An Analysis Of Space And Pomwer Discourse In White Teeth

Zadie Smith,a young women English novelist,is a new star of English literature.Her first novel White Teeth was published in 2000.As soon as it was punished,it was reckoned as the best seller of the year and won multiple honors,including the Guardian First Book Award,the 2000 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction,the 2000 Whitebread Book Award in category best first novel and so on.White Teeth had been translated into more than 20 languages and been filmed in 2002.The background of the White Teeth is the northern part of London which is a community with several nations.It portrays all kinds of joys and sorrows of the three ethnic families with comic touch and depicts how these immigrants survive in London under the conditions of race,gender,politic,religion,history,and multi-cultures.This thesis uses spatial theory and postcolonial theory to analyze the relationship between space and power discourse in White Teeth.This thesis consists of five parts.The first part is the introduction of the novel and the author,literature review,method,purpose and the significance of the thesis.The second part expounds the space and colonial discourse,London as a concrete space and abstract absence was empowered different significances by colonizers.The spatial control and the ideological input toward London from the colonizers can be also expressed in some aspect.All kinds of architectures or landmarks such as the status of Victoria,the Buckingham Palace are input various dominant ideas.Not only they were treated as the symbolic landmarks of London,but also they contain the colonial discourse of the colonists.As the embodiment of power,they have their own symbolic significances.The third part interprets the confusion and the construction of the identities of characters in disciplined space and marginalized space.School and family are regarded as the state apparatus of the imperialism.Although in school,a holy space,there still exists racial and sexual discrimination.Immigrants who come from the third world are oppressed and do not have their own voices in the white-dominated society.Black men have to face the oppression from the white men and the discrimination from the propertied class of their own race.Even the black women were double marginalized no matter in domestic or public space.These immigrants are the groups who are marginalized and confused by their identities.The fourth part focuses on the process how characters resist and how they find a third space that is full of hope,could communicate and negotiate each other.Irie,as the fourth generation of immigrants,she is eager for Englishness and wants to get rid of the characteristics of the black so she tries her best to get close to the the Chalfens.At the end of the novel,the escaping of the Future Mouse and the discovery of Irie's ancient histories demonstrate discovery of the new hope for their survivals and identities.It is a third space that contains constant uncertainty.The last part is the conclusion.The conclusion is that in England,a big city of immigrants,different spaces were empowered different significances and ideologies.For minority immigrants who come from the third world,neither totally westernized or totally maintain the tradition can work in the multicultural city.There must be a third space that could negotiate between the two sides,that is the proper way for them to construct their own identities and survive.At last,the question of identity is no longer the question of seeking roots,but is the question of how to behave.