention to multiple beginnings and the narration of instants will make it difficult to establish an event –​a beginning, an origin –​that fully explains Keisha’s difficult relationship to her past and her complex transformations in her search for belonging and freedom. Moreover, the collection of instants that frame her narrative hint at the cumulative effects of multiple stressors (Craps 2013, p.26; Visser 2011, p.276) and thus guides readers towards the role of the cultural, social, and cultural context in which Keisha’s life and transformation unfold. The “Host” section starts with a dramatic event, to then continue to tackle Keisha’s increasingly fragmented self and relationship to her origins. As she becomes older, the narrator remarks that “in the child’s mind a breach now appeared: between what she believed she knew of herself, essentially, and her essence as others seemed to understand it. She began to exist for other people” (p.208; italics in original). The use of “breach” to describe Keisha’s development takes in the vocabulary of trauma but what comes to the fore rather than a universal psychological split self is the split between self and representation. The reference to a rupture within Keisha’s mind is shortly followed by the description of her desire to be free from origins. This is first ascertained after the rather traumatic story told by Anita, one of Leah and Keisha’s friends, whose mother was raped: It was a domestic drama but also a kind of thrilling horror because who could say if Anita’s rapist father wasn’t living in NW itself and/​

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  95 or watching them from some vantage point at this very moment? […] Anita cried, and Leah cried too. Anita asked: “How do I know which half of me is evil?” But parental legacy meant little to Keisha Blake; […] Indeed, a non-​existent father and/​or mother was a persistent fantasy of hers, and the children’s books she had most enjoyed always began with the protagonist inheriting a terrible freedom after some form of parental apocalypse. (pp.210–​11) Keisha lacks empathy for Anita because she can only envisage her own liberation from origins. Moreover, the fact that this episode is reported as a “domestic drama” reveals a distance that diminishes the burden of Anita’s trauma within her family and the more collective realisation of the insidious abuse of women’s bodies. Keisha’s idea of freedom is at this stage connected to the fantasy of becoming an orphan. Julia Kristeva (1991, p.21) connects the foreigners’ wounds and sense of loss and their dream of being orphans when she argues that such an imaginative act provides them with the illusion of freedom to construct their identities without ideological and discursive constrain. Kristeva continues her exploration of orphanhood and otherness and asserts that When others convey to you that you are of no account because your parents are of no account, that, as they are invisible, they do not exist, you are suddenly aware that you are an orphan, and, sometimes, accountable of being so. (ibid.) Keisha could be said to have known herself to be a foreigner, an other, from early on in her life and the references to orphanhood point not only to failure in representation, but also to the desire for self-​invention, autonomy, and agency, which will be key in her transformation. Keisha’s desire to be an orphan is reaffirmed a few pages later in a fragment entitled “Jane Eyre”, which details her struggle with bullying and the lack of representation of black, working-​class people in different media. Canonical representations, what she has learnt to consider “relevant” and “pertinent”, exclude her and, even if the morality of fictional orphans allows her to cope with bullying, she is aware that the characters in those fictional worlds “came from a different socio-​economic and historical universe, and –​had they ever met you –​would very likely have enslaved you or, at best, bullied you” (pp.214–​5). The freedom she grants orphanhood is curtailed by the limitations of representation in postcolonial societies and the actual discourses that still neglect otherness, and her route towards erasing her origins will be mapped out by them. The fantasy of erasure and disconnection is marked in Keisha’s teenage years by further moments of fragmentation, which increases the “breach”

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96  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma she had already perceived otherness created. In the vignette “Surplus value, schizophrenia, adolescence”, in which Keisha is in church with her friend Layla, Keisha confronts herself in a mirror and says to herself: “that’s you. That’s her. She is real. You are a forgery. Look closer. Look away. She is consistent. You are making it up as you go along. She must never know” (p.221). Keisha’s self-​ perception as a forgery recaptures the issue of in/​authenticity, omnipresent in Smith’s work, and anticipates the question of performativity, which gathers intensity later on in the novel. The title of the vignette recalls Delueze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateau’s: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, and the mirror that Keisha confronts in turn recalls Lacan’s psychoanalytical theories that understood the mirror as a symbolic Other. This split in Keisha must be understood as a consequence of racism and representation and how much one deviates from the norms and order established by the “White-​ Man” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p.178). In this sense, this vignette foregrounds the protagonists’ conflicts with deviations from neocolonial, hegemonic, and heteronormative discourses in their adulthood. If NW contains psychoanalytical echoes, they are reworkings of earlier theories that emphasise the role of the historical and the collective, insidious racism, and colonialism and its drive to re-​territorialise bodies and minds. The novel continues to depict the socio-​economic breaches derived from race and class, which become evident when Keisha struggles to enter university, especially when compared to Leah. Keisha discards several universities because she cannot afford the train fare to go for the interviews and is finally accepted at Bristol, where she will study law. Before leaving for university there is no evidence of Keisha’s transformation. Nevertheless, fragments 46 and 47, described as pauses in the chronology of events, testify to the idea of changes in the self: the former introduces the almost universal idea that some people may stop recognising those they know; the latter, moves forward to a moment in Keisha’s future life, when a philosopher proposes a “thought experiment” about replacing “brain cells” with those of “another person” and asks: “at what point would you cease to be yourself? At what point do you become another person?” (p.231). This thought experiment frames Keisha’s imminent transformation and while the biological components of the experiment should be discounted, these questions point towards successive debates on being and authenticity. During Leah’s third visit to Keisha in Bristol, university is described as “a time of experimentation and metamorphosis” in reference to Leah, who tries different guises during her first year. Keisha seems to question then the fixity of identity and in the next fragment, “Proper names”, she is suddenly aware of being surrounded by “white people” and introduces herself as Natalie to Leah’s group of white friends (pp.239–​ 40). This change of name could be regarded as “a subjective gesture of self-​assertion” (Ledent 2002, p.59) among a group where she does not feel represented. However, from this moment onwards, her identification

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  97 as Natalie will imply her desire to erase Keisha. She conceives this change as a process of “self-​invention” (p.247), which is practically impossible because “erasure is […] never complete –​traces of the original always remain, in memory at least” (Walder 2011, p.34) and as the novel later on asserts, “she was still an NW girl at heart” (p.259). At the end of Leah’s third visit, she tells Natalie: “you’re the only person I can be all of myself with”, which prompts an anxious reaction in Natalie, who now admits she “[has] no self to be not with Leah, or anyone” (p.246). NW moves beyond the possibility of a protagonist with multiple identifications and a hybrid self to favour an apparently more existentialist stance. However, this perceived selflessness is quickly replaced by an identity that can assimilate into her environment, which leaves her exposed and subjected to various hegemonic discourses. Survival in her new context implies acquiring more capital, taking loans so as to “keep up” with her university circle only to “[find] herself with nothing again” (p.249) soon after. The erasure of Keisha and the existence of Natalie may respectively fit into Fanon’s (2008) zones of non-​ being and being and the struggle against the dehumanisation, alienation, and lack of recognition of black people. Becoming Natalie is the only identification that allows her to mitigate racial and class oppression and feel that she has, in fact, a valid sense of being, albeit an alienated one. Keisha and Natalie become two separate ways of being in a world that does not seem to allow their coexistence. The description of her future husband, Frank, the son of an immigrant Trinidadian father and a wealthy Italian mother, as “made of parts Natalie considered mutually exclusive, and found difficult to understand together” (p.241) confirm this. Moreover, in the us vs. them world they inhabit, Frank’s attempt to belong within the minority of the other black students is deemed “unnatural” on account of his privilege (p.258) and when Frank tells her his life story –​the death of his father, the isolation he felt in Italy, his years of boarding school in England –​he complains that Natalie sees him as a “victim”. Natalie then reckons that she might be able to “help him become a real person” (p.263). It is not only race but the intersection of class and race that delimits zones of being and non-​being. Natalie, willing herself into being, will adhere to Frank’s privilege and try to secure a good job as a lawyer. Foreseeing that she may not “be offered tenancy”, Natalie turns a probable rejection into a “story” in which she in charge and whereby she can “mak[e]‌the future safe”. The narrator comments that “all Natalie’s storytelling had, in the end, this aim in view” (p.288). When she is finally offered tenancy, she has already acted out a history of past rejection and lack of representation and believes that “the future is locked” (LaCapra 2013, p.21). Natalie obliterates her past and narrativises her future so as to cope with the obstacles that her class and race have posed throughout her life. This fictionalisation allows her to feel in control and as having the freedom of choice, which she knows has been limited for her and her family (pp.271–​2). If a traumatic

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98  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma past must be put into words to be worked through, Natalie’s storytelling may become evidence of the need to face her past and present and work through the structural micro-​aggressions that shape her future. This sense of imagined futurity contrasts with the reality of her past, her family and Caldwell, the “accidents” she could not avoid. When Natalie goes back home to sort out her mother’s bank affairs after she has been swindled by a pastor, she feels that “everything was the same in the flat, yet there was a new feeling of lack. A new awareness. And lo they saw their nakedness and were ashamed” (pp.295–​6). Natalie’s new status makes her (more) ashamed of her origins, which she equates to lack and the impossibility of change. Her shame over her origins is complemented in the fragment entitled “Contempt”. Contempt, as an affect, should be understood “as an attempt to ‘relocate’ the shame experience from within the self into another person” (Morrison 1989, p.14). But as this episode reveals, Natalie directs contempt towards her own self. First, the narrator reworks the Biblical reference used previously, “And lo they saw their nakedness and were not ashamed”, in a conversation that for the most part moves around economic power and status. Second, while Frank and two friends discuss the monetary value of houses, Natalie admits that, for her, “the money was for the distance the house put between you and Caldwell”. Lastly, the narrator explains that “Natalie Blake had become a person unsuited to self-​reflection. Left to her own mental devices she quickly spiraled into self-​contempt” (p.300). Smith continues to question how the affect of shame leads towards erasure and complicates it further by directing Natalie’s shame towards her past self as Keisha. As Sara Ahmed (2004, p.103) argues, shame implies a “self-​ negation”. More recently, Smith (2020, p.63) has elaborated upon contempt and argues that in the eyes of contempt you don’t even truly rise to the level of a hated object –​that would involve a full recognition of your existence. Before contempt, you are simply not considered as others are, you are something less than a whole person. All of Natalie’s efforts are directed towards erasing, negating, Caldwell and Keisha. Nevertheless, they continue to define her life and fill her with shame. Natalie confesses to her sister Cheryl, by now the mother of three children, that she is ashamed of seeing her family living packed in a small flat. Cheryl rebukes her sister’s remark by arguing that she does not understand why Natalie keeps coming back to Caldwell if she hates it. In turn, Natalie feels she is “being punished for making something of [her] life”. Nevertheless, the only response she gets from Cheryl is that she is, in fact, “paranoid” (pp.308–​11). This feeling of being punished for getting out of Caldwell and the reference to shame via the biblical revelation of self-​consciousness in the above paragraph discloses that Natalie reads

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  99 herself through “the Western grand narrative of shame”, one that implies “shameful exposure and the punishment of exile” (Burrows 2006, p.130). Natalie has become an urban exile that is defined by Western hegemonic narratives and the adherence to these limiting and limited discourses. In addition to these, or perhaps as a result of them, her fraught relationship between past and present means that she can only return with the help of sedatives (p.310), which emphasises the anxiety that Caldwell arouses. Natalie’s struggle with recognition continues throughout her adult life. Part of the reason why she becomes a mother is because she admits that “she had no intention of being made ridiculous by failing to do whatever was expected of her” (p.321). She is ashamed and afraid of being exposed, and of anybody finding out what she is not. In her reunion with Layla, her friend from church, Layla tells her: You’re exactly the same […] You always wanted to make it clear you weren’t like the rest of us. You’re still doing it. […] Even when we used to do those songs you’d be with me but also totally not with me. Showing off. False. Fake. Signalling to the boys in the audience, or whatever […] And you’re still doing it. (p.333) Natalie seems to be acting out her inconsistencies and Layla exposes her by seeing through her forgery and performativity, which is referred to immediately after as being “in drag” for the various roles she plays in society, and Natalie cannot ascertain “what would be the most authentic, or perhaps the least inauthentic” (p.333). If for Judith Butler (1990, p.137) drag could deconstruct gender by unveiling “those aspects of gendered experience which are falsely naturalized as a unity”, the extrapolation of drag to class, nationality, and the private/​public divide reveals her deep fragmentation and the impossibility of attaining a fixed, stable identity that has been for so long promoted in Western discourses and psychoanalytical and trauma theories. These performances, however, diminish the potential subversion of mimicry because Natalie’s transformations rather convey an image of camouflage and adaptation that prevent her from feeling exposed as an other (Pérez Zapata 2014). Yet, Natalie contradictorily feeds exposure when she subscribes to listings for sexual encounters, where she “was what everybody was looking for” (p.312). In these listings, Natalie has been looking for threesomes under her old name and more particularly using the nickname KeishaNW. The encounters described are mostly unsatisfactory, either because they do not actually happen or because they go wrong. But what comes to the fore is Natalie’s interest in the homes of others and her process of transformation through a process that she describes as “leaving her own body” (p.340). Natalie becomes a caricature of what she may have become had she stayed in Caldwell and her erasure is now double for she is also leaving Natalie behind. The novel does not provide a clear

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100  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma explanation as to why Natalie should seek these threesomes, although at one point she admits that she is not “happily married” (p.298). What is clear is that she wants to escape the constraints of the discourses to which she had been previously subjected. Fernández Carbajal (2016, p.8) argues that these relationships evidence Natalie’s sense of “inadequacy and internal conflict” and allow her “to feel more attuned to the community to which she used to belong as a child and adolescent”. Nevertheless, her transformation into Keisha does not feel that communal and for the moment she seems to be acting out, that is, “repeating in real life, what she ought only to have remembered” (Block-​Lewis 1981, p.207). Natalie’s efforts to forget Caldwell and her old self prove impossible and, in a similar manner to Levi in On Beauty, she acts up and out her origins. NW does not dwell on the rather schizophrenic relationship between Natalie and Keisha and instead radically questions the protagonist’s sense of self. When Frank finds out about the listings he asks Natalie “What the fuck is this? Fiction?” and “Who are you?” (pp.353–​4; italics in original). Neither Frank, nor the reader for that matter, can tell at this point which identity is the real one or if there is one at all, which would confirm the novel’s previous affirmation that she had “no self to be” (p.246). This sense of being no one soon merges with the idea of going to and coming from nowhere (p.355). This nowhere is Caldwell. Natalie walks to, through, and back from Caldwell, her place of origin, in a movement that is redolent of Howard Belsey’s walk through Dalston in On Beauty and his confrontation with his shameful origins. Philip Tew (2014, par. 22) argues that “a major crisis or trauma is precipitated for Natalie when her double life is discovered by her partner” since she has “enacted her desires” and such deviation from the norm seems to be traumatic for both Natalie and Leah. Tew seems to agree to the criticism of trauma theories’ excessive reliance on the event and its belated experience (ibid., par. 1), but NW plays with repetition and belatedness. The sentence “she thought to the left, she thought to the right but there was no exit”, which appears in fragment 33 in the “Host” section when Keisha’s mother found a vibrator that Leah had given her as a gift (p.234), and later on in “Crossing” just after Natalie realises the shame that surrounds Caldwell (p.364). This sentence connects two moments of exposure that are, moreover, linked by the “prospect” of suicide as a response (pp.224, 385). But while the tone of the first reference to suicide feels like a teenager’s exaggerated reaction, the trauma that ensues from the shame of having been exposed as carrying on a double life under many guises, in having laid bare her inconsistencies throughout different moments of her life, makes the second reference to suicide and the complete dissolution of the self more real. In the first part of the penultimate section of the novel, “Crossing”, the narrator refuses to use proper names, which had been so recurrent in the previous section, in favour of the repetition of “she”, not even “Ms. Blake”, as the narrator had occasionally called her. The name

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  101 “Natalie” is used once (p.360) when she inquires about an “incident” in which someone has been apparently stabbed. She asks a policeman and, receiving no answer, she believes that here “she was no-​one. She didn’t merit answering” (p.360). The first thing she and the reader encounter in this new section is the aftermath of a violent event and a negation of the self, which once again frames Natalie’s experience within dramatic circumstances. Then, she turns to walking: Walking was what she did now, walking was what she was. She was nothing more or less than the phenomenon of walking. She had no name, no biography, no characteristics. They had all fled into paradox. Certain physical memories remained. (p.360) This disassociation of herself from experience is similar to the dissolution of the self that follows traumatic episodes. Here, however, the vocabulary is not exclusively derived from trauma theory but is also reminiscent of Rousseau’s writings on walking and the possibility that through walking itself “you can escape your identity” and, moreover, “You are nobody. You have no history. You have no identity. You have no past. You have no future. You are only a body walking” (Gros in Cadwalladr 2014). Nevertheless, her spatial immersion into Caldwell does not allow for such an escape and annihilation of subjectivity. However hard she tries to escape, Natalie is defined by place and her connections. Nathan Bogle, her former neighbour from Caldwell and classmate at Brayton who ends up a dealer and a pimp that lives mostly on the streets, calls her into a concrete existence when he calls her Keisha Blake. In a language similar to that used to describe her masquerade as Keisha in the sex encounters, she “tries to put herself in the old role” because she assumes “it would be something to replace this absence of sensation, this nothing” (p.362). One may wonder if this feeling of nothingness was previous to being discovered and “undone” by walking, a feeling of nothingness that stems from the socio-​economic context into which she was born, this “nowhere” that is North West London. Both Natalie and Nathan are running away from their present only to meet up with their past once again. This immersion in her place of origin forces Natalie to exercise her memory, but the attempt to erase her past and her identity as Keisha has blocked her capacity to remember: As she walked she tried to place the people back there, in the house, into the present current of her thought. But her relation with each person was now unrecognizable to her, and her imagination –​due to a long process of neglect, almost as long as her life –​did not have the generative power to muster an alternative future for itself. All she could envision was suburban shame, choking everything. (p.364)

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102  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma The relationship between Natalie and Keisha, between past and present is non-​dialogic in NW and, therefore, her spatial immersion into Caldwell leads her to experience memory and temporality in a troubled manner. The dialogue with her past is further rendered impossible because of the shame linked to class and place, which contributes to her desubjectivation. Shame is individual as well as cultural, and ubiquitous. Léon Wurmser has argued that “shame’s aim is disappearance […] most frequently in the form of forgetting parts of one’s life and one’s self” (qtd. in Bouson 2000, p.40). In addition, Rita Felski (2000, p.35) contends that being lower (-​ middle) class is a “nonidentity”, and adds that, although upward mobility is feasible “in purely economic and sociological terms”, it is not so in “cultural and psychological” ones. As a consequence, Felski goes on to argue that “the lower middle class is driven by the fear of shame”. Suburban shame marks Natalie culturally as a member of the lower classes and, despite her efforts to escape her repressed memories, these constrain her. Nathan also has a complex relationship to his origins. He tries to share with Natalie some memories of the times when it looked like he might have a future and is critical of the systemic inequalities that make such future impossible: “there’s no way to live in this country when you’re grown. Not at all. They don’t want you, your own people don’t want you, no one wants you” (p.376). Keisha then starts to ask him “But don’t you remember –​” and is interrupted by Nathan: Oh, Nathan, ‘member this, ‘member that –​truthfully Keisha I don’t remember. I’ve burned the whole business out of my brain. Different life. No use to me. I don’t live in them towers no more, I’m on the streets now, different attitude. Survival. That’s it. Survival. That’s all there is. (p.376) Nathan Bogle, who acts as a sort of double of Natalie Blake, is also a nobody. Indeed, as Eva Ulrike Pirker (2016, p.68) points out their shared “initials […] could equally be read as an abbreviation for ‘no-​body’ ”, heightening this section’s dissolution of the self. Moreover, these are words that Natalie cannot bring herself to say. Even if their lives have had very different outcomes, they both feel unwanted and imprisoned, the need to forget, and the will to survive. This perception of not being wanted, which Léon Wurmser (in Bouson 2000, pp.40, 150) labels as unlovability, revolves around the “weakness, defectiveness and dirtiness” of shame. Wurmser argues that “to be unlovable means not to see a responsive eye and not to hear a responding voice”. The past that Caldwell represents confines them to limited possibilities and identifications, to silence and invisibility. Surrounded by a wall that Natalie walks back and forth frantically, “seeking some sign of perforation in the brick” (p.361), looking for an exit, Caldwell and the system in which it is built restricts physical and psychological freedom, fills its neighbours with shame, and conveys to them that they, in fact, inhabit a zone of non-​being.

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  103 Natalie’s wandering seemed to be rather unconscious, but the novel soon reveals that she had one destination in mind: Hornsey Lane, where Archway Bridge can be found. As Annalisa Pes (2014, p.26), among others, has pointed out, this is a well-​known suicide bridge. Once on the bridge, “she remember[s]‌only one layer of obstruction”, which could lead the reader to believe that there had been a previous attempt at suicide. She finds “spikes up and spikes down, an iron imitation of barbed wire. This must be how they stopped people going nowhere” (pp.383–​3). The association between NW and “nowhere” finds here another dimension: that of death. This more direct confrontation with death and non-​ being, this complete erasure, nevertheless, provides a moment of sudden epiphany. Archway Bride is also a location from which one can see the city, the original site of London, yet another allusion to beginnings. When contemplating various landmarks in London, “the tower blocks were the only thing [Keisha] could see that made any sense, separated from each other, yet communicating” (p.384). The city offers no escape. In Natalie’s imagination, it does not even offer the possibility of assimilating into it. The city demands a break that she daren’t make despite her shame. Perhaps she is saved because committing suicide would entail doing something that is not expected of her because, as her mother told her, “our people hardly ever do that” (p.235). She might also be saved because as Molly Slavin (2015, p.110) points out, “here, Natalie’s map interweaves organically with the city’s geography; she is able to define her center”. Through her observation of Caldwell and the city, Natalie arrives at the disalienation of the urban. Perhaps Natalie is like the towers: she has two apparently different and contradictory identities that nevertheless speak to each other. Caldwell may be physically separated from the rest of London by its boundary wall, and psychologically closed off to those who do not assimilate in order to adapt. However, there are breaks in the wall that allow for an exchange and redefinition of boundaries and selves whereby margin and centre meet and are thus overturned. In the last chapter of the novel, which is a return to the first one, “Visitation”, Natalie has yet another epiphanic revelation, this time concerning freedom and determinism: Whoever said these were fixed coordinates to which she had to be forever faithful? How could she play them false? Freedom was absolute and everywhere, constantly moving location. You couldn’t hope to find it only in the old, familiar places. (p.397) Natalie’s vision may be explained through Fanon’s arguments in Black Skin, White Masks, where he argues that Those Negroes and white men will be disalienated who refuse to let themselves be sealed away in the materialized Tower of the Past.

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104  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma For many other Negroes, in other ways, disalienation will come into being through their refusal to accept the present as definitive. (2008, p.176) Moreover, Fanon explains that “before it can adopt a positive voice, freedom requires an effort at disalienation” (ibid., p.180). Natalie seems to have finally realised that she does not need to be exclusively defined by Caldwell and her original identity as Keisha and the way in which others see that particular identity, forever shamed. However, her realisation may seem a little contradictory, because both of her identities might be regarded as “prisons”, with Caldwell, that old familiar place, repeatedly described in terms of confinement, both physical and psychological, and her identification as Natalie constrained by the norms of hegemonic discourses. Natalie’s acknowledgement of freedom also leads her to experience, even if fleetingly, an affective state that resembles empathy. When she is talking to Michel after he has discovered the contraceptive pills that Leah takes with her name on them, Natalie defended herself against the imputation of collaboration. Normally all of her energies would be in defense –​she was trained in it –​but as she spoke her mind traveled to what felt like open ground, where she was able to almost imagine something like her friend’s pain, and in imaging it, recreate some version of it in herself. (p.396) Natalie can now put herself in the place of the other, which clearly counters Douglas Crimp’s statement that “it seems that empathy only gets constructed in relation to sameness, it can’t get constructed in relation to difference” (qtd. in Caruth and Keenan 1995, p.96). Perhaps, for a moment, Natalie has stopped feeling like an other. It could be argued that in going back to Caldwell and allowing herself to remember, Natalie has been able to work through the rejection of her past and conceived of a shared history with her own otherness. This process of working through resembles disalienation in some ways. Nevertheless, in this last chapter, Leah asks Natalie why they have the lives when people from their same background are failing and/​or getting murdered. Natalie responds that their lives are better because we were smarter and we didn’t want to end up begging on other people’s doorsteps. We wanted to get out. People like Bogle –​they didn’t want it enough. I’m sorry if you find that answer ugly, Lee, but it’s the truth. This is one of the things you learn in a courtroom: people generally get what they deserve. (p.400)

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  105 No trace of empathy can be found here; Natalie chooses to appeal to the law and the exercise of justice in order to explain the different outcomes of people coming from the same background. Fernández-​Carbajal (2016, p.12) deems this “an easy answer for a complex issue affecting Natalie herself, for it is not socioeconomic betterment that seems at stake here, but the collusion of class with ethnicity, heterosexual monogamy with normalcy”. Natalie’s argument evokes, on the other hand, the neoliberal discourse that tends to blame the problems of the poor on the poor themselves, without considering the structural failures that leave the lower classes on the wayside. According to Owen Jones (2012, p.xii), the neoliberal culture so effectively installed in Britain by Margaret Thatcher implied that “poverty and unemployment were no longer to be seen as social problems, but more to do with individual moral failings. Anyone could make it if they tried hard enough”. Therefore, it could be argued that Natalie’s answer to Leah is the justification for her own history of moral success and privilege, one that conceals her other moral failings and shameful exposure and that further continues to blame individuals instead of the still colonial attitudes in her society. Given that all these characters come from the same background, one may argue that such a context is responsible for engendering violence towards the self, and also towards the others, even though this does not justify their rather unethical choices. NW, while denouncing a potentially traumatising environment in which racism and class discrimination still define and affect subjects, nonetheless aims to present characters in their full humanity, that is, flawed, contradictory, and prone to make choices which are difficult to justify. The ending of the novel is complex, especially given the amount of ambiguity that transpires. Natalie goes to console Leah after she has also been found out by Michael. While the occasion seems auspicious for revealing the truth, Natalie chooses not to: Natalie Blake would have seen that the perfect gift at this moment was an honest account of her own difficulties and ambivalences, clearly stated, without disguise, embellishment or prettification. But Natalie Blake’s instinct for self-​defense, for self-​preservation, was simply too strong. (p.399) If, as Martha Nussbaum (2006, p.207) argues, “shame has its origins in a primitive desire to be complete and completely in control”, Natalie is still ashamed of her lack of a unified self and unified discourse, of her inconsistencies, and misses a moment of bonding with her good friend. Philip Tew argues that “the novel ends with Leah and Natalie reconciled […] the past permeating the present, the traumatic beginning of their initial relationship reemerging […] reminding readers that trauma is not only negative” (2014, par. 23–​4), and concludes that some “London

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106  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma fictions incorporate insistently cartographies of suffering, charting the traumatic and traumatological realities of urban selfhood, doing so to offer an understanding of how such traumas are inherent in our very selves”. This generalisation of trauma is counterproductive and, as Abigail Ward (2013, pp.178, 180) warns, “there is a danger in viewing trauma in a positive light” because doing so “minimizes the damaging effects on the psyche (both individual and collective) engendered by the traumatic experience”. The feeling of bonding that may be perceived at the end is diminished by Natalie’s inability to fully express her shame and inconsistencies to Leah and the persistence of inequalities in the way societies sees them and the way they see each other. The end of NW remains ambiguous and Natalie’s split remains apparently unresolved. She phones the police to inform of Nathan’s possible connection to the stabbing: “Natalie dialled it. It was Keisha who did the talking […] ‘I got something to tell you,’ said Keisha Blake, disguising her voice with her voice” (p.401). Given Natalie’s will to survive in a postcolonial and neoliberal society, the more positive interpretation of plurality also contains the pernicious seed of shame. Natalie may be continuing to act out “an ambiguity that is extraordinarily neurotic” (Fanon 2008, p.148). However, the reference to voice, rather than identities or identifications, at the end of the novel could in turn be seen as an attempt to solve the traumatic identity that springs from Natalie’s postcolonial condition. It is no longer a question of deciding between two or more different identifications, but rather of letting a polyphonic self-​emerge. Wendy Knepper refers to Smith’s article for the New Yorker “Some Notes on Attunement: A Voyage around Joni Mitchell”, in which Smith refers to Kierkegaard, and argues that, in Smith’s writings, as in Kierkegaard’s, there is “a sense of the plural, mutable self”, who points to the general “inconsistency of identity, of personality” (2013, pp.115–​16). Smith’s commentaries on voice in her essay “Speaking in Tongues” (2009, pp.133–​4) may also prove useful. Drawing from her own experience of acquiring a Cambridge voice over one from Willesden, she affirms that she did not consider it “a straight swap, of this voice for that”. After realising that she has lost her Willesden voice, she confesses: “I should have kept both voices alive in my mouth. They were both part of me. But how the culture warns against it!” (ibid., p.134). Smith further explains this replacement by referring to the fear of in-​betweenness: How persistent this horror of the middling spot is, this dread of the interim place! It extends through the spectre of the tragic mulatto, to the plight of the transsexual, to our present anxiety –​disguised as genteel concern –​for the contemporary immigrant, tragically split, we are sure, between worlds, ideas, cultures, voices –​whatever will become of them? Something’s got to give –​one voice must be sacrificed for the other. What is double must be made singular. (p.136)

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  107 Culture warns against in-​betweenness, but the ending of NW may uphold hybridity, and thus resistance, whereby different voices do not fight against one another, but rather coexist. Characters should be regarded as polyphonic, as the containers of the multiple realities they inhabit, rather than as traumatically split. Plural characters such as Natalie are drawn towards a single identity by the culture they inhabit. Mainstream culture’s insistence and enforcement of a single identity mainly respond to and try to do away with the anxiety that such culture feels towards otherness. If postcolonial narratives with an array of split characters are approached via trauma theory, it will be necessary to question whether these theories are the projection of a monolithic culture afraid of otherness and of being broken, as Gilroy’s (2004) ideas on postcolonial melancholia suggest. It is only when this is taken into consideration that the image of a double migrant identity, of a coconut, of having black skins and wearing white masks, starts to lose its schizophrenic and traumatic stigma. This is what NW offers at multiple levels. Natalie’s identity remains ambiguous, elusive, and impossible to define in binary terms, as either single or multiple. If the novel’s references to schizophrenia are reconsidered, one could argue that against the continuous reterritorialisations that she encounters, she becomes rhizomatic, she has “neither beginning nor end, but always a middle from which it grows and it overspills” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p.21). And so does the narration, by playing with the possibilities of fusing past and present and forcibly open in the way it will continue to make us question origins, middles, and ends. The collection of traumatic fragments derived from necolonial and neoliberal practices and their cumulative effect encourages the characters to adopt and perform restrictive identities and, what is worse, curtail their freedom, choices, and future. The various scenarios of violence that can be found in the novel not only denounce multiple micro-​aggressions that can end up becoming traumatic, but also the structural and institutional neglect of the lower classes. Although NW depicts characters as suffering from and in this endemic structural violence, it refuses to see them merely as victims. If these characters were only seen as marked by their context and events, and regarded as, or liable to become, traumatised, we would be falling into a determinism that the novel attempts to fight against. Moreover, the novel’s insistence upon events and the use and abuse of the vocabulary of trauma and forms of narrating trauma throughout certain chapters aims to question how we read individual trauma and direct us towards questioning the society in which some subjects are more likely to be traumatised than others. NW lays bare the need for a decolonised theory of trauma that is closer to psychopolitics (Hook 2013) because it is impossible to detangle the politically structural powers and their effect on the psyche of specific collectives. The use of forms of narrating trauma, the overemphasis on the event and its capacity for bonding, together with the construction of complex and overtly ambiguous characters, especially

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108  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma Natalie/​Keisha, compels us to interrogate postcolonial (traumatic) identities. If disalienation for Fanon “entails an immediate recognition of social and economic realities” (2004, p.4), the same should be applied to the decolonisation of trauma.

Bibliography Alexander, J., 2004. Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma. In: J. Alexander et al., eds. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1–​30. Ahmed, S., 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Batra, K., 2010. Kipps, Belsey, and Jegede: Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism, and Black Studies in Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty”. Callaloo, 33 (4), 1079–​92. Bentley, N., 2007. Re-​ Writing Englishness: Imagining the Nation in Julian Barnes’s England, England and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Textual Practice, 21 (3), 483–​504. Bentley, N., 2018. Trailing Postmodernism: David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Zadie Smith’s NW, and the Metamodern. Journal of English Studies, 99 (7), 723–​43. Bhabha, H.K., 1992. The World and the Home. Social Text, 31/​32, 141–​53. Bhabha, H.K., 1994. The Location of Culture. London; New York: Routledge. Block-​Lewis, H., 1981. Freud and Modern Psychology: The Emotional Basis of Human Behavior. New York; London: Plenum Press. Bourdieu, P., 1973. Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. In: R. Brown, ed. Knowledge, Education, and Cultural Change. London: Tavistock, 71–​112. Bouson, J.B., 2000. Quiet as It’s Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison. Albany: State University of New York Press. Burrows, V., 2006. Ghostly Hauntings of White Shame in David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon. Westerly, 51, 124–​45. Butler, J., 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Cadwalladr, C., 2014. Frédéric Gros: Why Going for A Walk Is the Best Way to Free Your Mind. The Guardian, 20 April 2014. Available at www. theguardian.com/ ​ b ooks/ ​ 2 014/ ​ a pr/ ​ 2 0/ ​ f rederic- ​ g ros- ​ w alk- ​ n ietzsche- ​ k ant [Accessed 8 November 2016] Caruth, C., ed., 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caruth, C. and Keenan, T., 1995. ‘The AIDS Crisis Is Not Over’: A Conversation with Gregg Bordowitz, Douglas Crimp, and Laura Pinsky. In: C. Caruth, ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 256–​72. Childs, P., (2005) 2012. Contemporary Novelists: British Fiction since 1970. Houndmills; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Childs, P. and Green, J., 2013. Aesthetics and Ethics in Twenty-​First Century British Novels: Zadie Smith, Nadeem Aslam, Hari Kunzru and David Mitchell. London: Bloomsbury. Chrisman, L., 2003. Postcolonial Contraventions: Cultural Readings of Race, Imperialism and Transnationalism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  109 Craps, S., 2010. Wor(L)Ds of Grief: Traumatic Memory and Literary Witnessing in Cross-​Cultural Perspective. Textual Practice, 24 (1), 51–​68. Craps, S., 2013. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated from French by B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Erikson, K., 1995. Notes on Trauma and Community. In: C. Caruth, ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 183–​99. Eyerman, R., 2004. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity. In: J. Alexander et al., eds. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 60–​111. Fanon, F., (1952) 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto-​Press. Fanon, F., (1963) 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Felski, R., 2000. Nothing to Declare: Identity, Shame, and the Lower Middle Class. PMLA, 115 (1), 33–​45. Fernández Carbajal, A., 2016. On Being Queer and Postcolonial: Reading Zadie Smith’s NW Through Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 51 (1), 76–​91. Fischer, S.A., 2007. ‘A Glance from God’: Zadie Smith’s On Beauty and Zora Neale Hurston. Changing English, 14 (3), 285–​97. Guignery, V., 2013. Zadie Smith’s NW: The Novel at an ‘Anxiety Crossroads’? Études Britanniques Contemporaines: Revue de la Société d’Études Anglaises Contemporaines, 45. Gilroy, P., (1993) 2000 The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University. Press. Gilroy, P., 2001. Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gilroy, P., 2004. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? Abingdon: Routledge. Hook, D., 2013. Critical Psychology: The Basic Co-​Ordinates. In: D. Hook, ed. Critical Psychology. Claremont: UCT, 10–​23. Huddart, D., 2005. Homi K. Bhabha. London; New York: Routledge. Huyssen, A., 2003. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Jackson, R., 2012. Imagining Boston: Haitian Immigrants and Place in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. Journal of American Studies, 46 (4), 855–​73. Jones, O., 2012. Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. London; New York: Verso. Kangas, D.J., 2007. Kierkegaard’s Instant: On Beginnings. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Knepper, W., 2013. Revisionary Modernism and Postmillennial Experimentation in Zadie Smith’s NW. In: P. Tew, ed. Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 111–​26. Kripke, S.A., 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kristeva, J., 1991. Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University. Press. LaCapra, D., 2013. History, Literature, Critical Theory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Ledent, B., 2002. Caryl Phillips. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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110  Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma López-​ Ropero, L., 2016. Searching for A “Different Kind of Freedom”: Postcoloniality and Postfeminist Subjecthood in Zadie Smith’s NW. Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-​American Studies, 38 (2), 123–​39. Marcus, D., 2013. Post-​Hysterics: Zadie Smith and the Fiction of Austerity. Dissent, 60 (2), 67–​73. Mcleod, J., 2005. Revisiting Postcolonial London. The European English Messenger, XIV (2), 39–​47. McLeod, J., (2000) 2010. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mengel, E., Borzaga, M., and Orantes, K., eds., 2010. Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in South Africa: Interviews. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi. Mengel, E. and Borzaga, M., eds., 2012. Trauma, Memory , and Narrative in the Contemporary South African Novel: Essays. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi. Mirze, Z.E., 2008. Fundamental Differences in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. In: T.L. Walters, ed. Zadie Smith: Critical Essays. New York: Peter Lang, 187–​201. Morrison, A.P., 1989. Shame: The Underside of Narcissism. Hillsdale: Analytic Press. Nussbaum, M.C., 2006. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Parker, I., 2014. Psychoanalysis and Critical Psychology. In: D. Hook, ed. Critical Psychology. Claremont: UCT, 139–​61. Pérez Zapata, B., 2014. In Drag: Performativity and Authenticity in Zadie Smith’s NW. International Studies: Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal, 16 (1), 83–​95. Pes, A., 2014. Post-​Postcolonial Issues and Identities in Zadie Smith’s NW. The European English Messenger, XXIII (2), 21–​7. Pirker, E.U., 2016. Approaching Space: Zadie Smith’s North London Fiction. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 52 (1), 64–​76. Procter, J., 2003. Dwelling Places: Postwar Black British Writing. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ramone, J., 2011. Postcolonial Theories. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Slavin, M., 2015. Nowhere and Northwest, Brent and Britain: Geographies of Elsewhere in Zadie Smith’s NW. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 48 (1), 97–​119. Smelser, N.J., 2004. Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma. In: J. Alexander et al., eds. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 31–​59. Smith, Z., 2000. White Teeth. London: Penguin Books. Smith, Z., 2004. Interview with G. Holbrook Gerzina. In: S. Nasta, ed. Writing across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk. Abingdon: Routledge. Smith, Z., 2005. On Beauty: A Novel. London: Penguin Books. Smith, Z., 2009. Speaking in Tongues. In: Z. Smith, ed. Changing My Mind. London: Penguin, 133–​50. Smith, Z., 2012. NW. London: Hamish Hamilton. Smith, Z., 2020. Intimations: Six Essays. London: Penguin. Stein, M., 2004. Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation. Columbus: Ohio State University. Tolan, F., 2013. Zadie Smith’s Fosterian Ethics: White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 54 (2), 135–​46.

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Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma  111 Tew, P., 2014. Will Self and Zadie Smith’s Depictions of Post-​Thatcherite London: Imagining Traumatic and Traumatological Space. Études Britanniques Contemporaines, 47. Vickroy, L., 2002. Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Visser, I., 2011. Trauma Theory and Postcolonial Literary Studies. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 47 (3), 270–​82. Walder, D., 2011. Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing, Representation and Memory. New York: Routledge. Ward, A., 2013. Understanding Postcolonial Traumas. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 33 (3), 170–​84. Whitehead, A., 2009. Memory. London; New York: Routledge. Whitlock, G., 2000. The Intimate Empire: Reading Women’s Autobiography. London; New York: Cassell.

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3  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory Dialogic Histories of Slavery in The Embassy of Cambodia and Swing Time The narratives analysed so far have explored the relationships of different characters to their roots through the excessive attachment or complete departure from them. Within this spectrum, Smith’s narratives seem to favour those characters such as Irie Jones in White Teeth (2000) or Natalie Blake in NW (2012), who are able to connect and incorporate their histories even if in a complex and extremely ambiguous manner. In a similar way, Levi Belsy in On Beauty (2005) establishes a dialogue between the history of Haitian immigrants in Boston and that of African Americans. These previous three novels contain references to the multiplicity of origins, with diasporic characters engaging in both real and imagined relationships to various homelands. Nevertheless, The Embassy of Cambodia (2013) and Swing Time (2016) refer more explicitly and consciously to global origins in our contemporary, entangled neoliberal and neocolonial world. Although The Embassy of Cambodia is set in Willesden around the time of the 2012 Olympic Games, the story moves beyond the walls of North West London through the trajectory of its protagonist, Fatou, an immigrant from Ivory Coast and her interrogation of global suffering. Addressing new forms of slavery and precarity, The Embassy of Cambodia calls our attention to connected histories of suffering. Swing Time also departs from North West London and moves around the globe as its protagonist, an unnamed first-​ person female narrator follows Aimee, her employer and Australian singer of world-​ wide fame. Through a set of departures and returns, the novel explores the protagonist’s construction of identity by establishing connections to her African ancestry, the memories of slavery, and the historical and contemporary Black Atlantic (Gilroy 1993). The configuration of contemporary global relationships and identities through histories of suffering and the dialogues these narratives create with the histories of different nations elicit an exploration of trauma and traumatic memories through Michael Rothberg’s concept of multidirectional memory. Rothberg uses this term in order to “think about the relationship between different social groups’ histories of victimization” and assess “what happens when different histories confront each other in the public sphere” (2009, p.2). Rothberg rejects the view of “memory as

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  113 competition” and the subsequent establishment of a hierarchy or “competition” of suffering since this most likely would lead to the erasure of some histories in favour of others (ibid., p.3). Multidirectional memory works against a fixed view of the past and remembrance and thus Rothberg (ibid.) advocates memories that work in juxtaposition and are “subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-​referencing, and borrowing, as productive and not private”. Rothberg bases a large part of his analysis on the decolonising theories of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, and argues that multidirectional memory echoes the way in which trauma studies are increasing their exploration of postcolonial traumas and developing their criticism of the discipline’s Eurocentric views and focus. Rothberg envisages multidirectional memory as the approach thanks to which the potential of traumatic histories to bridge the gap between cultures is more effective because, as Robert Stam and Ella Shohat argue, comparison “can trigger […] a salutary deprovincialization and mutual illumination” (2009, p.477). In his effort to bring together histories of suffering and under-​representation, Rothberg stresses the decolonisation of individual and collective identities and histories, which merge and speak to each other, rather than for each other. This chapter first examines the multidirectional connections that The Embassy of Cambodia establishes with the memories of different genocides as well as the traumatic memories of Fatou and the story’s dialogic nature, both thematically and formally, to then analyse and the connections that Swing Time establishes through the narrator’s confrontation with glocal and global histories of suffering in the transnational and cosmopolitan world that the novel depicts. Both narratives draw attention to slavery, past and present, to the inequalities and exploitation of global capitalism, and the need to remember global histories so as to establish a productive dialogue that will not only aid in the construction of the protagonists’ sense of self but also attempt to reconfigure the way in which larger communities engage with the suffering of others. The analysis of these two texts through the framework of multidirectional memory, transnationalism, and cosmopolitanism further encourages the decolonising turn in trauma studies and Smith’s continuous political compromise with the decolonisation of selves and global relationships.

3.1  Genocide in the Suburbs: Trauma and Multidirectional Memory in The Embassy of Cambodia1 The protagonist of The Embassy of Cambodia, Fatou, a woman originally from Ivory Coast, settles in Willesden, London, after working for some years in Ghana and then taking one of the migration routes through the north of Africa, the Mediterranean, and Italy. The story never discloses Fatou’s legal status but at the present time of the narrative she is working as a domestic servant for an Arab family, the Derawals. The terms of this employment, however, are more in line with modern-​day slavery: Fatou

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114  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory is not in control of her passport, she does not receive any wages, she is subject to verbal and physical abuse, and her movement is limited to doing the shopping, going to a health club using stolen passes from her employers, and meeting her friend Andrew on Sundays. During one of the few instances in which Fatou is able to leave the Derawals’ house, she notices two people playing badminton behind the walls of the Embassy of Cambodia, which sparks her interest. Using different narrators that reflect upon the history of genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime during the last decades of the twentieth century, who observe Fatou, and who engage in a collective and individual struggle to articulate how history shapes our view of the present, The Embassy of Cambodia aims to uncover and bring to the fore histories of suffering that often remain unseen and forgotten. In view of Fatou’s uncertain status, several studies have researched how The Embassy of Cambodia examines the conditions of immigrants who have recently arrived in Britain and, more particularly, how it addresses cases of modern-​day slavery. Bettina Jansen (2018, pp.220–​1) maintains that Fatou “personifies the most recent wave of large-​scale immigration into England, namely the migration of impoverished, war-​and terror-​ stricken African refugees”. Within this larger group that Jansen identifies, Fatou seems to further belong to the groups of new slaves found in global postcolonial metropolises. Smith’s story directly includes a reference to the case of a rich man who had kept a slave in his house (p.15). When Fatou finds a Metro newspaper in the Derawals’s house reporting the story, she nevertheless discards the possibility of being a slave herself since she had not been kidnapped and she enjoys some relative freedom (pp.15–​6). The fact that the story includes the word slave between single quotation marks (p.15) may further question the existence of slaves in contemporary times and confirm how the label “slave” is generally used as “an easy metaphor” of contemporary working conditions (Bales 2000, p.5). In keeping with the terminology employed by Kevin Bales (2000), Rahila Gupta (2007), and Pietro Deandrea (2015), new slaves are an embodiment of various “forms of precarity” (Opondo and Shapiro 2018, p.13) and representative of hidden “labour in contemporary capitalism” (Del Valle-​Alcalá 2020, p.73). Cases of new slavery in contemporary times at the heart of the metropolis have caused a “universal shock” (Gupta, 2013), but the fact is that slavery has remained a more or less hidden global reality throughout the last centuries. Rahila Gupta (2007, p.234) actually goes as far as stating that “it is delusional to believe that slavery ended at any given point in history”. Similarly, Paul Gilroy (2013) argues that although the memory of slavery and transatlantic trade persists at some level, the narrative of “the heroic story of its abolition” has gained more relevance in contemporary history and that slavery “is not appreciated as a historical phenomenon with contemporary consequences”. The Embassy of Cambodia debunks this perception of

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  115 slavery as a thing of the past and foregrounds new forms of neocolonial precarity. As an immigrant and domestic worker (and new slave), Fatou is a vulnerable subject and virtually invisible. Abigail Ward (2016, p.45) argues, taking on Deandrea’s concept of spectralisation, that new slaves “barely register in people’s minds and, in many ways, are unknowable”. Thus, Fatou’s story works towards unveiling these hidden histories and it does so not only by questioning what slavery constitutes nowadays but also by narrating them in parallel to other Western and non-​Western histories of suffering. In line with this reflection of current postcolonial contexts, the specific time in which The Embassy of Cambodia is set further brings to the forefront some of the contradictory discourses of contemporary multiculturalism. The story takes place during the 2012 Olympics, which the first-​ person plural narrator perceives with an apparent altered temporality: the beginning of the fifth chapter considers that just eight days “after the Olympians had returned to their respective countries” amounts to a “long” time (p.11). The Olympic Games were reported to be an example of Britain’s rich multiculturalism and presented an image of unity despite the riots that had broken up the previous year and the discourses that asserted that the multicultural project promoted in the previous decades had failed. In fact, the Olympic Games proved to be an example of this failed multiculturalism and the increasing rejection of migrants and asylum seekers, thus presenting the Olympic Games as an event removed from the country’s reality, which may account for the narrator’s distorted perception of their temporal references. As Abigail Ward reports (2016, p.44), “eighty-​two of those visiting the UK for the Olympics applied for asylum”, many of whom “were rejected by the Home Office and have since left the UK”. In spite of this denial, some claimed that thanks to the Olympic spirit and its celebration of diversity “a new Britain [was] being born out of the best of the old Britain” (Suroor 2012). This example of hope for a new Britain was, in fact, met with a resurgence of the old, colonial Britain and the rejection of otherness that was central in the campaign in favour of Brexit. Thus, The Embassy of Cambodia has been viewed as an observation on “the growing unease with immigration and increasingly open hostility towards migrants and refugees” that led to the Leave vote (Korte 2019, p.25). This multicultural present thus reveals fragments of a colonial past and the consequences that colonisation and decolonisation have had globally. The Embassy of Cambodia opens with a rhetorical question: “Who would expect the Embassy of Cambodia?” (p.10), which draws attention to the puzzling decentred location of this Embassy in Willesden. However, we should not ask “who” but why the Embassy of Cambodia and the recent history of genocide in the country are central for the story of an immigrant and new slave in London. Moreover, we should ask what these seemingly foreign histories tell us about ways of narrating memory, suffering, and the workings of global flows of information and people.

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116  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory As Abigail Ward (2016, p.45) infers, Smith may have chosen Cambodia for her story because nowadays it is a country that still “has a shocking record for human trafficking and the continuation of slaveries”. However, The Embassy of Cambodia lays emphasis on the country’s history of genocide and how its memory survives in global, collective circuits. The juxtaposition of Fatou’s story and genocide in Cambodia could therefore suggest an entanglement of histories of suffering that would fit into Michael Rothberg’s concept of multidirectional memory. For Rothberg (2009, p.11), multidirectional memory implies “remembrance [which] cuts across and binds together diverse spatial, temporal and cultural sites”. Such juxtaposition must establish a productive and dialogic relationship between histories of suffering, bringing them together rather than setting a hierarchy. In this sense, multidirectional memory should be based on an “ethics of comparison” that leaves behind any form of “competition, appropriation and trivialization” (Rothberg 2011, p.525). The Embassy of Cambodia, by placing together distant histories in contemporary London, forces characters, narrators, and readers to regard history and memory in a new light and, as many of Smith’s narratives, it recalls instances of interconnectedness and warns against how colonialism still operates in modern times. The Embassy of Cambodia bewilders the community of Willesden because of its suburban location and the historical memories it evokes. As the first-​person singular narrator informs, “I doubt there is a man or woman among us, for example, who –​upon passing the Embassy of Cambodia for the first time –​did not immediately think: ‘genocide’ ” (p.6). This association makes the Embassy “not the right sort of surprise” (p.14) because it forces the collective voice of Willesden to face Cambodia’s recent history. For Abigail Ward (2016, p.42), the Embassy’s decentralised location acts as “a reminder that, similar to trafficked workers like Fatou, embassies can also be found across London, even in the more genteel suburbs”. In addition, if we attend to studies of memory and trauma, the suburban location of the Embassy may allude to the decentralised position of Cambodia in global histories of genocide. Even if this genocide is nowadays included in the canon of genocide studies alongside the Holocaust, Rwanda, Armenia, and other colonial genocides (Stone 2006, p.1), historically, it has not been regarded as pivotal in the study and understanding of suffering, remaining low in what can only be described as a hierarchy of trauma. If the history of Cambodian genocide can thus be considered peripheral and subordinate to others in the twentieth century, it could be argued that The Embassy of Cambodia, in juxtaposing this genocide with Fatou’s story, acknowledges two histories that have been somehow silenced, but which nevertheless continue to haunt us. Pietro Deandrea (2015, pp.11–​2) referred to new slaves as spectres that abound in Western history, “repressed by Western modernity”, and which have recently been brought to the fore by postcolonial studies. If, as Abigail Ward (2016, p.145) explains, most people do not often

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  117 acknowledge new slaves, when they do, as Gupta comments, they are often described as shocking: new slaves are also a surprise and, drawing a parallelism to the Embassy, “not the right type of surprise” (p.14). The first-​person plural narrator does not particularly focus on the hierarchy of trauma but rather on the division that the Khmer Rouge regime established between New and Old People, between “city” and “country” people. In their attempt to build a Communist regime under Pol Pot, city dwellers symbolised capitalism and were thus to be converted into peasants by means of forced labour. According to Ben Kiernan (2012, pp.33, 44), city dwellers were regarded as “subhuman” and eventually “the entire population of Cambodia became an unpaid agricultural labor force, and the economy a vast plantation”. Thus, the history of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge helps bring to the fore the presence of new forms of slavery. Later on, this same narrator quotes the motto used by the Khmer Rouge regime –​“To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss” –​and details the process whereby New People were forced to become Old People. New People, the narrator explains, had to “show no weakness in the fields. [because] Vulnerability was punishable by death” (p.39). This commentary emphasises not only the vulnerability of the Cambodian population but, read in parallel to Fatou’s story, it could connote how new slaves have become, as Kevin Bales (2000) states, disposable people. The classification established by the Khmer Rouge regime is further applied by the narrator to describe the community of Willesden: “we are almost all New People, though some of us, like Fatou, were until recently, Old People, working the land in our various countries of origin” (pp.39–​40). Although extrapolating such division may verge on a form of historical appropriation, it can nevertheless bring to the fore not only the distinction between old and new slaves but also between old and new immigrants to the United Kingdom. This reading of the nature of immigration in contemporary Britain by alluding to the division between Old and New People created by the Khmer Rouge may be supported by the fact that the regime structured the Cambodian population according to race and, to a lesser extent, class (Kiernan 1996, p.26). Thus, in keeping with the juxtapositions found in accounts of multidirectional memory, such division may speak of Smith’s overriding concern with the intersection of class and race in contemporary societies and a political concern with current attitudes and restrictions to immigration. The Embassy of Cambodia might therefore indirectly address governmental political reactions to the arrival of new immigrants, which favour the wealthy and disregard those coming from poorer backgrounds and which can only be expected to continue once the points-​based system of immigration is deployed by the British government. Moreover, the fact that, as Ben Kiernan (2002, p.469) asserts, genocide in Cambodian may be read as a history of “deportation” may help to articulate the hostile environment enforced by the Home Office in 2012 that favoured systematic

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118  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory deportation and was to be the cause of the Windrush Scandal (Gentleman 2019). Kiernan explains that deportation is a general characteristic to all genocides, but placed within the time and place of the story, Smith seems to be using multidirectional memory to criticise the policies of detainment and deportation of immigrants and asylum seekers.2 Consequently, the division of the community between New and Old People also brings to the forefront the wrong type of surprise by directing readers to the unjust system that imposes divisions within the city and nation. The reaction of the first-​person plural narrator to the Embassy and the assumption that the whole of Willesden has also made a direct connection of Cambodia to genocide further testifies to the ubiquity of trauma. While such quick and collective association may point towards the danger of generalising particular histories and traumas, The Embassy of Cambodia seems to delve into the pervasiveness of trauma in global contexts. Several scholars have reflected on the traumatic (and traumatising) nature of the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries and the way in which trauma has become engrained in our unconscious. For Roger Luckhurst (2008, p.119) contemporary culture is defined by “the affective transmissibility of trauma […] across virtually every arena of discourse, whether scientific or cultural, professional or amateur, high or low”. For Fassin and Rechtman (2009, p.212), trauma has effectively “become part of the Zeitgeist”. The first-​person narrator appears to participate in such manner of understanding the world and it could be argued that, in adopting such view, even presents trauma as a master narrative with particular modes and traits of recounting traumatic experiences. In fact, there is one particular reference in the story that may hint at the ways in which trauma is narrated in contemporary times. At the beginning of The Embassy of Cambodia, the narrator comments on the reactions to seeing the building of the Embassy: “if we were poets perhaps we could have written some sort of ode about this surprising appearance of the embassy. […] But we are not really a poetic people. We are from Willesden. Our minds tend towards the prosaic” (p.6). This statement recalls Adorno’s (1955, p.33) contention that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”, a “dictum” that has been placed out of context and often misused (Hoffman 2005) but is nevertheless taken as a sentence that encapsulates the difficulty and even impossibility of representing trauma. The Embassy of Cambodia is indeed prosaic and its narration, although it introduces some flashbacks that, as will be argued, can be considered intrusive memories, it does not play with the fragmentary, experimental, “anti-​narrative” (Craps 2013, p.40) ways typically associated to narrating trauma. Even if Smith addresses historical, collective, and individual traumatic episodes, she consciously presents these as life events and not specific events associated to psychological disorders. The perils of trauma as a master narrative that could ultimately silence the histories and suffering of others are in some way mitigated here by the juxtaposition of genocide in Cambodia and Fatou’s story within

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  119 the narration of the first-​person plural narrator, which facilitates the understanding of historical and collective traumas. However, this must be taken with caution since this first-​person plural narrator, who does not seem to include Fatou within this plural voice and thus calls into question the dialogic nature that the story seems to be putting forward through the use of multidirectional memory. The Embassy of Cambodia includes particular events in the life of Fatou which are traumatic by means of another third-​person heterodiegetic narrator, thus separating Fatou’s individual traumas from the collective voice of Willesden. In addition to her displacement and enslavement, the narrative recalls, through religious vocabulary, how Fatou was raped while working as a maid in a hotel resort in Accra: He (the Devil) came, this time, in Russian form. Afterwards, he cried and begged her not to tell anyone: his wife had gone to see the Cape Coast Castle and they were leaving the following morning. Fatou listened to his blubbering and realized that he thought the hotel would punish him for his action, or that the police would be called. That was when she knew that the Devil was stupid as well as evil. She spat in his face and left. (pp.44–​5) Fatou believed that she had been spared two years of being unmolested because of the influence of her father and God, but the remark “this time” suggests that rapes were recurrent, which together with the fact that Fatou’s rape goes unpunished by the resort and the police, point towards a systemic and structural violence against women. Moreover, the narrative places within this violent event the memory of transatlantic slave trade by referencing Cape Coast castle, the last point before departure for slaves, the door of no return. The Embassy of Cambodia does not detail if Fatou leaves Ghana immediately after her rape, but it could be one of the reasons why she chooses to depart through one of the routes of illegal migration that will eventually lead her to become a modern-​day slave. This episode confirms, even more strongly, that it is impossible to separate individual instances of trauma from larger structural and historical forms of oppression and suffering, and continues to remind us, as Michael Rothberg (2014, p.iv) explains, that “an event-​ focused trauma theory needs to understand the conditions of structural violence”. For Abigail Ward (2016, p.46), the fact that Fatou recalls the rape while swimming in London represents an intrusive flashback that testifies to the belatedness of trauma. Nevertheless, given Fatou’s religious beliefs, she thinks of the rape as a sin and turns to religion, which is reminiscent of Ambrosia’s narrative in White Teeth. Moreover, if Ambrosia wanted to get rid of a trace of bad blood, to clean her family’s history, Fatou will also become fixated on being “washed clean” (p.68). Images

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120  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory of water and baptism recur throughout the story. Even at the end, when the Derawals dispose of her, the narrator describes how Fatou “felt a sense of brightness, of being washed cleaned that neither the weather nor her new circumstances could dim” (pp.68–​9). Although we may attempt to understand her reactions to a traumatic event through a Western perspective, i.e. by applying the vocabulary developed by Western theories of trauma, Fatou cannot afford to fixate on the past and her only possibility is to move forwards. The only visible response to the intrusive memory of rape, or the Devil in its many forms, is that Fatou’s swimming turns “fast and angry” and she outpaces “a young white man in the lane next to her” (p.45). Through this very physical reaction, Fatou may be displaying her strength and resilience, and emulating an escape. Nevertheless, this sense of continuous escape, together with the recurrence of images of being washed clean, renewed, forgiven, do recall instances of acting out that sit ambiguously with what may constitute trauma for subjects like Fatou and with non-​normative (Western) ways of coping. Following Step Crap’s (2014) analysis of trauma in Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love, it could be argued that Fatou’s rape –​especially given the repeated exposure to suffering and different perpetrators that the phrase “this time” (p.44) might imply –​is another event within a larger chain for those populations who “lead poor, vulnerable, and unprotected lives” (p.53). Craps draws a distinction between non-​ Western populations for whom vulnerability is the norm and Westerners who lead “safe, valued, and protected lives” (ibid.). In addition, Craps alludes to the problematics of applying Western perspectives on trauma to analyse non-​ Western reaction to suffering and draws attention to a “quiet suffering, which, […] our Western trauma paradigm risks obscuring” (ibid., p.57) by focusing on singular events and narrativised ways of coping that overlook how certain populations may turn to silence as healing. In opposition to the history of genocide in The Embassy of Cambodia, Fatou’s rape, displacement, and enslavement may reflect that “quiet suffering” to which Craps refers. And while Smith inserts once more some of the precepts that guide more Western trauma theories such as intrusive memories, there is no emphasis on working through. The Embassy of Cambodia does, however, provide ample reflections on suffering in general and Western and non-​Western reactions to trauma in particular. The latter, moreover, provides the only instance in the story in which readers have access to Fatou’s direct testimony. Fatou tells Andrew, a Nigerian immigrant she befriends after he hands her a leaflet with the question “WHY IS THERE PAIN” (p.46; capitals in original), about two rather traumatic episodes she witnessed in Accra and Rome: One day, at the hotel, I heard a commotion on the beach. It was early morning. I went out and saw nine children washed up dead on the beach. Ten or eleven years old, boys and girls. They had gone into the water, but they didn’t know how to swim. Some people were crying,

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  121 maybe two people. Everyone else just shook their heads and carried on walking to where they were going. After a long time, the police came. The bodies were taken away. People said, “Well, they are with God now.” Everybody carried on like before. I went back to work. The next year I was in Rome. I saw a boy who was about fifteen years old knocked down on his bike. He was dead. People were screaming and crying in the street. Everybody crying. They were not his family. They were only strangers. The next day, it was in the paper. (pp.47–​8) Fatou ponders on the reactions to these two events, not only of those first-​hand witnesses, but also of second-​hand ones. In fact, her friendship with Andrew seems to be consolidated when, deviating from generalised and clichéd responses to suffering, he concludes that “a tap runs fast the first time you switch it on” (p.48). The reactions of people in Ghana and Rome, as well as Andrew’s response, speak of the regularity with which certain populations witness death and trauma: while the death of several children in Accra is barely mourned and does not disrupt the everyday lives of the witnesses, the death of the boy in Rome implies that Westerners have distanced themselves from unexpected, traumatic deaths. Fatou’s conversations with Andrew often focus around suffering, as Fatou’s questions on pain and witnessing suggest. Moreover, she directly asks him at one point “Are we born to suffer?” and expresses her suspicion that “we were born to suffer more than all the rest” (pp.26–​7). Fatou uses “we” to refer to Africans, whose suffering she believes to be underrepresented in history and contemporary times. In this same conversation, Fatou brings up the Holocaust and moves on to Rwanda, Hiroshima to conclude that, out of all genocides, “more people died in Rwanda […] And nobody speaks about that. Nobody” (p.26). Fatou directly addresses the hierarchies that have traditionally governed the description of genocides in the West and reclaims the centrality that non-​ Western genocides should have. As Abigail Ward (2016, p.46) comments, “several critics working in the field of genocide would agree with her” given the strong presence and enduring remembrance of the Holocaust in Western culture and how other genocides have been overlooked and forgotten. Thus, The Embassy of Cambodia criticises the unproductive hierarchies historically established to talk about suffering in the West and, more particularly, the way the Holocaust has obscured talking about other genocides. In fact, scholars such as Dan Stone (2006, pp.174–​5, 189) argue that in the particular context of Britain, the remembrance of the Holocaust and the Second World War constitutes a “screen memory” that leaves out of the question “the darker side of Britain’s imperial past”. In this sense, The Embassy of Cambodia becomes another example of Smith’s engagement with the historical amnesia in British contemporary society and the silence around colonial and postcolonial

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122  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory histories. However, the references to the Holocaust, even as a screen memory, could ambivalently draw attention to more hidden histories. According to Michael Rothberg (2009, p.14), a screen memory may be understood as multidirectional since “it both hides and reveals that which has been supressed”. Given Smith’s use of ambivalence and ambiguity throughout her work, the reference to memories which have been and continue to be more central to Western history could therefore work to further examine scales of suffering and, more importantly, draw attention to silenced histories and the suffering that remains hidden behind closed doors and walls. The first-​person plural narrator does include Fatou in its omniscient account when her knowledge about history and genocide in general and about Cambodia in particular is questioned. Fatou’s interest in Cambodia is magnified when she sees a woman leaving the Embassy. While acknowledging that the terms of the Khmer Rouge do not apply anymore, the narrator describes the woman exiting the Embassy as neither a New nor an Old Person (p.19). The narrator notes that Fatou is ignorant of these terms and focuses exclusively on observing the woman, who carries “many bags from Sainsbury’s” that look quite old and that may contain “not food but clothes or something else” or perhaps “rubbish” (pp.20–​ 1). With the ever-​present game of badminton in the background, Fatou remains “at the bus stop” and observes the woman until she is out of sight (p.21), an image that proleptically announces Fatou’s fate at the end of The Embassy of Cambodia, when she is dismissed by the Derawals after saving their youngest daughter from choking on a marble and she “pack[s]‌her things into the decoy shopping bags she usually took to her swimming pool” (p.66) and waits for Andrew at the same bus stop. Considering these similarities, the Cambodian woman, for Abigail Ward (2016, pp.44–​5), may be yet another “domestic worker” and the way the story shows that “new slaveries include people from various backgrounds and that new slaves are everywhere, including working in prestigious embassies”. Hence, Fatou’s interest in observing the Cambodian woman can be read as a moment of identification. Because of her fixation with a single individual instead of the larger history of Cambodia, the narrator explains that some people may assume that Fatou has a “narrow, essentially local scope” (p.23). Yet, the similarities between the Cambodian woman and Fatou subvert such narrow scope and may in fact be taken as yet another instance of relationality and multidirectionality in the glocal suburb of Willesden. Fatou’s interest in a single person removes the abstraction from generalised historical accounts about Cambodia’s past and draws our attention to how we see or fail to do so people in our most immediate contexts. The first-​person plural narrator of the story does not deny Fatou’s local scope but rather justifies it by expressing “sympathy with her attitude” (p.23). But, as Lilie Chouliaraki (2006, p.92) explains, sympathy is often nowadays

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  123 “detached from its object”. Distance is, indeed, at the community’s core argument concerning sympathy: The fact is that if we followed the history of every little country in this world –​in its dramatic as well as its quiet times –​we would have no space left in which to live our own lives or to apply ourselves to our necessary tasks, never mind indulge in occasional pleasures like swimming. Surely there is something to be said about drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be? (p.23) This view on the involvement or lack thereof in the suffering of others has been commented upon by several theorists. In her study on grievability and mourning, Judith Butler (2009, p.35) poses the following questions: “Are there others for whom I am responsible? And how do I, in general, determine the scope of my responsibility? Am I responsible for all others, or only to some, and on what basis would I draw the line?” (2009, p.35). In a similar line, Susan Sontag (2003, p.85) previously argued that if the goal is having some space in which to live one’s own life, then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another. The Embassy of Cambodia therefore raises ethical questions about how, where, why, and even with whom we draw the line or the circle, as Butler and the narrator in the story ask. However, the story also seems to raise questions about our capacity to react to suffering, recalling Lilie Chouliaraki’s (2006, pp.97;2) arguments on how the constant exposure to images of close and distant suffering may cause “compassion fatigue”, that is, “the audience’s indifference towards distant suffering” and how rather than compassion current confrontations with images of suffering must be understood as pity, since this “incorporates the dimension of distance”. This way of seeing, or rather witnessing, and the similarities between Fatou and the woman from the Embassy are further elaborated upon towards the end of the story. Not only does Fatou carry her belongings in bags that resemble those of the Cambodian woman, but the narrators’ attitude towards Fatou may also recall that same “essentially local” scope. Once Fatou is waiting at the bus stop, the narrator recounts how Many of us walked past her that afternoon, or spotted her as we rode the bus, or through the windscreens of our cars, or from our balconies. Naturally, we wondered what this girl was doing, sitting on the damp pavement in the middle of the day. We worried for her.

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124  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory We tend to assume the worst, here in Willesden. We watched her watching the shuttlecock. Pock, smash. Pock, smash. As if one player could imagine only a violent conclusion and the other only a hopeful return. (p.69) The people of Willesden and readers, by implication of the plural narrator, become witnesses to Fatou’s fate at the end of the story. Nevertheless, Fatou’s static position at the bus stop, the passing by of people, and the witnesses’ observation from enclosed spaces reinforce the impression of distance that had been advanced by the narrator in the argument in favour of establishing a perimeter around others’ suffering. Thusly, Fatou is acknowledged but not fully recognised and the ending of her story insinuates the complicated nature of witnessing in contemporary times and the impossibility of taking action about the suffering of others. Consequently, the people of Willesden become, as Susan Sontag (2003, p.29) contends, “voyeurs”, because they witness her suffering but do not act upon it. Nevertheless, The Embassy of Cambodia does not leave us impervious to such suffering. The Embassy of Cambodia foregrounds questions of responsibility and ethics through its emphasis on in/​visibility, witnessing, and varying as well as contextual reactions to the suffering of others. Witnessing is thus presented in The Embassy of Cambodia from a moral standpoint that questions our level of implication with others’ suffering. As Avishai Margalit (2004, pp.32–​3) argues “Most people most of the time carry on [living] by not caring for most other people” because the act of caring would imply a personal involvement that exposes the witnesses’ vulnerability. For Margalit (2004, p.150) then, “the moral witness should himself be at personal risk, whether he is a sufferer or just an observer of the suffering that comes from evil-​doing”. The Embassy of Cambodia entangles histories of suffering and reactions towards it and could leave readers pondering on who is a sufferer in the story, how much suffering different characters and narrators may have witnessed, and how close we are willing to come to the suffering of others and share that suffering, putting ourselves, as Margalit claims, at risk. Even if only as voyeurs, to recall Sontag’s terms, the narrators and characters in The Embassy of Cambodia bear witness to Fatou’s story, thus confirming Shoshana Felman’s (1992, p.15) contention that once you become the witness of others’ suffering, you must bear a “responsibility” towards others. Felman (ibid.) argues that even when witnessing seemingly features individual, solitary responsibility, the very nature of witnessing breaks that solitude because it pushes us “to speak for others and to others” (emphasis in original). Felman (ibid.) also asks “by virtue of what short of agency is one appointed to bear witness?” (emphasis in original). These question regarding who becomes a witness and who speaks for whom resonate throughout The Embassy of Cambodia, particularly

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  125 in relation to the role of the narrators. The first-​person plural narrator, who is allegedly an old immigrant living in “a dingy retirement home” (pp.13, 40) whose balcony directly looks over the Embassy, claims to be speaking for the community of Willesden: “Of the Old and New People of Willesden I speak; I have been chosen to speak for them, though they did not choose me and must wonder what gives me that right” (p.40). The narrator’s claim is dismissed by the community’s response who argue “We are not one people and no one can speak for us” (p.40). This collective sense of testimony and speaking for and to others does not include Fatou at a narrative level. Thus, Smith’s story brings to the fore the difficulty of witnessing the suffering of subjects like Fatou, who remain effectively invisible within the circuits of domestic workers, new slaves, and even of illegal immigration. Moreover, the community’s response warns against homogenised collective responses and against the indirect testimonies of those who talk for others having failed to talk to others. Hence, The Embassy of Cambodia addresses contemporary crises of witnessing and prompts readers to think about individual and collective responsibility and action against suffering, trauma, and injustice. Despite the elucidation of the role of witnesses, and perhaps because of the complexities and ambiguities that this may prompt, the narrative itself, in parallel to Fatou’s sentiment, might be said to bring out a “vague impatience with […] all accounts of suffering in the distant past” (p.30) and, one may argue, with other accounts in the more immediate present. In short, what can be done with the multidirectional account of histories in The Embassy of Cambodia? The articulation of the history of genocide in Cambodia, the references to other genocides in the twentieth century, the individual trauma of Fatou, and the collective suffering of those subjects who often remain invisible and outside representation are compressed in such manner that it leaves no question of the global and glocal entanglements in contemporary times. In addition, the multidirectional memory portrayed in the story can help us reassess established theories on trauma because the different accounts of suffering, past and present, speak to each other at a narrative level and foreground how historical traumas outside the West could facilitate a more critical understanding of traumatic experiences that are a consequence of colonialism and the rejection of otherness in neocolonial times. In this sense, the divisions enforced by the Khmer Rouge regime provide an innovative way of writing about the systemic and institutional abandonment and enslavement of vulnerable subjects, and the choice of a distant suffering does not conceal individual and collective traumas within the boundaries of the United Kingdom but rather reveals further aspects of the climate of racism and rejection of immigration. In addition, the structure of the story in 21 chapters, which replicates the maximum number of points a player may score in a game badminton, may be taken as further commentary on the different ways of approaching forms of memory and their theorisation. The score, which is

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126  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory always set to zero for the first player, may hinder the possibilities of the multidirectional model of memory that Rothberg proposes by including it within a structure that rather resembles a more competitive and hierarchical approach to memory and trauma. As Rothberg (2009, p.3) explains, competitive memory “understand[s]‌the articulation of the past in collective memory as a struggle for recognition in which there can only be winners and losers”. Thus, The Embassy of Cambodia not only juxtaposes various individual, collective, and historical traumas but also two opposing views of conceiving memory. But rather than a juxtaposition, the score seems to suggest the struggle of multidirectional memory against the larger framework of competitive memory. The Embassy of Cambodia becomes therefore a narrative against forgetting those silent and oppressed voices and histories and against the hierarchies that historical, social, and cultural politics establish. The “(dis)placements” that multidirectional memories highlights (Rothberg 2008, p.225) and the critically ethical stance that their juxtaposition makes us take in The Embassy of Cambodia could thus truly foreground the decolonisation of trauma studies. This decolonising process, for Rothberg, must be necessarily global (ibid., p.226) and Smith’s story focuses on the global and the glocal and the way in which multiple histories of suffering conflate within a short range. The Embassy of Cambodia further emphasises the need to develop a more ethical, decolonial gaze with which to observe our close realities in addition to distant suffering and what can be done in face of the dehumanisation that colonial and neocolonial practices exert over vulnerable groups. This new ways of seeing the past and the present and of understanding repeated historical behaviours at a global scale also address the ways in which we witness suffering and may warn us to pay more attention to those who are at risk of remaining hidden and silenced. Rothberg (2009, p.5) claims that “when the productive, intercultural dynamic of multidirectional memory is explicitly claimed […] it has the potential to create new forms of solidarity and new visions of justice”. Nevertheless, it could be argued that besides hopeful and more just outlooks on the possibilities of multidirectional memories, Smith seems to be questioning what can be done beyond the written page and how literature may pave the way for a more ethical understanding of individual, collective, and historical traumas in our global age and how one could act upon the witnessing and acknowledgement of suffering. At one point in the story, Fatou asks “Was it wrong to hope to be happy?” (p.51) and some of those who see her at the bus stop at the end “imagine […] a hopeful return” (p.69). The open ending of The Embassy of Cambodia does not promise such a hopeful ending. While it is true that Fatou is no longer in servitude of the Derawals, she remains at the mercy of others and is still unable to “make her own arrangements”, which she believes would guarantee her survival (pp.21, 68). Thus, readers are caught between that “hopeful return”, sharing Fatou’s believe in new

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  127 beginnings, and “a violent conclusion” (p.69), may be closer to the imagined “violent conclusion” given that the chapter titles/​score could further imply that subjects like Fatou cannot ever win the game and may not even participate in it, only being able to partially observe it from the outside. These subjects are the ones who remain invisible and unrecognised, who have very slight chances of winning in the games that neoliberalism and neocolonialism play with others. The Embassy of Cambodia is thus another example in Smith’s narratives that draws attention to the dis/​ connections between histories, communities, and individuals. One could hope that perspectives such as multidirectional memory may bring about a more fruitful dialogue about the precarity that characters such as Fatou must face as a result of contemporary migratory flows and neocolonial responses to otherness in the West and even more direct change at both an individual and collective level in the way we react towards such precarity.

3.2  Multiple Ancestries, Violent Memories, and the (Im)Possibilities of Multidirectional Memory in Swing Time If modern forms of slavery run through The Embassy of Cambodia, Swing Time explores, alongside contemporary forms of precarity, the histories and memories of slavery and how these have shaped numerous generations culturally and socio-​economically across time and space. The first of Smith’s novels to be written in the first-​person singular, Swing Time intersects recollections of the unnamed narrator’s childhood and adolescence in North London, mostly through her relationship to her mother –​also unnamed in the novel –​and her friend Tracey, and her adult life working as personal assistant to world-​famous pop singer Aimee. This unnamed narrator is perhaps one of the most difficult characters to empathise with in Smith’s work given her naivety and sometimes pitiful tone towards herself and others and, as will be later discussed, her unreliability. Nevertheless, through the narrator’s focalisation, Swing Time presents the anxious entanglement of histories that inform postcolonial identities. More particularly, Smith’s fifth novel brings to the fore a multiplicity of ways to remember and confront key events in the history of slavery, African diaspora, and identities that have been and are still shaped by the history of the Black Atlantic. According to Suzanne Scafe (2020, p.106), Swing Time “traverses the geographies and temporalities of the Black Atlantic, unsettling conventional definitions of a black African diaspora, and restlessly interrogating easy gestures of identification and belonging”. Nevertheless, as Justine Baillie (2020, p.291) remarks, the narrator shows a “naïve, misplaced faith in transcontinental hybridity”. Swing Time retraces some of the anxieties that affected Smith’s previous texts and addresses precarity, slavery, traumatic collective memories, and the de/​construction and performance of multiple and changing selves. The narrative form of Swing Time may not be as experimental as NW or as effectively condensed as The Embassy of Cambodia, but the intersection

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128  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory of the narrator’s more recent memories with her earlier, formative years together with an exploration of roots, allow Smith to continue to explore the entanglement of past and present and the complex articulation and narration of selves in contemporary global contexts and the ambiguities and contradictions that often arise in these processes of becoming. Swing Time could be defined, above all, as a novel about movement, not only in the almost essayistic way in which it sometimes approaches dance, which will mark the narrator and Tracey throughout their lives, but also in the protagonist’s movements across space and time. The novel itself is structured in sections that make reference to time –​from “Early Days” to “Late Days” –​with the apparent exception of “Middle Passage”, which nevertheless addresses key moments in the narrator’s life that will be addressed in the following pages. The novel thus moves through the narrator’s various dislocations and her re/​conciliations with the individual and collective histories of her family and origins. The narrator’s life is often portrayed as movement away from pain and painful traumatic histories, and towards freedom from the burden of history and from her submission to the rhythms of others, namely Tracey and Aimee. Swing Time, as I argue elsewhere (2019, pp.75–​6), complicates the relationship between “dislocation and stasis” and the way in which history floods the way in which the characters in the narrative understand themselves and others. The “Prologue” of the novel is a return home, albeit a rather bitter one. After the narrator is fired for drawing attention to Aimee’s irregular adoption of a baby girl from The Gambia and after a video of the narrator as a child dancing provocatively with Tracey is leaked –​drawing attention away from Aimee’s malpractice and abuse of power –​, she is sent back home to London. London feels both homely and unhomely: she feels foreign after years abroad, yet the city unexpectedly forces her into familiar territory. In her first day out after the scandal subsides, she goes to a film event in which a director shows a clip from the musical Swing Time and she connects to the joy that the film had brought her as a child: I felt I was losing track of my physical location, rising above my body, viewing my life from a very distant point, hovering over it. […] I saw all my years at once, but they were not piled up on each other, experience after experience, building into something of substance –​the opposite. A truth was being revealed to me: that I had always tried to attach myself to the light of other people, that I had never had any light of my own. I had experienced myself as a kind of shadow. (p.4) The narrator realises that she must free herself from the rhythms of others. The “Prologue” finishes with an email, allegedly from Tracey, saying that “Now everybody knows who you really are” (p.5; italics in original).

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  129 Tracey’s message, intended as rebuke, contrasts with the sections that follow, which could be conceived as a narrative effort to work through some of the memories of those experiences that create an outline of who the narrator is. Rejecting a linear way of narrating in favour of flashbacks and flashforwards, Swing Time becomes an exploration of individual and collective histories, traumatic memories, and a painstakingly ambiguous search for freedom. As is the case with several of Smith’s protagonists, the narrator of Swing Time, the daughter of a Jamaican mother and an English father, struggles to locate herself within the historical, social, and cultural map of England. Smith continues to write the experience of growing up other in the last decades of the twentieth century and the fight against deterministic discourses that confine postcolonial subjects to specific roles and (mis)representations. At the beginning of novel, this particular time and place is not portrayed by the narrator as outwardly traumatic as the north London of previous narratives, particularly that of NW. Nevertheless, their context is admittedly devoid of joy and creates an eagerness for movement and connection in different characters: the narrator, who finds comfort in dance and the physical and theoretical exploration of movement (pp.100–​1); her mother, who she perceives as constantly escaping places, things, people, and preconceived ideas, as “clawing” her way into the world (p.18) in a physical and psychological effort to break down the different walls that constrain them and connect with other oppressed subjects; and Tracey, who will eventually express her desire to live between New York and Kingston and escape England, which she deems a “miserable fucking country” (p.243). Moreover, as the exploration of the narrator’s memories moves forward, the novel reveals traumatic episodes in her life and in the lives of other characters, weaving together histories of suffering that often remain unseen within a private sphere and/​or silenced by dominant discourses. Against traumatic suffering, and even as a way of coping, dance becomes a source of joy for the narrator ever since childhood. Dance lessons connect her and Tracey: they become friends after realising that, despite their differences, their “shade of brown was exactly the same” (p.9). These dance lessons become to some extent a microcosm of the social relationships of the community: they will establish an us vs. them in terms of race and ethnicity, economics and purchasing power, and they give grounds for the analysis of family structures and relationships. Dance, and dance lessons, are thus from the very beginning marked by race and class: from what equipment each family can afford, to the narrator’s identification with “Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson” because he “danced for the Harlem dandy, the ghetto kid, for the sharecropper –​for all the descendants of slaves” (p.24). Dance becomes not only a source of joy, but also the source of political readings on inequality and racism, and the element that structures many of the narrator’s relationships as well as her way of understanding the world.

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130  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory The narrator’s ideas on dance further allow her to articulate a desire for uprootedness that recalls Keisha’s desire for orphanhood in NW. The narrator admits: “a dancer was a man from nowhere, without parents or siblings, without a nation or people, without obligations of any kind, and this was exactly the quality I loved” (p.24). This description of dancers as people with no ties to any sort of origins reflects a yearning for freedom from the burdens of individual and collective histories. The narrator will thus seek to become unburdened from traumatic histories and the equation of freedom with uprootedness will become, via Aimee, an ambiguous guiding principle in her adulthood. While NW circumscribes Keisha’s desire to become an orphan within the traumatic individual stories of the council estate where she grows up and the lack of representation and/​or misrepresentation of black subjects in film and literature, Swing Time resorts to dance and musicals as well as to explicit traumatic histories of slavery, emancipation, and segregation. Both novels speak of loss and absence, which LaCapra (2001, pp.43–​85) uses to refer respectively to the traumatic consequences of historical and structural events, but Swing Time is more specific in its continuous references to historical and transhistorical traumas, foundational losses, and systemic inequalities up to the present. The narrator will approach the history of slavery and African Americans in her own time and terms, but throughout her childhood and teenage years, her mother will be the one to beseech her to study the history of black people and heed the warning signs that may point to the repetition of oppression in contemporary contexts. The narrator’s mother urges her daughter to remember where they come from and asks her to locate herself not in a particular place, but rather within the timeline of historical events. She summons up the image of the African Sankofa bird, which “looks backwards, at the past, and it learns from what’s gone before” (p.30) as well as Walter Benjamin’s the angel of history, whose “face is [also] turned towards the past” (Benjamin 1968, pp.257–​8). For the narrator’s mother, Tracey and her family have a limiting local understanding of the world and she maintains that, while Tracey only has “the present” (p.31) and seems condemned to repeat the “the cycle of poverty” (p.167), her daughter “know[s]‌where [she] came from and where [she’s] going” (p.31). Following Benjamin’s theorisation of the angel of history, which confronts a more consequential, linear vision of history against “one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage” (1968, pp.257–​8), Swing Time sees colonialism and slavery as the catastrophes whose consequences can still be tangibly and affectively felt, as the wreckage upon which the modern system of global inequalities is founded. The novel thus explores the entanglements of individual and collective memories, which as Michael Rothberg (2009, p.35) argues, are always in some sense multidirectional. In “making the past present,” recollections and representations of personal and political

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  131 history inevitably mix multiple moments in time and multiple sites of remembrance; making the past present opens the doors of memory to intersecting pasts and undefined futures. Swing Time introduces these images to reinforce Smith’s encouragement to look at the past in order to integrate it into the present and thus allow for a more viable future. The narrator’s mother’s exploration of the past thus aims to understand the collective histories of black people, including instances of traumatic suffering, in order to improve the lives of present and future generations. Her relationship to her individual past, however, differs from the unburdened way in which she addresses the collective past of others. The beginning of novel discloses that the narrator’s mother and other siblings were raised by their elder brother Lambert after their mother left Jamaica for England (p.20), but it does not reveal much else apart from a generalised sense of shame and anxiety generated by a colonialist educational system (p.42). The narrator explains later on that she learnt from her uncle Lambert that her mother’s upbringing was, in fact, traumatic: her own childhood had been full of violence, emotional and physical, but she rarely referred to it other than calling it “that nonsense”, or sometimes “those ridiculous people”, because when she ascended to the life of the mind everything that was not the life of the mind stopped existing for her. (p.245) As was the case with the Bowden family in White Teeth, part of the history of the narrator’s family in Swing Time is surrounded by silence and the narrator’s mother’s way of dismissing potentially traumatic events further evokes the Bowden’s references to Captain Charlie Durham as a “djam fool bwoy” (p.354). Swing Time thus further recalls the ways in which postmemory (Hirsch 2008) works within families with a traumatic past, both individual and collective, that is transmitted mostly through silences. The narrator’s mother, however, continuously draws attention to historical and collective suffering, rather than her individual history. Although the narrator presents her mother’s silence as an avoidance mechanism, it matches the novel’s heightened emphasis on the collective and on making specific those events that have bound the lives of many oppressed subjects. If White Teeth accentuated Irie’s nostalgia for a history that would connect her to Jamaica, the narrator’s mother in Swing Time believes that “People like us, we can’t be nostalgic. We’ve no home in the past” (p.310). This statement may seem discordant with her previous claims to look towards the past and her criticism of Tracey’s living exclusively in the present (p.31). Nevertheless, it may adduce further evidence that she does not want to address her individual traumatic past. The narrator’s

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132  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory mother will uphold her claim for a situated knowledge of the history of the black diaspora while refusing to linger over an unproductive vision of the past. The narrator’s mother only returns to Jamaica in her imagination when she is facing the last stages of terminal cancer: “I dream of Jamaica, I dream of my grandmother. I go back in time…” (p.447). For most of her life, she disassociates from and intellectualises Jamaica’s history and structural problems, but her multiple arguments on collective suffering reveal some particularities of her own individual history. Tracey and her family are a particular source of concern for the narrator’s mother, especially the broken relationship between Tracey’s white mother –​who also remains unnamed –​and Louie, her Jamaican father, and, more particularly, the latter’s absence throughout most of Tracey’s childhood. There are numerous stories that justify Louie’s absences, the most recurrent one being that he is continuously in and out of prison. When the narrator one day sees Louie with what looks like another family and informs her mother, the latter, instead of reacting angrily against Louie, lectures her daughter on the history of Jamaica: Slamming pots about, speaking passionately of Jamaica, and not present-​day Jamaica but Jamaica in the 1800s, the 1700s, and beyond […] telling me about breeders and bucks, of children torn from their mother’s arms, of repetition and return, through the centuries, and the many missing men in her bloodline, including her own father, all of them ghost men, never seen close up or clearly. […] I didn’t know what to do with all the sadness. A hundred and fifty years! Do you have any idea how long a hundred and fifty years is in the family of a man? She clicked her fingers, […] That long. (p.244) The reference to “repetition and return” places the history of Jamaica within the vocabulary of trauma and it shows that its collective past, beyond family lines, still haunts its diasporic subjects. Thus, even if the narrator’s mother dismisses and intellectualises her individual history of trauma, the above rant about the collective traumatic history of colonisation in Jamaica evidences a remnant of pain and the fear of being unable to escape from the traumatic and deterministic cycles that beset diasporic subjects. In addition, this discourse contrasts those, especially Aimee’s, that disregard historical and structural problems and blame some individuals for their own failings. Swing Time, in its repeated allusion to traumatic historical events, does not allow readers to ever lose sight of the collective. As Baillie (2020, p.288) argues, Swing Time “should be read against the histories of slavery and colonialism as Smith’s narrator, the narrator’s mother, and her childhood friend Tracey are descendants of the pan-​African diaspora originating in Caribbean slavery”. The ties with this pan-​African diaspora define the narrator’s mother’s aspirations to connect with others,

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  133 similar to Kiki’s desire to connect in On Beauty, and they also influence her daughter’s vision of history as well her relationship to Tracey and other members of the communities in her school and council estate. Thus, she inculcates in her daughter not only the value of key cultural elements, such as the symbolic meaning of the Sankofa bird, but also teaches her some of the darkest episodes in the history of slavery, Caribbean diaspora, and African Americans. These episodes about the traumatic histories of slavery and segregation, which the narrator’s mother regards as keystones in her own and her daughter’s education, give the latter “night terrors” (p.200). In the first of the nightmares she recounts, she sees herself as part of the Harlem Renaissance, in a scene that reverses the wrongs of history, eliminates racism and pain from the collective history of the African diaspora originating in slavery and replayed in segregation: we had […] never been called ugly or stupid, never entered theatres by the back door, drunk form separate water fountains or taken our seats at the back of any bus. None of our people ever swung by their necks from a tree, or found themselves suddenly thrown overboard, shackled, in dark water. (p.100) This dream eventually turns into a nightmare when the narrator sees the audience expects her, “their sister, to sing”, but she is not able to produce any sound, which makes her “wet the bed” at age 11 (p.100). Nightmares have been recurrently associated with the repetition of traumatic episodes and the impossibility to consciously narrate them (Caruth 1996, pp.3–​4) and for Baillie (2020, pp.298–​9), “these recollections signify both her personal history and the written history of trauma bequeathed by her mother”. The narrator’s impossibility to speak could signify a further manifestation of trauma, but this episode also illustrates the narrator’s impossibility of establishing a dialogue with her past, at least, at this stage in her life: reading and learning about these traumatic historical events has left an indelible mark upon her, but she cannot yet integrate the multiple juxtapositions of the memories this nightmare evokes. Throughout Swing Time, the narrator will refer to other nightmares in history that plague her dreams. In a flash forward to the first weeks of her job as personal assistant to Aimee, the narrator finds herself in Hampstead Heath after having been questioned about her lack of openness and comfort in her new position. Aimee and the narrator visit Kenwood House, where two pictures on display make the narrator recall and transmit two interconnected (hi)stories that her mother had often told her while growing up. The first is the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, portrayed in Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay and her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray by David Martin.3 The narrator describes Dido Elizabeth Belle’s story as

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134  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory a tale […] about a brown girl –​the daughter of a Caribbean slave and her British master –​brought to England and raised in this big white house by well-​to-​do relatives, one of whom happened to be the Lord Chief Justice. (p.112) As Gretchen H. Gerzina (2020, pp.161, 178) indicates, the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle has been the source of “fascination” in recent times. But, as Gerzina (2020, pp.167, 178) argues, there is evidence that counters “the assumption that Dido was born a slave” and concludes that this story “challenges us to rethink what we thought we knew about Britain’s black past, about women like [Dido], and about their lives in unexpected places”. Although the narrator’s account may contain some inaccuracies according to recent research, what comes to the fore is how she challenges the way the tour guide in Kenwood House tells the story drawing arguments from her mother: she questions a “leaflet” that claims that Dido’s parents “had ‘met in the Caribbean’, as if they’d been strolling through a beach resort at cocktail hour” (p.112); and against Dido’s connection in the popular imaginary to the abolition of slavery and the trial of the Zong, overseen by her “compassionate uncle”, she replicates her mother’s scepticism towards the possibility “that a great-​ uncle’s compassion for his brown great-​niece had the power to end slavery in England” (p.112). The first argument recalls how White Teeth criticises the retelling of Captain Charlie Durham’s abuse of Ambrosia as a tale of love that masks the racism at the core of colonialism and how British history has refashioned problematic events of its past (Smith 2000, pp.356, 363). The second argument presents how the story of Dido is connected in the popular imagination to the abolition of slavery and the trial, overseen by Dido’s uncle, of the captain of the Zong, a ship lost at sea en route for Jamaica and from which hundreds of sick slaves were thrown overboard so that insurance could be claimed on its human cargo. The case of the Zong testifies to “the savagery of slavery” and recent accounts of the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle and her uncle “minimize the legacy of slavery for Britain”, emphasising abolitionist causes and situating slavery in the past, with no present consequences (Andrews 2016, p.453). These interconnected histories thus allow the narrator to scrutinise the retellings and misrepresentations in the history of black Britain. The narrator claims thus admits: “I knew [the story of the Zong] intimately, it had sailed so many times through my childhood nightmares” (p.112). These histories are haunting even more so because it is impossible for the narrator to let go of sustained transhistorical losses that are still palpable in the present. Even when the narrator’s mother tries to make her daughter see the achievements of the multiple African diasporas and glimmers of hope (p.100), the narrator clings to this overwhelming sense of loss, which will shape her level of engagement with others and with the present. Besides the chance to expose this loss and the need

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  135 to redress dominant versions of history, the case of the Zong begins a more thorough exploration of multidirectionality in the novel. By telling a more accurate version of the story of the Zong, the narrator expects Aimee to side with the truth. Instead Aimee chooses to believe that Dido’s story indeed illustrates “the power of love” (p.112) and further dilutes the historical and contemporary consequences of these events when she replies: “ ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ […] ‘If my dad hadn’t died young? No way I’d be here. It’s the pain. Jews, gays, women, blacks –​the bloody Irish. That’s our secret fucking strength’ ” (p.113). In addition to this “sentimental readings of history” (p.113), Aimee offers an unethical reading of multidirectional memory. For Michael Rothberg, multidirectional memory juxtaposes the often traumatic histories of different collectives, bringing them together through an “ethics of comparison” rather than seeing them as being in competition (2009, p.2; 2011, p.525). Aimee confronts in the story not only the individual loss of her father but also the insidious trauma of having been sexually abused as a child and a teenager (p.67). Swing Time does not belittle Aimee’s trauma, particularly the latter, but the narrator presents Aimee as a woman who does not situate herself ethically within historical and global instances of suffering. Aimee approaches these traumas via her own personal experiences of loss and the novel almost parodies her universalisation of pain, and criticises her hasty identification with historical and transhistorical traumas and, later on, her whimsical efforts to redress insidious trauma by building a school to educate and empower girls in Africa. Lucy Bond and Step Craps (2020, p.11) argue that addressing traumatic histories “holds the potential to generate transhistorical and transcultural forms of empathy and understanding”, which “would require a collective willingness to adopt a critical perspective on history, and to acknowledge different forms of traumatic experience without appropriating them”. Aimee, who is said to disregard structural differences and places herself at the centre of each and every story, is in no position to adapt the critical view that Bond and Craps specify. The narrator believes that Aimee “[finds] her own story universally applicable” (p.140). During a night out, Aimee tells her: you spend your life apologizing! It’s like you’ve got survivor’s guilt or something! But we’re not in Bendigo any more! You’ve left Bendigo –​ right? […] Sometimes you gotta get out –​get the fuck out of Bendigo! Thanks be to Christ we both have. Long ago. Bendigo is behind us. (p.140) This rather confessional moment reveals Aimee’s conflicting relationship with her past and reinforces her belief in post-​traumatic growth (Tedeschi and Calhoun 1995), which in her current position adopts a neoliberal approach: she can afford to escape her origins and she believes herself to hold a moral compass that can guide others away from trauma.

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136  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory Aimee is only able to understand the narrator’s relationship to her past with a blithe disregard for the social, economic, and cultural differences between herself and others. Therefore, her juxtaposition of the multidirectional memories of historical and collective traumas is further disputed by her inability to recognise others outside her own set of boundaries. Aimee’s lack of a critical view on history and politics is a repeated concern throughout the novel but it is decidedly exposed when she and her team start the project of building a school for girls in The Gambia. The narrator’s mother questions Aimee’s “passion” for “poverty reduction”, which lacks any sound political compromise, and believes she is restaging the colonial image of “White woman saves Africa” (pp.152–​ 3). The narrator herself casts doubts upon Aimee’s intentions when she underlines Aimee’s participation in neoliberal discourses (p.111) and when she reveals that during the same night out in which Aimee drunkenly diagnoses her with survivor’s guilt, she admits: “I can’t remember where it is right now, tiny country…in the west? But she [her assistant Judy] thinks that might be a really interesting direction for us to go in, it’s got potential” (pp.141–​2). Aimee’s “ethical adventure” (p.204) in The Gambia is thus discredited as an exploitative commercial strategy imbricated with power that will be finished when “she gets bored” (p.253) or whenever a more fashionable cause becomes more deserving (p.299). Baillie (2020, p.294) argues that “the nameless narrator’s journey in Swing Time illustrates how global inequalities can be exploited to facilitate an individualistic, neocolonial odyssey of celebrity and servitude”. Nevertheless, within this discouraging global dynamic, the narrator will attempt to develop her own ethical journey, trying to ascertain all the wrongs and suffering of the village where the school is built and hoping to finally connect with an imagined motherland. Swing Time frames the narrator’s journey to The Gambia within the section “Middle Passage”, which also narrates in parallel chapter her teenage years and sexual awakening. These two moments in her life are presented as journeys of self-​discovery that confront her with the workings of inequality at a glocal and a global level. The continuous movements to which Aimee’s life subjects her eventually lead her to connect with some of the places in the (hi)stories her mother had told her throughout her childhood. The first image of The Gambia, however, is one of happiness. Here the narrator reconnects with her passion for dance, which gives her a certain sense of belonging (p.165). The narrator’s trips to The Gambia allow her, nevertheless, to begin to work through some of the burdensome memories that have haunted her since childhood. Even if she had previously dismissed what she termed “diaspora tourism” (p.177), once in The Gambia she asks Lamin, one of the teachers and mediators in the village, to go to the famous compound of the rebel slave […] to see at last, with my own eyes, the shore from which the ships had left, carrying

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  137 their cargo of humans, destined for my mother’s island, and then on to the Americas and Britain, […] a triangle that had produced –​ among its numberless consequences –​my own existence. (pp.176–​7) If her mother had seen her life as an example of precarious uprootedness, her multiple visits to The Gambia allow her to better locate herself within the histories that define her. As argued elsewhere (Pérez Zapata 2019, p.72), the narrator’s “encounter with a history of displacement grounds her in a movement across time and space” that is essentially to transhistorical, transatlantic, transnational, and glocal. In The Gambia, however, the narrator is soon seen as a foreigner who “had brought with her only weight and sorrow” since she only asks “morbid” questions (p.221) and compared to previous volunteers and aid workers seems unable to have “fun” (p.223). The narrator repeatedly asserts her willingness to stay in the present (pp.165, 207), but she carries with her the “shadow” of the traumatic histories and finds it difficult to connect with this particular time and place. As Rothberg (2009, p.92) explains, colonial ideologies are designed to separate collectives, but considering Fanon’s contention that “the traumas associated with racism create a psychically and socially relational intimacy across groups” (ibid.), could revert some of such isolation. The narrator approaches her trip to The Gambia as an opportunity to connect with her ancestors and with others who are similar to her, who she sees almost as equals, especially Hawa. But villagers in The Gambia regard her as a white woman (p.417) because of her lighter skin colour and her British nationality. Thus, the narrator is forced to resituate herself within history and global context. This situation does not allow for relativist or comparatist views. Rather, it begs us to consider the urgent need for situated readings. In this sense, the narrator’s trip to The Gambia works both as the narrator’s attempt to locate herself within the larger histories of her past and the dislocation that her present identity represents for others. One of the ways in which the narrator attempts to better situate herself within the present of The Gambia is by connecting what she observes with her knowledge about Jamaica and her mother’s family. In the village in The Gambia, the narrator reports “I saw deprivation, injustice, poverty […] polygamy, misogyny, motherless children (my mother’s island childhood, only writ large, enshrined in custom)” (p.222). She establishes multidirectional connections between Jamaica and Africa, and in this process she becomes closer not only to her immediate reality, but also to her mother because very similarly to the way she perceived her mother as theorising history and the realities of their present, the narrator researches The Gambia and ends up feeling a homicidal fury, adolescent in nature, towards the IMF and the World Bank, the Dutch who’d bought the slaves, the local chiefs

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138  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory who’d sold them, and many other distant mental abstractions to which I could do no practical damage. (p.249) The narrator’s connection to her multiple origins within the contemporary context of The Gambia and the prolonged consequences of colonial rule up to the present allow for a multidirectional reading of memories and their connection to present forms of suffering. But unlike her mother, who channels her anger into her political career, she does not know how to use that anger and purposefully “looks away” (p.249) from the reality of the village. If The Embassy of Cambodia alluded to a “vague impatience” with past suffering, Swing Time signals a more palpable impatience with suffering, past and present, and shortens the distances with the places that embody such suffering. Although the village in The Gambia already allows the narrator to juxtapose histories of suffering and grasp a sense of belonging through her connection to the joy of dance, it will be the visit to Juffure and Fort James Island (Kunta Kinteh Island), which allows her to reflect more openly about the pain endured by generations of Africans, that gains significance as one of the central episodes in this late middle passage: I tried to put myself in a meditative frame of mind. To picture the ships in the water, the human property walking up the gangplanks, the brave few who took their chances and leapt into the water, in a doomed attempt to swim to shore. But every image had a cartoon thinness to it. […] All paths lead back there, my mother had always told me, but now that I was here, in this storied corner of the continent, I experienced it not as an exceptional place but as an example of a general rule. Power had preyed on weakness here: all kinds of power –​local, racial, tribal, royal, national, global, economic –​on all kinds of weakness, stopping at nothing, not even at the smallest girl child. But power does that everywhere. The world is saturated in blood. Every tribe has their blood-​soaked legacy: here was mine. I waited for whatever cathartic feeling people hope to experience in such places, but I couldn’t make myself believe the pain of my tribe was uniquely gathered here, in this place, the pain was too obviously everywhere, this just happened to be where they’d placed the monument. (p.316) As Baillie (2020, p.300) comments, this passage shows that “Trauma is not necessarily attributable to one source as power is trans-​historical, transnational, and transtemporal in its manifestations”. Thus, she continues (ibid.) “For Smith’s narrator, the borderless saturation of power is so ancient, so deep and so wide it cannot be distilled into one site of

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  139 remembrance”. The question, then, remains how such loss can be productively remembered. This location and place in time should encourage the remembrance of collective histories, but the global entanglements of colonialism and slavery lead the narrator to a saturation that makes it difficult for her to fully experience the significance of that particular place of remembrance. Stef Craps (2013, pp.61–​3) elaborates on Derrida’s concept of “mid-​mourning” to account for the difficulty of mourning these historical losses. The analysis of postcolonial texts that deal with traumatic episodes and slavery, such as the case of the Zong, leads him to conclude that “the traumas sustained by the formerly colonized and enslaved are collective in nature and impossible to locate in an event that took place at a singular, historically specific moment in time”. These events, for Craps, remain “in a permanent state of tension” and become “a continual working-​over of history”, thus becoming a history that permanently haunts the present. In an argument that also ties in with mourning, John McLeod (2020, p.458) suggests that slave narratives in black British writing attempt to answer, among others, the following question: “how do we begin to mourn those who went before us, forgotten or misrepresented, destroyed by the nation we seek to claim as our own?”. The narrator of Swing Time hopes that getting closer to the sites of the foundational trauma of slavery may allow her to better work through the sustained losses that she must live with. However, her experience in The Gambia lays bare hat there is no easy answer to the question of how to mourn such an insurmountable loss. The narrator’s return to one of the places of this original/​foundational trauma does not result then in the cathartic mourning process she expected. When the guide to the fort takes them to the “last resort” in Kunta Kinteh Island he tells visitors: “You will now feel the pain” (p.317). But the narrator does not/​cannot further comment on the pain this particular place should cause visitors beyond her realisation of the expansive nature of the pain of colonialism. After this anti-​epiphanic moment, there is an abrupt cut to the narrator’s observation of Lamin and Aimee’s ongoing relationship and this pain is only briefly addressed again shortly after in the café near the museum, where, surrounded by souvenirs and “NEVER AGAIN” signs, the narrator listens to “uneven conversations that could not decide what they were: the heavy reflections of visitors to a historical trauma or the light cocktail chatter of people on their beach holiday” (p.318). The narrator hints at the banalisation of trauma but, more importantly, this account points to the coexistence of pain with the dynamics and rhythms of everyday lives and how the memory of this pain is quickly forgotten within the workings of historical amnesia. This passage, in line with Smith’s previous works, ultimately prompts us to think about all the implicated subjects in processes of remembering and forgetting and to ask how, if at all possible, this loss is mourned. The narrative structure, which alternates between past and present, shows how this loss has permeated through time and further encourages

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140  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory us to look not only to the prolonged historical consequences of slavery and colonialism, but also to those other instances of suffering in the present that could help us understand this loss in a more multidirectional manner. First, the clash of the educational project with the rhythms and exigencies of the village in The Gambia, the school’s project entanglements with corrupt governments, and the fact that several men from the village have taken “the back way”, a Gambian expression that refers to the routes of illegal migration, and the mention –​albeit in passing –​ to the traumatic experiences of refugees (p.393), create a sense of frustration that connects with the repetition and return cycles to which the narrator’s mother alluded. The narrator’s current context, her observation of the (re)actions of the privileged circles to which Aimee belongs, and the shadow of her own family’s history expose that the end of slavery is a chimera, as Gupta (2007, p.34) argued. Second, Swing Time is also multidirectional in its juxtaposition throughout the novel of the historical and collective traumas of the African diaspora and the insidious violence against women. In this sense, the novel continues the approach established in The Embassy of Cambodia, which juxtaposes Fatou’s individual story of rape and migration with historical traumas. However, while The Embassy of Cambodia has a more direct and raw approach to the memories of suffering, Swing Time is sometimes vaguer, mostly on account of the narrator’s ambiguous telling. The only explicit traumatic experience of abuse against women is Aimee’s trauma of abuse and rape and the others, mostly those affecting black girls, are only hinted at if not completely silenced, thus laying bare the power structures where these traumatic stories are located and the subordination of the stories of black women to those of white women. Despite this imbalance, the narrator portrays Aimee as being truly involved in redressing patriarchal abuse of power over women. Aimee’s traumatic past becomes the driving force to build the school for girls in The Gambia. Aimee alludes to the insidiousness and universality of abuse: look, it happened to me in Bendigo, it happened to me in New York, it happens everywhere. It’s not about your “local context” –​this is everywhere. I had a big family, cousins and uncles coming and going –​I know what goes on. And I’ll bet you a million dollars you go into any classroom of thirty girls anywhere in this world and there’s going to be one at least who has a secret she can’t tell. (pp.407–​8) Aimee may be here redeemed from her failure at grasping a more ethical approach to global histories of suffering, but this is hindered by the shadow of this project being a mere commercial strategy. The narrator, however, connects Aimee’s story with history through her mother’s vision of repetition and return: first, by asking herself “what happened to the

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  141 girls on the plantations –​or in the Victorian workhouses?” (p.67); then by commenting: I often thought I saw her again, this girl who lives everywhere at all times in history, who is sweeping the yard or pouring out tea or carrying somebody else’s baby on her hip and looking over at you with a secret she can’t tell. (p.408) The centrality of Aimee’s narrative in the narrator’s life and her analysis of historical events could overshadow those instances when violence against girls was being inflicted much closer to home. Baillie (2020, p.298) highlights two episodes in the novel that the narrator is only able to recall as an adult, thus following trauma’s predicament of belatedness (p.66). The first is a game in school that quickly escalates into something more serious “inflicted to black girls only”; the second, the suspicion that Tracey was abused by her father. The narrator describes how she arrives once to Tracey’s house and sees Louie leaving quickly and Tracey “straightening her crop top until it once again fully covered her bra” (p.264). The narrator’s mother also suspects that “something serious happened to [Tracey]” (p.234) and later on tells her daughter “we should have done more –​to protect her” and alludes to how “lucky” the narrator was for having a “wonderful father”, something which Tracey did not have (p.394). The narrator further alludes to her friend’s secrecy (p.395), which could be read in light of Diana Russell’s (1986) labelling of incestuous abuse as the “the secret trauma”. This secrecy, which may respond to the impossibility to narrate this shameful trauma, is complicated in Swing Time by the narrator when she tells her mother that she is “misremembering” Tracey’s traumatic past (p.394), when she deems Tracey’s stories about her father both true and untrue (p.36), an ambiguous tale that may nevertheless reveal the truth of her suffering, and her own blurring of fact and fiction. The novel acknowledges the coexistence of multiple, global histories of traumatic abuse of women but instead of setting them up in juxtaposition, Swing Time continues to draw attention to the inequalities of power in histories of suffering, to whom is able to tell these stories of suffering –​not because narrativising these events may lead towards healing but rather because Aimee’s narrative, as that of a well-​known white woman, becomes most representative –​, and to complex processes of remembering. Yet, despite the narrator’s own failings and the power imbalance in the narratives she inhabits, Swing Time allows for the multidirectional juxtaposition of histories of racial and sexual abuse and draws attention to the historical amnesia surrounding collective episodes in the history of black and diasporic subjects and the silences surrounding cases of abuse against women in contemporary times.

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142  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory Swing Time further complicates the narration of trauma and memory by the narrator’s continuous allusions to a permanent state of unreality. This state of unreality could be connected to the artificial life that Aimee and the world of fame represent. However, this unreality rather speaks of the profound disconnection from the lives of others and how ready people are to contain them, or rather, forget them, thus curtailing the possibilities of relationality and of being exposed to multidirectional accounts of suffering. Several parts of the novel allude, for example, to the surreal atmosphere the narrator encounters when she starts working for Aimee, not only because she has been a musical idol of hers for years, but also because Aimee displaces her to the very centre, both in terms of physical location and ideology (pp.102–​3). Aimee, and the world of privilege she represents, exist almost as an illusion, but one into which the narrator, nevertheless, allows herself to be swept into even as she fights her feelings of unbelonging into a class and location that seem almost foreign. The same chapter that discloses the narrator’s initial insecurities around Aimee and her world narrates their visit to Kenwood House, the nightmarish history of slavery, and Aimee’s neoliberal credo, which lays bare this world’s disconnection to the structural problems faced by those who have been historically decentred. Aimee and her team’s involvement in The Gambia particularly allow for an exploration of the problematics of relating to others’ suffering and to the difficulties to grasp the economic differences with The Gambia, a seemingly impossible empathic process that is described as a “failure” of the imagination by Aimee’s friends back in New York, and who further allude to the impossibility of translating “one reality [into] the other” (pp.175–​6). This state of unreality also applies to the narrator. In The Gambia, the villagers know “how little reality [Westerners] can take” (p.178) and she feels she is treated as if she were a child who cannot confront the uncomfortable facts and truths of the world. The preparations for Aimee’s arrival to the village, which remove the chaos the narrator had experienced days before, transform the place into “a state of unreality” (p.194). The narrator, moreover, admits that she exists outside the reality of The Gambia and that she is unprepared to accept it. Comparing herself to Fernando Carrapichano, the project manager, she comments: “the way he understood the world was so genuinely alien to me that it felt as if he occupied a parallel reality, which I didn’t doubt was the real one, but which I couldn’t ‘speak to’ ” (p.195). In addition, their stay in The Gambia throws Aimee’s crew into what they now regard as the real, a confrontation which is expected to alter their conception of the world. Upon arriving to Heathrow airport, Granger exclaims: “None of this looks real to me now! Something’s changed. Can’t be the same after seeing what I’ve seen!”. But, the narrator comments, “in a few days he was exactly the same, we all were” (p.298), because “If London was unreal, if New York was unreal, they were powerful stage shows: as soon as we were back inside them they not only seemed real but the only possible reality” (p.299). Later on, the

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  143 narrator continues to perceive her own reality in terms of fiction, and a rather closed one for that matter, and she understands others mostly in fictional terms: she describes her world in terms of “scenes”, and others in her life as “subsidiary characters” (p.336). She panics when her reality is invaded by these characters because they upset the way she narrates the world to her own self and others. This compartmentalised view of the world allows her to cope by being “responsible for [her]self” only (p.338) and she ends up “interpret[ing] everything personally” (p.449), thus re-​ enacting Aimee’s neoliberal beliefs (p.449). It is not clear if the narrator is mimicking Aimee, moving as she does as a shadow to others, or if Smith is, once more, presenting a highly contradictory character. Although the narrator’s account may certainly respond to Smith’s predilection for ambiguous characters and storylines, her multiple contradictions could also attest to the way she constructs her world in-​ between the borders of fact and fiction as well as to a more individualistic way of understanding the world that allows her to compartmentalise different realities and, more particularly, life at the village in The Gambia and her and others’ experiences growing up. Hence, Swing Time recalls how The Embassy of Cambodia draws attention to the lines or circle we establish around others’ suffering and to the anxieties that may arise when we become active witnesses, thus potentially increasing our own risk at suffering (Margalit 2004). The narrator’s attitude could be justified by the saturation not of power, but rather of the suffering she sees across time and space. Nevertheless, this stands in contradiction with the possibilities of multidirectional memory, and thus Swing Time exposes the ways in which multidirectional memory could be misused and the unpreparedness of subjects in the West to ethically integrate the suffering of others. Multidirectionality in the novel further translates in Swing Time as relationality, an entanglement that Irene Visser (2014) analyses in connection to Ella Shohat’s (2006, p.251) understanding of relationality as the possibilities to move from “reductive tendencies” by way of, among others, “ambivalences and negotiations”, which aptly fits Smith’s narration. Written in the first person, Swing Time becomes an exploration of the attempts and failures to see the inherent relationality among subjects and the (hi)stories of others. The narrator is burdened by the multidirectional memories of the histories that her mother transmits to her and the detached observation of the suffering that occurs during the different times of the novel. The non-​linear structure forces the narrator to face past and present accounts of history and brings to the fore the deeply engrained consequences of colonialism across time and space. Swing Time ends up asking similar questions to the one raised by The Embassy of Cambodia: what can be done with the suffering of the distant past? How does it connect to suffering in the present? How can collective, historical, and individual traumatic memories clash and blend in global and glocal contexts? The answers are equally complex and ambiguous.

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144  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory The first-​ person narration may be taken as exercise to address an impossible working through, one that particularly reveals the ambivalences and contradictions that plague the narrator’s self and her memories. More crucially, the multiple references to more or less ethical approaches to multidirectional memories allow Swing Time to expose, albeit not to fully resolve, the need to rethink the multiple connections of histories of suffering and to draw attention to the difficulty of being ethical witnesses to the suffering of others. The most hopeful resolution that the novel offers is the narrator’s improved relationship with Fernando Carrapichano and her willingness to approach Tracey with a changed attitude, as Baillie also asserts (2020, p.303), which may indicate the possibility that by “form[ing] essential relationships with others” (Visser 2014, n.p.) the narrator has worked through some of her traumas. Thus, Swing Time ends with a call to engage with relational, ethically multidirectional approaches to traumatic suffering as well as with more feminist perspectives on trauma, which as Laura Brown contends (1995, p.109) “requires […] the construction of relationships based on mutuality and respect instead of power and dominance”. The end of the narrator’s submissive relationship to Aimee may be regarded as the catalyst that frees her to have more grounded, ethical relationships, but it is the juxtapositions of the recollection of the historical, collective, and individual histories of the African diaspora and of women, the acceptance of these memories without the tremendous burden that allows the narrator to take steps towards connecting with others. Although the form of Swing Time may not always be as effective as that of The Embassy of Cambodia, it is still a powerful novel in its representation of the myriad histories of suffering and a commentary on the way we witness realities of suffering and the choice to become responsible for others. Even if the narrator lives in a world of tension, a consequence both of the state of mid-​mourning that Craps associates to the memories of slavery and colonialism and of the insidiousness of their consequences in contemporary societies, she is able to approach others more ethically in the end. Swing Time thus confirms Smith’s narrative commitment to reveal the tensions between forgetting and remembering, historical amnesia and the burdens of traumatic histories, and thus expose the silences that should make us interrogate the contemporary world from an ethical stance that focuses on global and, more pressingly, glocal contexts. The heightened emphasis on the silences through history and around us, the constant allusions to the need to be better situated within the times and spaces that define different subjects, and the possibilities and misuses of multidirectional memories, allow for a reading of Swing Time that is in line with decolonising views of trauma. The narrator’s memories in Swing Time aim to bridge the gaps between cultures, between selves, and above all, between times. It is not only necessary to juxtapose memories of suffering, it is imperative that these juxtapositions are placed together ethically and that the dialogues that they create do not stem from an

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Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory  145 individualistic, non-​relational view of the self and world. The narration of the nightmares and haunting power of colonial history, the realities of former colonial countries, the recollection of Tracey’s suffering, and even Aimee’s, call for a shift in the way we witness and talk about trauma in postcolonial times towards accounts with global, historical perspectives and greater awareness of situatedness.

Notes 1 A previous version of this section was published in 2015 in the journal article Decolonizing Trauma: A Study of Multidirectional Memory in Zadie Smith’s “The Embassy of Cambodia”. Humanities, 4 (4), 523–​34. 2 Smith directly criticised the UK’s Home Office treatment of refugees and asylum seekers and more specifically their detention in Yarl’s Wood during the campaign Women for Refugee Women (see Martinson 2014). 3 For a discussion of the painting’s origins and history see Gerzina (2020), pp.171–​3.

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146  Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory Fassin, D. and Rechtman, R., 2009. The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press. Felman, S., 1992. Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching. In: S. Felman and D. Laub, eds. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge, 1–​56. Forna, A., 2011. The Memory of Love. London: Bloomsbury. Gentleman, A., 2019. The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment. London: Guardian Faber. Gerzina, G.H., 2020. The Georgian Life and Modern Afterlife of Dido Elizabeth Belle. In: G.H. Gerzina, ed. Britain’s Black Past. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press161–​78. Gilroy, P., [1993] (2000) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gilroy, P., 2013. 12 Years A Slave: In Our ‘Post-​ Racial’ Age the Legacy of Slavery Lives On. The Guardian, 10 November, www.theguardian.com/​ commentisfree/​2013/​nov/​10/​12-​years-​a-​slave-​mcqueen-​film-​legacy-​slavery [Accessed 1 December 2020]. Gupta, R., 2007. Enslaved: The New British Slavery. London: Portobello. Gupta, R., 2013. Look Around You –​Modern Day Slavery Is More Common Than You Might Think. The Guardian, 22 November, www.theguardian. com/​commentisfree/​2013/​nov/​22/​modern-​slavery-​south-​london-​exploitation [Accessed 1 December 2020]. Hirsch, M., 2008. The Generation of Postmemory. Poetics Today, 29 (1), 103–​28. Hoffman, K., 2005. Poetry after Auschwitz –​Adorno’s Dictum. German Life and Letters, 58 (2), 182–​94. Jansen, B., 2018. Narratives of Community in the Black British Short Story. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Kiernan, B., (1996) 2002. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-​79. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kiernan, B., 2012. Twentieth Century Genocides. In: R. Gellately and B. Kiernan, eds. The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Korte, B., 2019. Glimpses of a Divided Kingdom in Zadie Smith’s Short Stories of the 2010s. In: B. Korte and L. Lojo-​Rodríguez, eds. Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 21–​38. LaCapra, D., 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Luckhurst, R., 2008. The Trauma Question. London; New York: Routledge. Margalit, A., 2004. The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Martinson, J., 2014. Zadie Smith Calls for The End to Women’s ‘Walking Nightmare’ At Yarl’s Wood. The Guardian, 20 February, www.theguardian. com/​books/​2014/​feb/​10/​zadie-​smith-​yarls-​wood-​detention-​centre-​campaign [Accessed 1 December 2020]. McLeod, J. 2020. Reinventing the Nation: Black and Asian British Representations. In: S. Nasta and M.U. Stein, eds. The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 453–​67. Opondo, S.O. and Shapiro, M.J., 2018. Subalterns ‘speak’: Migrant Bodies, and the Performativity of the Arts. Globalizations, 16 (4), 575–​91.

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Conclusion The Forms, Complexities, and Contradictions of Postcolonial Trauma

Zadie Smith’s narratives are inherently ambiguous. Readers and scholars will not find definitive answers to the myriad questions that plague her texts. Rather, Smith’s texts constantly interrogate our contemporary postcolonial world and offer multiple complex perspectives from which we can examine the insidiousness of colonialism and the ways in which postcolonial subjects are affected by colonialism’s traumatic consequences over the centuries. Although Smith locates in colonial expansion and slavery part of the foundational trauma for African and Caribbean peoples and their diasporas, as becomes increasingly clear in Swing Time (2016), the struggles of diasporic and postcolonial subjects in Smith’s texts do not refer to a single, original trauma in the past: the narratives here analysed show that for Smith the real conflict lies in the tensions between past and present, between remembering and forgetting, between colonial pasts and (post)​colonial presents. Colonialism and slavery in Smith’s works are two central events which have had a ripple effect, and which have transformed their traumatising and traumatic natures across time and space thus creating a shock wave that persists in contemporary contexts. These foundational traumas coexist in Smith’s narratives with other forms of suffering and oppression, with loss, and with other “original traumas”. As the first chapter in this monograph explained, original trauma is defined in White Teeth (2000) in terms of the cycles of repetition and return within the diasporic experience of the Iqbal family, yet applicable to other families in the same novel as well as others in several of her subsequent works. Smith’s idea of original trauma does not depart so much from more canonical definitions of trauma as a belated experience that is prone to unconscious repetitions (Caruth 1996). Nevertheless, the definition of original trauma questions the terminology used to refer to the experiences of diasporic subjects while still ascribing to canonical definitions of trauma. This dependent relationship between Western ideas on trauma and the difficulty to name the experience of diasporic subjects through the terms established by Western traditions could be regarded as establishing the bases for Smith’s subsequent inclusion of ambiguity. Thus, the definition of original trauma draws attention to the suffering of

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Conclusion  149 diasporic and migrant collectives found at the centre of former colonial powers and the difficulties of establishing a relationship that is not based on the dominance of centre over margins. From her very first novel, Smith interrogates the historical and political contexts in which this trauma originates and explores the continuous traumatising potential of neocolonial ideologies. While White Teeth devotes some time to define the traumas that affect postcolonial subjects and the criticism of psychoanalytical methods of coping and healing, a tendency that Smith continues throughout her work, the attention soon shifts to the contexts in which these traumatic experiences occur and the focus turns from the individual to the collective traumatic histories of exile and diaspora, making it clear that in postcolonial contexts it is impossible to disentangle individual and structural problems. By placing the concept of original trauma together with the heavy emphasis dominant discourses place on the origins of others, and returning time and again to colonialism and slavery as defining events in global history with insidiously far-​reaching consequences up to our times, Smith redresses the historical amnesia that has blinded former colonial forces and details the tensions of forgetting and remembering for both victims and perpetrators. Smith’s narratives imply continuous acts of remembrance: she does not allow readers to forget where the traumas of the characters she depicts in her novels originate and she asks us to look for the significance of traumatic events, not in the events themselves, but in the “elsewhere” (Smith 2012, p.201), the larger contexts and ideological frameworks in which these events take place. Through her characters, the different exercises in focalisation, and the numerous commentaries on psychoanalysis and trauma, Smith directs us towards new ways of reading, seeing, and understanding traumatic experiences. She does not invalidate some of the predicaments on which trauma theory rests, but she reframes the way in which trauma has been for long understood as a rather more individual matter, focused on a single event and thus sides with those theories that aim to infuse trauma theories with postcolonial perspectives. Therefore, original trauma can only be understood as a series of traumas with multiple origins within colonial, racist, and neoliberal ideologies and thus with different coping mechanisms that cannot exclusively follow Western ways of coping. The different narratives analysed in the previous chapters further lay bare how Smith has changed the way she approaches trauma, from the more humorous tone of White Teeth and On Beauty (2005) as regards psychoanalysis, to the crude and yet parodic portrayal of trauma in NW (2012), and the more restrained and direct juxtapositions of suffering in The Embassy of Cambodia (2013) and Swing Time. The explicit references to Freud and psychoanalysis found in White Teeth and On Beauty and its association to privileged, white, Western traditions give way to more serious portrayals of traumatic realities in later works.

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150 Conclusion The obsession of the Chalfens in White Teeth, and of Joyce in particular, and Claire’s long-​ standing involvement with therapy in On Beauty, situate psychoanalysis outside the range of experiences of others and which can open to be further misused to reduce these others to reified data. The dissection of others through psychoanalysis is highly parodied in White Teeth through Joyce Chalfen’s reading of otherness. She portrays herself as the saviour of the Iqbal brothers and despite her claim that Magid and Millat are traumatised on account of having been separated by their religions and cultures (p.434), her analysis focuses on their individual and familial contexts and does not include any form of self-​reflexivity. The almost caricaturesque construction of a character so reliant on psychoanalysis to understand herself and others does not completely invalidate some of the theories of psychoanalysis, which Smith uses time and again in her work without parodic intentions, but it discredits a decontextualised use of psychoanalysis that only serves as a tool for Western, privileged subjects. Joyce’s attitude one in which diasporic subjects are also regarded as objects of pity, is written as something out of place and time for the for multicultural reality that surrounds her. Even the arguments of those diasporic subjects such as Niece-​of-​Shame in White Teeth (p.80), who embrace psychoanalysis, are refuted as useless against the continuous anxieties that the struggle between past and present in which different generations are locked in. Alsana (ibid.) rejects the use of “the talking cure” as a solution for the problems that the generational gap with her and Clara’s husbands will cause and disputes the power of psychoanalysis to disentangle the complex histories the new generations will have to live with. Her argument, which proleptically announces the disagreements with the Chalfens’ imposition of psychoanalysis on her sons and its pointlessness, moves beyond the realm of the individual and acknowledges the complications that will arise because of their “rooted” histories. From the early pages of White Teeth, Smith thus establishes her vision of trauma as the entangled, and often labyrinthine, conflation of histories and stories and the confusing relationship with one’s roots. Her narratives, though the use and sometimes the abuse of the vocabulary of trauma question the language we employ to talk about trauma itself and what is left beyond mere words, which, in turn, could reframe issues of the unspeakable within trauma discourses, questioning not only the validity of “the talking cure”, but also whose responsibility it is to speak about colonial atrocities in the past and present. Whilst Smith’s narratives prove that there are some theoretical facets of trauma that could help articulate the pain of unbelonging and the suffering of generations of diasporic subjects as well as new migrants, the repeated use of the terms of trauma eventually renders them meaningless and thus make it evident that there has been a banalisation of trauma. The repeated mockery of psychoanalysis and the suspicious and ironic references to the “event” found in White Teeth, On Beauty, and NW suggest that the pervasive

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Conclusion  151 traumatic Zeitgeist of the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries may have often resulted in the misuse of the terms and theories of trauma. Not only has trauma become a “catchword” as Lucy Bond and Stef Craps contend (2020, p.142), but it has also come a point in which almost everything and everyone are read and/​or classified under the light of trauma. Such banalisation of trauma trivialises suffering. By no means should this lead to comparatist or relativist approaches. As has been shown, particularly in the third chapter through Rothberg’s (2009) multidirectional model of memory, establishing a hierarchy of suffering follows traditional discourses on trauma which are counterproductive when it comes to understanding others’ suffering. But there must be a greater situatedness. A heightened awareness of trauma and the ways in which it operates does not often translate in an increased recognition of others and, more importantly, in our responsibility for those others’ suffering. This current banalisation of trauma emerges, in part, from the continuous and even increasing focus on the individual. Postcolonial texts and postcolonial theories of trauma shift the focus towards the collective and structural and evidence how neoliberal and neocolonial ideologies further deepen the atomisation and separation of communities. Novels such as NW, which finds fault with the ubiquity of trauma, seem to denote the possibility of banalisation and further question how using canonical trauma theories that focus exclusively on the event and individual instances of suffering, and advocate for trauma’s bridging of peoples and cultures is ultimately futile. As the narrator in the novel asks readers, attention must be paid to the contexts and histories that shape characters. The different ways of narrating trauma share a political and decolonising aim. Nevertheless, Smith’s first novels seem more didactic at times in their commitment to dismantle the universal claims of psychoanalysis and the blatant ridicule of those who strictly adhere to its axioms to then move on to cruder and more contradictory accounts of trauma and traumatised selves. This progression in her way of narrating trauma has advanced the revision of earlier texts and thus, in hindsight, White Teeth has been re-​evaluated as a text which was not as celebratory as once thought it was –​a reassessment that is also influenced by the failures of multicultural discourses that were not as integrative as they claimed and which were not ready to remember and publicly acknowledge the violent colonial histories that centuries later led to plural, diasporic societies. Later works such as NW, and especially Keisha’s narrative, are deliberately narrated not only through references to trauma, but also by recurring to several of the key forms of narration often associated to the (re) telling of traumatic events: gaps in the narrative, non-​chronological time, fragmentation, and repetition. This more formal approach allows Smith to rewrite trauma and even to “write-​back” to the empire and the empire of trauma. If the traumatic Zeitgeist of our time inscribes all subjects within the ideological and cultural frameworks of trauma, these techniques help

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152 Conclusion NW to reveal a certain saturation with trauma narratives and specially the excessive emphasis on the event, one of the main criticisms of postcolonial trauma theories (Visser 2011; Craps 2014), and the need to unsettle canonical narration and show more versatile forms of writing trauma which are better adapted to postcolonial realities. The Embassy of Cambodia and Swing Time, although less experimental, respond to postcolonial forms of narrating trauma in their use of multidirectionality and thus continue with Smith’s decolonising agenda, particularly in the way in which global suffering conflates in postcolonial societies and how it lays bare the large chain of historical events that define the lives of postcolonial and diasporic subjects and how certain histories of suffering silence others. Smith’s progression in writing trauma thus answers to a more resolved aim to direct readers to the locations in time and space of defining historical and collective traumas and to situate her work within the political discourses that seek to unveil the colonial ways of thinking and being in our contemporary world. Smith’s form and style has been classified through different labels and in light of several traditions, some of which are of interest in their relationship to trauma narratives. James Wood (2000) labelled Smith’s style in White Teeth as “hysterical realism”, a subgenre in which Wood includes authors who, in a Dickensian voice, are “ashamed of silence”, and whose novels contain “stories and substories” that “clothe real people who could never endure the stories that happen to them”, and thus fail “at the level of morality”. Smith (2001) questions some of Wood’s remarks yet finds them “painfully accurate” because, as she affirms, these are indeed “hysterical times”. Smith’s words could be read beyond its meaning of uncontrolled emotion and in line with what hysteria signified for Freud and Breuer (1968), that is, the fact that a repressed memory might make a subject ill. This reading would replicate Smith’s ambivalent approach to psychoanalysis and thus show that such a psychoanalytical label can direct us to how her work repeatedly deals with the problematics of memory and silences in diasporic and postcolonial subjects as well as the insidious effects of the politics of forgetting that have led former colonial countries to live in the climate of “historical amnesia”, the “historical forgetfulness” that Stuart Hall (1978) claimed exists at the core of British society as a result of a “decisive mental repression” of “race and empire” (emphasis added). Smith’s work is indeed a reflection of these hysterical times precisely because she points to the silences present in the society she reflects in her writing and rather than being “ashamed of silence”, she shames the silences and wilful forgetfulness of post-​imperial societies. In addition, Wood’s criticism of endurance and morality in hysterical realism could be questioned when applied to Smith’s work. With regard to endurance, it should be noted that Smith’s narratives are often the reflection of the traumatising potential of neocolonial and neoliberal ideologies which are extremely deterministic in their social and cultural judgements and in which many of her characters struggle between

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Conclusion  153 integration, assimilation, and rejection. Furthermore, Smith’s writing shows that being born in a given environment does not automatically turn you into a victim, and those subjects who face individual and collective forms of trauma will develop symptoms of different degrees of intensity. Smith clearly delineates the physical and psychological barriers postcolonial subjects are faced with, but she rejects the systematic reading of some groups as traumatised, and thus as victims who are denied of any agency. Although there might be those, as Wood, who regard the mishaps and the layering of suffering as somewhat exaggerated, the traumatic experiences in the case of Smith’s narratives, rather work towards transmitting the pervasive cumulative effects of micro and macroaggressions as well as the burden of traumatic family pasts. In one of her essays, Smith (2018, p.370) speaks of some people as “survivalists” who seek to “endure” no matter how. I would argue that this description aptly describes how she portrays many of the characters in her fiction and thus, even when there are many variables that can quickly turn them into victims of abusive systems, her narratives bring to light the coping mechanisms and endurance of migrant subjects. While not all of them are remarkably resilient –​compare for example Samad in White Teeth and Fatou in The Embassy of Cambodia –​the characters’ journey from the impotence against oppression to endurance and working through is particularly compelling in its nuances and questioning of abusive systems of power. If there are some characters in White Teeth that seem to barely withstand the traumatising effects of colonialism across time, this is only in appearance. As the analysis of the attachments to and erasure of origins, and the layers of inherited traumas and postmemory show, these protagonists endure a lot of pain. The argument that characters such as those created in White Teeth would not be able to cope with the reality they are endowed with may signal a problem in the way postcolonial trauma is transmitted or, rather, a failure to accurately read it. While I agree to Wood’s contention that there is some excess in certain elements, I would locate these in the chance and intricate interconnections in White Teeth. The sustained traumatic events that characters endure in this specific novel and in subsequent fictions further lay bare moral concerns that can be perceived as the moral shortcomings of the characters and, more pressingly, as the failing, unethical social structures those characters inhabit. Thus, even if some of the characters in Smith’s narratives lack some morality –​which I believe Smith understands but does not justify, her reflection of suffering is in consonance with the ethical aspirations of postcolonial trauma theories. Continuing with Smith’s formal approaches, other critics have referred to the modernist and postmodernist techniques of some of her narratives. Such is the case of Matthew Paproth (2008, pp.9–​11), who argues that Smith’s novels are “determinedly modernist in form”, while the characters’ “pursuit of meaning and truth”, “fractured and chaotic world”, and “uncertainty of life” reveal a “postmodernist, postcolonial world, where

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154 Conclusion stable boundaries are constantly being obliterated and where meaning is constantly shown to be unstable”. Connecting to Smith’s own theoretical approaches, David James (2013, pp.205–​7) considers NW as an example of “wounded realism”, a label he takes from Smith’s (2009) essay “Two Directions for the Novel”. Smith contends in this essay that “if literary realism survived the assault of Joyce, it retained the wound” (p.79). James sees NW as “a modernist gesture of sorts”, and highlights the combination of “direct speech”, “interior thoughts conveyed by free indirect style” and narratorial “intrusions”, techniques which recur in Smith’s work although with varying degrees of experimentation, NW being the most innovative. James’s term of “wounded realism” proves then useful in conceiving of Smith’s fictions as trauma narratives: the wound is reflected then in the shape and content of Smith’s stories since the cumulative effects of traumatic histories, excess, chance, repetition, fragmentation, distrust in a world of continuous uncertainty, instability, and unreliability reflect the anxieties associated to realism in general and to Smith’s particular use of realistic, postcolonial trauma narratives. Ultimately, Smith’s wounded realism allows us to (de)construct meaning and accept the fluctuation of meaning in “hysterical”, chaotic times. Modernist techniques have been recurrently associated to trauma narratives, but as several studies contend, these are not the only stylistic features apt for the narration of trauma. The writing of postcolonial trauma takes various shapes in Smith’s works and the modernist, postmodernist, and fragmentary form that NW shares with more recognisable trauma novels is presented as one among many ways of narrating trauma. Less experimental fictions can be as effective in transmitting the aftermath of trauma and the overwhelming losses and absences that colonialism imposes as long as they maintain the prioritisation of history and attention to those unequal and potentially traumatising contexts in the present. Having said that, I would argue that Smith’s narration of trauma is more effective not when she overtly criticises psychoanalysis or the centrality of the event within Western understandings of trauma, but rather when she forces us to unearth the layers of historical traumas and attend to the silences which some of the characters lapse into and the deafening silence of amnesiac societies, which often occurs in those instances in which she resorts to ellipsis, aporia, and fracture. Although Smith’s explicit criticism of psychoanalysis is useful to denounce its enforced ubiquity, her narratives are more incisive in their portrayal of trauma when the texts require an effort to truly understand and engage with the (hi)stories of others, that is, when she requires readers to closely examine the muddled family, national, and global ties within (post)colonial pasts. More often than not, such examination will not result in the disentangling of the intertwined and complex suffering of the characters Smith depicts in her novel. Similarly, a close reading of her texts forces us to beware of the silences present in her diasporic characters and the muteness of former colonial centres, and the reader’s knowledge of some

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Conclusion  155 of the characters’ traumatic stories via narratorial comments and other characters’ accounts replicates trauma’s tension between knowing and not knowing and further expands this antithesis to those not wanting to know, to the deliberate ignorance of colonial pasts. The silences that surround colonial atrocities and postcolonial traumas may be then said to mirror the unspeakability of trauma. If for Judith Herman (1992, p.1) the survivors of trauma face a “conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud”, the postcolonial narratives of Smith show the bitter struggle of postcolonial subjects against a society that hinders their possibilities to speak up by silencing and even denying (post)colonial traumatic pasts which turn silence into a powerful oppressive tool (Borzaga 2012). There are some characters in Smith’s fictions that find in silence the only way to cope with their individual traumatic pasts, such as Clara in White Teeth or the narrator’s mother in Swing Time, even if these are always fused with other historical and collective traumas. Stef Craps (2013, p.55) sees silence as both a “symptom” and a “coping mechanism”, an ambivalence which Smith espouses in her narratives. Some characters may thus seem to exist between acting out and working through and, while their silences may be appropriate for their particular experience of trauma, the fact remains that the silences of these mothers deeply affect their daughters, who seek to grasp the suffering of previous generations. Some of the generational histories in Smith’s novels then ask readers to accompany the characters in the processes that will unearth untold familial and transnational histories. In the same way, the most convoluted stories, subplots and texts that attend to contradictions, ambiguities, and silences both at the level of character and narrative require an effort on part of the reader. The large amount of contradiction and ambiguity in Smith’s fictions opens up the space to interrogate the subtleties, incongruities, and possibilities of trauma theories and trauma novels and truly transmit the uncertainty of colonial pasts and postcolonial presents and futures. Narratively, Smith uses contradictions and ambivalences, together with repetition, non-​chronological time, and ellipsis, to convey how her characters navigate their pain of unbelonging and the feeling of being lost in a past that does not allow progress or in a present without a past, following erasure and ossification, to use McLeod’s (2005, p.41) terms. These strategies are conceived not as antithetical procedures but rather as two common coping mechanisms against historical oppression and the rejection of otherness. But, more frequently, Smith’s characters do not fully adhere to these extremes and most cannot be classified into clear-​cut categories. In fact, many of these characters often show traits of both coloniser (often via internalisation) and colonised within their own selves and thus accentuate the contradictions that seem inherent to Smith’s work. Smith often seems to explore the boundaries of the “both/​and” that define many postcolonial subjects and while her texts disclose the multiple limitations they

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156 Conclusion face, she uses countless affiliations to break down physical and psychological barriers that attempt to reduce this multiplicity into assimilated singularity. Ambiguity should then be understood as the only logical reaction to the illogical discourses of colonialism and, as Whitlock (2000, p.6) claims, as a decolonising strategy that brings down the power of binary understanding. Most of Smith’s narratives, as has been shown, strongly focus on the (de)construction of plural identities and the contradictions of her postcolonial and migrant characters help to further destabilise fixed ideas about the self and decolonise its dominant perceptions. One of the main objectives in Smith’s narratives is to dismantle the polarisation present in postcolonial societies and ambiguity seems well suited to this aim. Moreover, the multiple ambiguities help bring to the fore that, as Buelens, Durrant, and Eaglestone (2014, p.1) explain, the concept of trauma is neither fully material or somatic, nor simply psychic, nor fully cultural or easily located in its appropriative or disruptive relation to the symbolic order, nor simply historic or structural, but a point at which all these currents meet. If the narrator in Swing Time felt a saturation of power (p.316), it is perhaps because the traumas derived from the colonial power she suffers and witnesses exists at the crossing of all the above possibilities detailed by Buelens, Durrant, and Eaglestone. One could argue that ambiguity works as consolation in a world that is still in the process of accepting multiplicity and contradictions within plural selves. Ambiguity and contradiction may often seem like feeble strategies of resistance but the transformations of selves are continuously in flux, navigating traumatising pasts and presents in a world that is under the illusion of containing highly mobile societies but still operates according to the logics of us vs. them. Characters such as Samad, Magid and Millat, Irie, and Keisha/​Natalie, who try to eliminate their ambiguity in some form or another, do not fare well until, in the case of Irie and Keisha/​Natalie, they embrace it. Similarly, the open and sometimes contradictory endings that these narratives present –​the uncertainty about Irie’s daughter in White Teeth, the possibility of forgiveness and reconnection in On Beauty, Natalie/​Keisha’s ambiguous voice at the end of NW, Fatou’s precarious future in The Embassy of Cambodia, and the promise of new relationships in Swing Time –​might baffle the reader, but I believe this bafflement to be a productive one, perhaps one of Smith’s most effective strategies, because it makes us aware of the instability and fluctuation of these characters’ selves and the instability in their lives, which clearly contributes to deconstructing and decolonising the single, stable idea of the self that we often have, let alone the security of our environments.

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Conclusion  157 One of the tenets of postcolonial trauma is that it must concern itself with ethics (Craps and Buelens 2008; Visser 2011). Similarly, any theoretical and practical approaches to decolonisation must be the result of ethical disquisitions. The combination of both in Smith’s work alongside ambiguity also brings to mind the ethical possibilities of ambiguity. The use of ambiguity, a term which as Anthony Ossa-​Richardson (2019, p.402) claims may be impossible to define, may ultimately work towards resisting totalising interpretations of otherness and suffering. Ossa-​ Richardson (2019, p.369), in his genealogy of ambiguity, defines one type of ambiguity as that which is concerned with the revelation “of a hidden truth”. Indeed, previous books on ethics, such as Simone the Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), analyse ambiguity through existentialist philosophy as something inherent to human beings thus claiming that “to attain his truth, man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it” (p.4). Beauvoir (pp.24, 57) continues to detail the positive aspects of ambiguity, which is not understood as lack but rather as the dialectic approach that brings contraries together and thus is able to construct a “meaning which is never fixed”. Smith’s narratives of trauma, in their use of ambiguity, do not provide us with clear answers. While ambiguity and contradiction can be certainly commendable in Smith’s fictions, there might be potential pitfalls if these result in a general feeling of angst. However, I would argue that the fact that ambiguity and contradictions are encompassed within narratives of postcolonial trauma should inspire us to investigate the multiple and unstable truths that these trauma fictions may reveal about our understanding of trauma, postcolonial contexts, and otherness. One of the main areas in which Smith articulates her perspective on ambiguity and contradiction is identity. Much of the narration of trauma in her novels revolves around the rejection of otherness within postcolonial societies and within selves. The latter is mostly articulated through split identities and their misrepresentation and/​ or lack of representation in dominant discourses. Fragmented selves are a constant feature of postcolonial texts, one that noticeably arises in the conflicts between the adaptation to and assimilation into societies that do not truly allow plurality and systematically favour single, stable identities. White Teeth deems Samad’s split self a “schizophrenic” condition (p.219) that moves between two radical identities that he cannot fully integrate. Other characters follow the same path when confronted with the alienating societies in which they are situated. The traumatising nature of colonial ideologies still in place also leads other diasporic characters such as Keisha in NW and the narrator in Swing Time to seek freedom from these traumatising circumstances in the drastic desire for orphanhood, an ambivalent desire that leaves these characters without coordinates in time and space and proves impossible to attain. Consequently, these fragmentary identities are pitted against the contexts in which such fragmentation takes place: Smith’s narratives do not remain at the individual sphere

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158 Conclusion of the characters because this is always already tainted with the sociocultural, historical, and political discourses that attempt to define them. Thus, these ambivalent identities exhibit the reactions to the aggressions that ultimately shatter the characters’ trust in their societies and their own selves, therefore curtailing their capacity to fully relate to others and even to their own plural selves. Postcolonial trauma in this sense bespeaks the anxieties at the core of neocolonial societies. As the analysis in the previous chapters shows, Smith does not favour those characters who attempt to compartmentalise their plural selves and assimilate into their “host” societies through the latter’s terms. Her narratives are more favourable to those characters who at some point face their individual and/​or collective pasts and who are then able to integrate, even if ambivalently, their plural identities. In trauma theories, Anne Whitehead (2004, p.140), summarising Pierre Janet’s ideas, explains that “where traumatic memory repeats the past without consciousness, narrative memory recognises the past as past”. This is the essential definition of working through, which for LaCapra (2001, p.144), in an ethical sense, […] does not mean avoidance, harmonization, simply forgetting the past, or submerging oneself in the present. It means coming to terms with the trauma, including its details, and critically engaging the tendency to act out the past. Smith exposes the need to work through postcolonial traumas as well as the frustrations and complications that some postcolonial subjects face in such processes. In the face of a traumatising present, sometimes the past, or rather an idealised version of it, is, however, the only thing that can allow for a grounded sense of self. Yet, this reveals how neocolonial contexts throw some subjects into useless ossification that prevents any form of relationality. Thus, in White Teeth, Samad’s embracing of radical difference and unwillingness to dialogue with English society is genealogically and psychologically understood but eventually dismissed as an unproductive behaviour that has serious consequences for present and past generations. In contrast, Irie’s exploration of her Caribbean past and her integration, although naïve and somewhat ambiguous, is associated with a more hopeful future with relational potential in terms of identities and a decolonised self that escapes both the influence of neocolonial discourses and the burdens of a traumatic colonial history. In a similar way, in On Beauty, Howard’s wish for disconnection from and misuse of his working-​ class origins is frowned upon, while Kiki’s pride in her African-​American lineage is presented in a more positive light, even if she still faces both the blatant and more subtle forms of racism in Wellington, and Levi ambiguously connects with the histories of Caribbean slavery and African-​ American oppression to articulate a self that copes with and resists racist discourses. NW, after its depiction of one of the most complex processes

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Conclusion  159 of erasure through Keisha’s transformation into Natalie, her anxieties and fears around her place of origins, her contempt for her former self and those others she associates to her past, moves towards a self that is able to put into dialogue her two selves perhaps in the most ambiguous ending of Smith’s fiction up to date. Lastly, the narrator in Swing Time is able to better relate to others, to be more responsible for these others, once she integrates the historical and collective histories of the African and Caribbean diasporas and the traumatic episodes of her childhood in North West London. This ambiguous and multiple identities bring to the fore a vision of the past as the place and time in which characters are able locate themselves within an entangled chronology and processes of displacement, but in which they should never get lost. These characters need to be aware of their roots, but they should not be exclusively defined by them and, above all, they should not be burdened by traumatic histories. Smith’s use of fragmentation, double and plural selves, and the impossible realisation of orphanhood seem to confirm Anthony Kwame Appiah’s (2018, p.31) contention that “however much identity bedevils us, we cannot do without it”. It is futile to completely do away with identities, but identities must remain in flux and invariably open to multiple identifications and affiliations that can facilitate belonging in a plural and changing world. In this regard, Whitlock’s arguments on the use of ambivalence and plurality as resistance against colonial ideologies could be further connected to Amartya Sen’s (2007, p.99) contention that “decolonization of the mind demands a firm departure from the temptation of solitary identities and priorities”. This assertion should be considered for the whole spectrum of identities, especially those which still expect singular, stable selves. In Smith’s fictions this can be observed both in the societies that neglect otherness and plural, hybrid identities and in those diasporic characters who fall into the error of compartmentalisation. Characters such as Samad in White Teeth or the narrator in Swing Time do compartmentalise their realities in order to cope with the anxieties and burdens of history but they are, in fact, replicating colonial ways of thinking that elude the recognition of intricate relational histories as well as the responsibility for others and their suffering. Departing from the confinement of these individual and separate identities throws these characters into contradiction and ambiguity and into a relational approach with their past and present manifold identities. One of the key elements of this relational approach also resides in the way Smith’s narratives transmit to readers the tensions between remembering and forgetting, victim and perpetrator, survival and victimhood, distrust and hope. These tensions, alongside ambivalence, take readers into uncharted territory where they may experience an empathic unsettlement, an affective reaction to trauma which for Dominick LaCapra (2001, p.66) “poses a barrier to closure in discourse”, and should make us feel the suffering of others without “identification […] appropriation or incorporation”. For LaCapra (2001, p.103),

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160 Conclusion one’s own unsettled response to another’s unsettlement can never be entirely under control, but it may be affected by one’s active awareness of, and need to come to terms with, certain problems related to one’s implication in, or transferential relation to, charged, value-​related events and those involved in them. This unsettlement, which I believe Smith’s fictions are able to cause readers through her depiction of trauma and ambiguity, questions not only (post)colonial discourses but also our general reaction to others’ trauma. This unsettlement allows for a more reflective vision of the suffering and trauma of others, which in turn transforms us into better witnesses, no longer passive and complicit with those discourses and silences that could further traumatise others. Smith’s writings can pave the way for a better way to see the lives of others and the contradictions of human experience in general, which may force us to move beyond solitary identities and realise how deeply implicated we are in each other’s histories. It is high time that we stopped “refus[ing] to be each other”, as H.J. Blackham’s epigraph reads in On Beauty. The unsettlement that Smith’s narratives of trauma may cause then calls for an effortful engagement that advocates an affective approach to trauma and suffering that avoids psychological gibberish, percentages, and numbers. What is more, I would argue that this endeavour to fathom the magnitude of postcolonial trauma could replicate our moral obligations towards others and thus force us to interrogate not only how we read trauma but also the reality in which these trauma narratives are produced. Smith’s fictions do not offer clear solutions as to how to remedy the wrongs the characters in her texts suffer, but they do invite for more productive dialogues with others and different histories of suffering. This unsettlement and urgency to become more attentive and affective witnesses is more effectively transmitted in The Embassy of Cambodia. Departing from questions of identity and long, entangled diasporic pasts found in other narratives, the story of Fatou nevertheless reflects the far-​ reaching consequences of colonialism and slavery in contemporary global circuits. The combination of different narratorial voices and focalisations and particularly the collective voice that observes Fatou’s suffering together with its commentaries on the history of genocide in Cambodia expose the politics of the gaze with which we observe histories of trauma. The use of multidirectional memory and the juxtaposition of multiple atrocities of the twentieth century bring together an articulation of the comparisons and hierarchies of trauma that help articulate a different reading of individual, historical, and collective traumas. Fatou’s story of endurance as an immigrant from West Africa to Europe and her status as a modern slave in contemporary London bring colonial practices to the core of former colonial centres. Although multidirectionality proves effective in The Embassy of Cambodia proves effective towards the

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Conclusion  161 decolonisation of trauma theories and challenges the prevalence of some histories of traumas over others, the more undeniable decolonising aim rests in the questioning of what histories of traumas we witness and how we react responsibly towards others’ suffering that the open ending of the story proposes. Thus, The Embassy of Cambodia calls for an ethical reaction, it begs us to become more aware of the potential relational aspects of suffering and of those global subjects whose suffering often remains invisible. The last part of the third chapter analysed how Swing Time shows that multidirectional memory can be, on the other hand, misused when it is not ethically situated within the networks of power that operate in contemporary global contexts. Aimee’s failings are frowned upon by the narrator, but the narrator herself fails to become responsible for anybody other than herself. This may respond to an acting out of individual and collective individual traumatic pasts. Indeed, the burden of the traumatic history of colonialism and slavery weights heavily in the narrator’s psyche and she belatedly admits to the burden of her own individual suffering growing up and especially the suffering of others close to her immediate context. Thus, in spite of the relevance of the collective suffering that both The Embassy of Cambodia and Swing Time bring to the fore by means of multidirectional and relational memories, they focus on the realities closer to “home” and on how structural and collective traumatic forms of oppression invade the private spheres of trauma. Consequently, these narratives draw attention to more ethical ways of understanding trauma and the need to create an ethics of communities which are both local and global and promote individual and collective engagements. Ultimately, Smith’s fictions beseech us to become ethical witnesses of our times. But in order to do that, Smith asks readers to look into national and transnational histories. Smith’s narratives often speak in favour of removing the burden of the past, thus encouraging forgetting at some level, and repeatedly point out the futility of nostalgia for diasporic subjects. In addition, they always request of characters, and even readers, to remember the histories that have enforced contemporary oppression in terms of race, ethnicity, and class. This means that we must be aware of the chain of traumatic histories that colonialism founded and the silence, forgetting, and the twisted remembrance of the greatness of empire that contemporary societies have favoured. Paul Gilroy (2004, p.98) argues that former colonial societies need to mourn the loss of empire to do away with the “postcolonial melancholia” that still haunts them. Within this traumatised and traumatising conditions, Smith’s diasporic protagonists and their family and individual traumatic histories bring to the fore not only the anxieties of feeling lost in a world not acceptant of difference but also these subjects’ confrontation to loss and potentially melancholic attachments. There are instances of individual loss, such as Howard’s grief for his mother, which are indeed traumatic, but it is the historical and collective losses of diasporic subjects that pervade Smith’s narratives

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162 Conclusion of trauma in their exploration of how the losses that generations of postcolonial subjects have faced throughout centuries of oppression are still being mourned. In this sense, Stef Craps’ (2013, pp.61–​3) elaboration of mid-​mourning and the inferred state of tension in which postcolonial subjects live proves one of the most useful concepts to understand the impossibly chronological timeline whereby the traumatic episodes of the past are continuously being acted out and worked through. The coexistence of postcolonial melancholia and mid-​mourning testifies to the complexities and ambivalences of Smith’s portrayal of postcolonial trauma and the requirement for an ethical approach to trauma that is able to redress historical oppression and inequalities. As Rebecca Solnit (2016) explains, when it comes to the past, we should “tell a more complicated and accurate story, one that has room for the best and worst, for atrocities and liberations, for grief and jubilation. A memory commensurate to the complexity of the past and the whole cast of participants”, because it is only then that some hope for the future will be possible, since “hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable”. Thus, there should be hope in the tensions that trauma creates between knowing and not knowing, between forgetting and remembering, as well as in the productive ambivalences that force us to interrogate the way we think of and react to trauma, the suffering of others, and the pervasiveness of colonial ideologies. The fictions analysed in the previous chapters show that in Smith’s work the trauma of postcolonial and diasporic subjects and the trauma of a failed empire coalesce, thus registering the deficiencies of multicultural societies that cannot be truly convivial. For Gilroy (2004, p.ix), a convivial culture would be inclusive of alterity and eliminate traces of anxiety, fear, and violence. Postcolonial societies have then the responsibility to remember imperial and colonial pasts and acknowledge how their ideologies have transformed through time in order to maintain their power over others. As Herrero and Baelo-​Allué (2011, p.xix) conclude, the only possibility for individuals to fully work through the postcolonial traumas that afflict them will arise solely when the insidious “structures” of (post)colonial ideologies “are radically questioned and transformed”. The recognition of the atrocities that have shaped our current world could then lead to a more acute recognition of otherness and a heightened awareness of the dynamics of power, in which we may be participants, that could be traumatising for those subjects within minorities that continue to be silenced. A convivial culture that has work through its failings could provide secure spaces of inclusivity in which belonging could thrive and in which group solidarity would not be impaired and trust in one’s surrounding could be regained. Smith’s narratives of trauma convey productive ways of looking into the past which may increase the capacity for connection between divergent groups and selves. Trauma narratives and theories can never bridge the gap between cultures if hierarchies and attachments to traumatising pasts are maintained. Through the revision

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Conclusion  163 of (post)colonial histories, the questioning of the terms and dictums of trauma theories, and the emphasis on the contradictions and ambiguities within postcolonial subjects and (post)colonial societies, Smith’s vision of postcolonial trauma reveals uncomfortable truths that make us rethink the ethics of trauma and suffering and the global responsibilities towards others’ suffering.

Bibliography Appiah, A.K., 2018. The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity –​ Creed, Country, Colour, Class, Culture. London: Profile Books. Bond, L. and Craps, S., 2020. Trauma. Abingdon; New York: Routledge. Borzaga, M., 2012. Trauma in the Postcolony: Towards a New Theoretical Approach. In: E. Mengel and M. Borzaga, eds. Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in the Contemporary South African Novel. Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 65–​91. Buelens, G., Durrant, S. and Eaglestone, R., 2014. Introduction. In: G. Buelens, S. Durrant, and R. Eaglestone, eds. The Future of Trauma Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 1–​8 Caruth, C., 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Craps, S. and Buelens, G. eds., 2008. Postcolonial Trauma Novels [Special Issue]. Studies in the Novel, 40 (1 & 2). Craps, S., 2013. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Craps, S., 2014. Beyond Eurocentrism: Trauma Theory in the Global Age. In: G. Buelens, S. Durrant, and R. Eaglestone, eds. The Future of Trauma Theory: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism. London and New York: Routledge, 23–​43. Freud, S., 1968. Studies in Hysteria. In: J. Strachey, ed. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Volume II. London: The Hogarth Press. Gilroy, P., 2004. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? London and New York: Routledge. Hall, S., 1978. Racism and Reaction. In: Five Views of Multi-​Racial Britain: Talks on Race Relations Broadcast by BBC TV. London: Commission for Racial Equality. Herman, J., 1992. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence –​ From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books. Herrero, M.D. and Baelo-​Allué, S., eds., 2011. The Splintered Glass: Facets of Trauma in the Post-​Colony and Beyond. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. James, D., 2013. “Wounded Realism”. Contemporary Literature, 54 (1), 204–​14. LaCapra, D., 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Mcleod, J., 2005. Revisiting Postcolonial London. The European English Messenger, XIV (2), 39–​47. Ossa-​Richardson, A., 2019. A History of Ambiguity. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

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164 Conclusion Paproth, M., 2008. “The Flipping Coin: The Modernist and Postmodernist Zadie Smith”. In: T.L. Walters, ed. Zadie Smith: Critical Essays. New York: Peter Lang, 9–​29. Rothberg, M., 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Sen, A., 2007. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. London: Penguin. Smith, Z., 2000. White Teeth. London: Penguin Books. Smith, Z., 2001. This Is How It Feels to Be Me. The Guardian, 13 October. www.theguardian.com/​books/​2001/​oct/​13/​fiction.afghanistan [Accessed 10 December 2020]. Smith, Z., 2005. On Beauty. London: Penguin Books. Smith, Z., 2009. “Two Directions for the Novel”. In: Z. Smith, ed. Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays. London: Penguin Books, 71–​96. Smith, Z., 2012. NW. London: Hamish Hamilton. Smith, Z., 2013. The Embassy of Cambodia. London: Hamish Hamilton. Smith, Z., 2016. Swing Time. London: Hamish Hamilton. Smith, Z., 2018. Man vs. Corpse. In: Z. Smith, ed. Feel Free: Essays. New York: Penguin Press, 366–​80. Solnit, R., 2016. ‘Hope Is an Embrace of the Unknown’: Rebecca Solnit on Living in Dark Times. The Guardian, 15 July. www.theguardian.com/​books/​ 2016/​jul/​15/​rebecca-​solnit-​hope-​in-​the-​dark-​new-​essay-​embrace-​unknown [Accessed 10 December 2020]. Visser, I., 2011. “Trauma Theory and Postcolonial Literary Studies”. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 47 (3), 270–​82. Whitehead, A., 2004. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Whitlock, G., 2000. The Intimate Empire: Reading Women’s Autobiography. London and New York: Cassell. Wood, J., (2000, July 24). “Human, All Too Inhuman: on the Formation of a New Genre: Hysterical Realism”. New Republic, 24 July. https://​newrepublic. com/​article/​61361/​human-​inhuman [Accessed 12 December 2020].

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Index

Abraham, N. 18, 25–​26, 52 abuse 2, 8, 11, 39, 52–​4, 95, 114, 134–​41 acting out 19, 31, 47, 99–​100, 155, 161 Adorno, T. 48, 118 Agency 2, 37, 42, 47, 54, 78, 95, 153 Ahmed, S. 60, 98 Alexander, J. 2, 5, 89 Alghamdi, A. 42 Ambiguity 56, 79–​80, 105–​6, 122, 148, 155–​60 amnesia 13, 19, 37, 54, 63, 69, 80, 88, 121, 139, 141, 144, 149, 152 Andrews, K. 134 anxiety 2, 9, 30–​1, 34–​7, 73, 84, 88, 99, 106–​7, 131, 162 Appiah, A.K. 159 assimilation 24, 29, 34, 69, 72–​78, 153, 157 attachment 18, 24, 34–​5, 43–​4, 60, 65–​6, 78, 153, 161–​2 authenticity 64, 71, 96 Baelo-​Allué, S. 5, 7, 162 Baillie, J. 127, 132–​3, 136–​8, 144 Bales, K. 114, 117 Batra, K. 89 Bell, D. 44, 54 Belle, Dido Elizabeth 133–​4 Benito Sánchez, J. 30 Benjamin, W. 130 Bentley, N. 79, 90–​1 Berástegui Wood, J. 15 Bhabha, H. 6, 77–​9, 88 binary 34, 36, 45, 48, 64, 80, 107, 156 Bistoen, G. 11 Bond, L. 1, 135, 151 Bourdieu, P. 82

Borzaga, M. 4–​7, 93, 155 Bouson, J.B. 86, 102 Brexit 115 Brown, L.S. 2–​3, 6, 66, 144 Buelens, G. 7, 12, 156–​7 Burrows, V. 99 Butler, J. 3, 39, 99, 123 Calhoun, L.G. 135 Caruth, C. 1–​5, 8, 26, 40, 75, 93 Childs, P. 81, 87 Chouliaraki, L. 122–​3 class 14, 17–​18, 27, 40, 57, 69–​82, 85–​99, 102, 105, 117, 129, 158, 161 Cohen, R. 59 Collingwood-​Whittick, S. 9 compartmentalisation 143, 158–​9 compassion 123, 134 contempt 43, 98, 159 contradiction 19, 23, 26, 31–​2, 37, 63–​4, 70, 80, 86, 103, 128, 143, 151, 155–​163. convivial culture 11, 37, 48–​9, 65, 162 coping mechanism 18–​9, 42, 54 56, 149 Craps, S. 1–​12, 39, 56, 94, 118–​120, 135, 139, 144, 155, 162 crypt 26, 52, 76 Deleuze, G. 96, 107 decolonisation 7–​9, 32, 64, 108, 113, 115, 126, 157, 160 Del Valle-​Alcalá, R. 114 determinism 14, 26, 80, 91, 103, 107, 129, 152 diaspora 2, 12, 24, 33–​4, 80, 89, 127, 132–​6, 140, 144, 149, 159

61

166 Index disalienation 103–​4, 108; see also Fanon, F. Doughty, L. 13 DSM 3 Durrant, S. 156 Eaglestone, R. 156 empathic unsettlement 8, 47, 159 empathy 95, 104–​5, 135, 142 endurance 152–​3, 160 Englishness 27, 31, 34–​5, 38, 71–​80 Erikson, K. 2, 31, 33, 52, 73, 84 ethics 2–​8, 12–​15, 19, 65, 80, 90, 105, 116, 124–​6, 135–​6, 143–​4, 153, 157–​8, 161–​3 exile 9–​12, 35, 76, 99, 149 exoticisation 32, 83–​8 Eyerman, R. 87 Fanon, F. 6, 44, 48, 97, 103–​4, 106, 108, 113, 137 Fassin, D. 4, 10, 26, 38, 118 Felman. S. 2, 124 Felski, R. 102 feminism 3, 6, 11, 15, 144 Fernández Carbajal, A. 100, 105 Fischer, S.A. 87 flâneur 85 see also walking forgetting: as erasure 65, 69, 70, 102, 126; constructive 60, 62 81, 161; tension between forgetting and remembering 2, 13, 19, 64, 80, 139, 144, 148–​9, 162; see also amnesia Forna, A. 120 Forster, E.M. 81, 90 fragmentation 4, 34, 49, 90, 95, 99, 151, 154, 157, 159 freedom 80, 94–​7, 102–​4, 107, 128–​30, 157 Freud, S. 2, 16–​7, 23, 69, 88, 149, 152 gender 14, 18, 70, 99 genocide 12, 113–​121, 125, 160 Gerzina, G.H. 14, 134 Gilroy, P.: black Atlantic 14, 112, 127; postcolonial melancholia 11, 19, 63, 107, 161–​2 globalisation 10, 14 grief 17, 59, 83–​5, 161–​2 Guattari, F. 96, 107 Guignery, V. 91 Gupta, R. 114, 117

Haiti 87–​9 Hall, S. 19, 152 haunting 18, 36, 46, 62, 76, 116, 132–​6 Herrero, M.D. 5, 7, 63, 162 Hirsch, M. 18, 25, 38, 59, 131 history: collective 18; 54, 128–​31, 133, 149, 159; individual: 131–​2, 144, 160; traumatic 14, 18–​9, 60–​65, 89, 113, 128–​37, 144, 149, 154, 159, 161. Hoffman, K. 118 Holocaust 2–​3, 12, 26, 116, 121 Hook, D. 107 hope 54–​6, 59, 63, 85, 126–​7, 144, 159, 162 Huddart, D. 79 Huyssen, A. 79 hybridity 41, 48, 56–​7, 60, 78, 107, 127 hysterical realism 152, 154 identification 8, 27–​8, 32, 38–​42, 69, 78, 80–​2, 86, 96–​7, 104–​6, 127, 135, 159 identity: authentic 14, 36, 50, 87, 90, 99; hybrid 38–​9, 41, 64, 159; split 14, 27, 29, 35, 38, 41; subversion 78–​80, 87, 99 illegal migration 119, 125, 140 in-​betweenness 28, 41, 48, 72, 106–​7 inequality 5, 12, 72, 75, 88–​9, 102, 106, 113, 129–​30, 136, 141, 162 integration 13, 24, 29–​30, 60, 69, 71, 153, 158; narrative 37, 65 Jackson, R. 89 Jamaica 27, 49–​56, 59–​62, 90, 129, 131–​2, 137 James, D. 154 Jansen, B. 114 Jones, O. 105 Kangas, W. 94 Kaplan, E.A. 2 Kaufman, G. 43–​4 Khmer Rouge 114, 117, 122, 125 Kierkegaard, S. 94, 106 Kiernan, B. 117–​8 Knepper, W. 90, 106 Kripke, S.A. 71 Kristeva, J. 95

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Index  167 Lacan, J. 2, 96 LaCapra, D. 2, 8, 24, 36, 45–​8, 97, 130, 158–​9; see also empathic unsettlement Laub, D. 2 Ledent, B. 96 Levy, A. 13 López-​Ropero, L. 91, 93 loss: historical 11, 81, 134, 139–​40, 161–​2 ; traumatic 10, 14–​18, 26, 28, 33, 36, 73, 87, 95, 130, 135, 148; see also mourning Luckhurst, R. 2, 118 Manzanas Calvo, A.M. 30 Marcus, D. 91 Mbembe, A. 32 McLeod, J. 24, 69, 88, 139 melancholia 28, 36, 60, 161; postcolonial melancholia 11, 19, 63, 107, 161–​2 Memmi, A. 8 memory: as burden 19, 25, 54–​7, 62, 69, 128–​31, 136, 144, 158–​61; intrusive 118–​20; multidirectional 112–​13, 116–​19, 125–​7, 135–​6, 143–​4, 160–​1; repressed 61–​2, 69, 102, 152; screen 121–​2; traumatic 13 see also postmemory Mengel, E. 4–​5, 93 micro-​aggressions 6, 37, 39, 98, 107 Mignolo, W. 8–​9 Miller, N.K. 1 mimicry 78–​80, 87, 99 Mirze, Z.E. 28, 35, 42, 49, 72 modernist narratives 4, 90, 153–​4 Mora Aguiló, D. 60 morality 35, 52, 95, 152–​3 mourning 9, 11, 14, 17, 26, 47, 55, 123, 139; mid-​mourning 139, 144, 162 multiculturalism 13–​4, 30–​4, 39, 42, 47, 56, 60–​5, 115, 150–​1, 162 naming 71, 87 neoliberalism 1, 81, 106–​7, 112, 127, 135–​6, 142–​3, 151–​2 North West London 13, 90, 101, 112, 159 nostalgia 60, 65, 131, 161 Nussbaum, M. 105 Opondo, S.O. 114 Orantes, K. 4, 93

original trauma 8, 14–​15, 23–​34, 38–​9, 42, 46–​7, 62–​6, 69–​70, 73–​6, 79–​81, 148–​9 orphanhood 95, 130, 157, 159 Ossa-​Richardson, A. 157 Paproth, M. 153 Parker, I. 93 performativity 43, 91, 96, 99 Pes, A. 103 phantom 25; see also Abraham; Torok Phillips, C. 13 Pirker, E.U. 102 pity 46, 123, 150 postmemory 18, 25–​6, 38, 58–​9, 131, 153; see also Hirsch postmodernism 3, 90, 153–​4 precarity 112, 114–​5, 127 Procter, J. 85 psychoanalysis 39, 64, 70, 82, 93; criticism 16–​7, 149–​154; rejection of, 15 PTSD 2–​3, 7, 17 racism 19, 30, 38–​9, 48, 60, 63, 79–​81, 86, 89, 96, 105, 125, 133–​4, 137 Radstone, S. 3 rape 2, 52–​3, 119–​120, 140 Rechtman, R. 4, 10, 26, 38, 118 recognition 5, 42, 44–​7, 58, 65, 69, 76, 88, 97–​9, 126, 151, 159, 162 relationality 122, 142–​3, 158 religion: as coping mechanism 35, 42, 53–​5, 64, 119; fundamentalism 41; Islam 36; Jehovah’s Witnesses 54 repetition 2–​3, 15, 23–​6, 29–​32, 37–​8, 42, 46–​9, 51, 62–​6, 73–​81, 90–​3, 100, 130–​3, 140, 148, 151–​5 resilience 120 resistance 70, 107, 156, 159 return: to origins 24, 31–​8, 73, 76–​8, 85, 99, 126, 132; traumatic 47, 63, 74–​5, 132, 139–​40 rhizome 13, 107 roots 15, 27, 35, 61–​5, 128, 150 Rothberg, M. 7, 12, 39, 112–​13, 116, 119, 122, 130–​1, 135–​7 Russel, D. 141 Scafe, S. 127 schizophrenia/​schizophrenic 41, 77–​8, 96, 100, 107, 157 Schwab, G. 59

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168 Index Sen, A. 29 shame 2, 18–​19, 27–​8, 37, 43–​9, 51–​7, 70, 76, 82–​8, 98–​106, 141, 152 Shapiro, M.J. 114 Shohat, E. 113, 143 silence: as coping 50, 56–​8, 120; as oppression 7, 11, 49, 54, 65–​6, 80–​1, 89, 116–​20, 144, 152–​5, 160–​2; as symptom of trauma 25, 34, 38, 59, 129–​31, 141 situatedness 19, 145, 151 slavery 18–​9, 90, 140, 142, 149, 158–​61; modern slavery 112–​117; transatlantic trade 59, 88, 89, 127–​134, 139 Slavin, M. 103 Smelser, N.J. 5, 89 Smith, Z.: Changing my Mind 106, 154; Feel Free: Essays 153; Intimations: Six Essays 98; NW 14–​15, 18–​19, 70, 90–​108, 112, 127, 129–​30, 149–​57; On Beauty 14, 17–​18, 69–​70, 81–​90, 100, 112, 133, 149–​50, 156–​60; Swing Time 14, 19, 112–​13, 127–​145, 148–​9, 155–​9, 161; The Autograph Man 14–​7; The Embassy of Cambodia 14, 19, 112–​127, 138, 140–​4, 149, 152–​3, 160; White Teeth 9, 13–​18, 23–​83, 112, 119, 131, 134, 148–​59 Solnit, R. 162 Sontag, S. 123–​4 Squires, C. 56 Stam, R. 113 Stein, M. 80 Stone, D. 116, 121 Stuckey, L. 55 Su, J.J. 60 suffering 3–​5, 11–​12, 16–​8, 24, 32–​40, 55–​6, 63, 70–​2, 88, 90, 106–​7, 112–​144, 148–​52, 159–​63 suicide 27, 100, 103 survival 2, 19, 54, 70, 78, 80, 97, 102, 126, 153, 159 Tal, K. 2, 48 Tancke, U. 9, 14, 24, 39, 61 Tedeschi, R.G. 135 temporality 28–​30, 46, 93, 102, 115–​6, 127 testimony 12, 37, 88, 120, 125 Tew, P. 15, 35, 56, 100, 105 The Gambia 128, 136–​143; see also Smith, Z.: Swing Time

Tolan, F. 81 Tomkins, S. 51 Torok, M. 18, 25–​6, 52 trauma: banalisation of 95, 139, 150–​1; belatedness of 2, 12, 52, 100, 119, 141, 148, 161; collective 5–​6, 8, 12–​14, 19, 25, 3, 90, 119, 125, 140, 152, 155, 160; cultural 5, 25, 89; cumulative 7, 39, 76, 94, 107, 153–​4; decolonisation of 7–​8, 32, 64, 108, 113, 126, 157, 160–​1; Eurocentric 3–​4, 8, 113; fiction 2–​3, 19, 157; formal representations of 3, 90, 91–​2, 118, 151, 154, 159; foundational 130, 139, 148; and gender 2–​3, 6, 11, 52–​3, 119–​120, 140, 144; hierarchy of 1, 34, 39, 75, 113, 116–​17, 121, 126, 151, 160, 162; historical 24, 31, 47–​8, 58, 87, 90, 125–​6, 139–​40, 154; insidious 6–​7, 25, 39, 64, 135; as pain of unbelonging 9, 27, 150; pastiche 70, 90; repetition and return 132, 140, 148; as sin 15, 42, 64, 119; transgenerational 18, 25–​8, 38, 44, 47–​51, 63–​5, 73, 77; universalisation of 3–​4, 151; unspeakability of 30, 71, 85, 155; Western approach to 3–​5, 12, 15–​16, 18, 24, 40, 65, 70, 99, 120–​1, 148–​50; zeitgeist 1, 118, 151 unbelonging 12, 14, 18, 31, 35–​45, 69, 71, 81–​2, 142; see also trauma: as pain of unbelonging unhomeliness 88, 128 unreality 142 unreliability 127, 154 Upstone, S. 41 us vs. them 13, 45, 48, 71, 80, 97, 156 Vanheule, S. 11 victim(s) 2, 5–​8, 48, 61, 89, 107, 149, 153 Visser, I. 7–​8, 26, 94, 143–​4, 152, 157 voyeurism 85, 124; see also witnessing vulnerability 73, 89, 117, 10, 124 Walder, D. 97 walking 84–​5, 101, 121; see also flâneur

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Index  169 Walsh, C.E. 9 war: Second World War 27–​9, 72; in trauma 3, 12, 114 Ward, A. 8, 106, 115–​22 Whitehead, A. 2–​4, 26, 31, 45–​6, 62, 80, 158 Whitlock, G. 64, 156, 159

witnessing 50–​3, 121–​126, 143–​4, 145 Wood, J. 152–​3 working through 18–​9, 24–​5, 40, 47–​8, 54, 63–​5, 73, 90, 104, 120, 144, 153–​5, 158 Zong 134–​5

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