Literary theorists have struggled with the relationship between the self and language, wondering if perhaps the self precedes language or if the self only exceeds in language, and any attempt at transcendence is fundamentally Romantic in that the transcendence, if any, would be necessarily mute. Others argue that such a question is patently useless in that there can be no discussion of the self without language, or about language without something of the self. The self cannot be articulated without language markers and language inherently bears markers of identity: if it did not, as Locke said, “then there would be but one language amongst all men” (Lupton 1214).
Zadie Smith and Richard Powers illustrate the way language and identity are bound up, in addition to the debate of contingency regarding the two concepts, in their respective novels, White Teeth and The Echo Maker. Identity politics cannot function independently of language: not only is an individual or individual character’s identity constructed through language, but the loss of language marks the devastating loss of identity, a notion clearly illustrated in the two novels of immediate concern. Language figures heavily into identity construction, the basis of such an identity in reality both within the novel and in the world outside the novel, and the way in which individuals continuously change their identities based on various circumstances, situations, and opportunities. Particularly interesting, then, in such a discussion of the inextricable link and intricate bond between identity and language is the name, and this is what Smith especially plays with and attempts to excavate in her White Teeth. Smith and Powers struggle with these important issues and invite their readers into the fray because a better understanding of language not only elevates involvement in and enjoyment of any given text, but the understanding of the link between language of identity enables readers to better derive a sense of meaning from given characters as well as the characters in the world outside the novel.
One cannot begin any discussion of language and identity politics without at least a rudimentary knowledge of what is meant by the elusive, perhaps impossible, term, “identity.” Generally, identity is understood as “the difference of oneself from others” (Michaels 41). But identity is far more pressing a concern than this commonplace understanding reveals. Treating the term with more careful attention to nuance, identity can be understood as the entirely subjective intuition on the part of an individual that such an individual belongs to a particular social category or group of people, with certain potentials and consequences of this belonging. Such intuition implies and suggests socializing in certain ways and in variously institutionalized forms to make identity clear to the individual and others on a daily, continuing basis. This understanding already indicates a sense of temporality to the way identity is practiced (Zhou 532).
Particularly interesting to any reading of Smith’s White Teeth is an understanding of ethnolinguistic identity, which refers to “people's intuitions of social categoriality emerging from certain cultural assumptions about language” (532). These intuitions construe language as being a basis of division among people, especially since it is believed that language is the central and enabling vehicle of thought and more specifically, culture. This makes the question: “Why don’t they just speak our language?” even more poignant. In White Teeth, readers are constantly reminded of the Iqbal (“Ick-Ball!”) family’s Other-ness through language. Bengali is frequently transliterated into the body of the text and other characters sometimes struggle to pronounce certain first names. When Millat tries to buy a ticket, the ticket man quibbles with semantics:
“One for
The ticket man put his tired face close up to the glass. “Are you asking me, young man, or telling me?”
“I just say, yeah? One for
This is particularly ironic and telling in that it is Millat who is more likely not to ‘speaka da English.’ He is the one with a foreign mother tongue, and yet he jeers at the ticket man for not knowing his own language. Perhaps this tactic can be understood as Millat’s attempt to defend himself against his own insecurities relating to language Other-ness: he challenges that language in others to distract from the fact that it can be challenged in him. Later on during this exchange, Millat refuses to pay the charge and then breaks wind in the ticket man’s direction.
The Crew, on cue: “Somokāmi!”
“What did you call me? You – what did you say? You little bastards. Can’t tell me in English? Have to talk your Paki language?”
Millat slammed his fist so hard on the glass that it reverberated down the booths to the ticket man at the other end selling tickets to
“First: I’m not a Paki, you ignorant fuck. And second: you don’t need a translator, yeah? I’ll give it to you straight. You’re a fucking faggot, yeah? Queer boy, poofter, batty-rider, shit-dick.” (192)
In this exchange, the ticket man draws a clear line of distinction between himself and these boys who speak in their ‘Paki language’ and refuse to repeat the same word in English. He constructs their identity as delinquent Paki kids based on their use of language and ironically, Millat turns around makes the same distinction when he rejects the construction of his identity as ‘Paki.’ The ticket man bases his argument here on difference in ethnolinguistic identity: his language is English while Millat’s language is ‘Paki.’ Millat himself forms his identity in relationship to another’s ethnolinguistic identity: he is not ‘Paki’ but Bengali. These distinctions are fundamental to the construction of identity in both cases and in this exchange, they are the main markers of identity for the characters. Simply put, “language is identity and identity is political” (Ramsdell 166). The individuals involved in this exchange must negotiate the political component of their identities and they do this by means of language.
An important fact regarding identities is that they change over both long and short periods of time. This is simple enough: an individual is sufficiently different after the course of five or ten years – or, of course, over a much, much shorter period of time – owing to education, socializing, personal calamities, etc. For this reason, it is difficult to make the case that identities are essences of the self; it is more useful to see identities “constituted through interactions as waxing and waning, as they are emphasized or downplayed in situationally specific ways” (Jones 1062). An individual’s identity is constructed through interactions with other people, an idea that Powers explores in The Echo Maker through almost all of the characters. Karin goes through a crisis of identity (or a crisis of the self, which is perhaps more accurate) when Mark does not reinforce her self-image and instead repeatedly denounces her for being a robot, a government spy, a secret agent, a “Kopy Karin” (Powers 278). She tries everything – talking with him over the phone, repeating old childhood stories and memories that a “Karbon Karin” (279) could never know, cutting her hair and dressing like she did in high school – to get him to acknowledge her identity as his sister, his caregiver, and to get him to reinforce and validate this self-image of hers, but to no avail. When Mark refuses to do this, Karin feels lost and alienated – from her little brother as well as herself, or at least her own conception of herself.
This idea of individuals relying on other individuals to construct their identities is seen in Smith’s White Teeth as well. Millat takes down his posters and swears off music and movies and turns to a more ascetic lifestyle after he falls in with the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, or KEVIN (“They are aware they have an acronym problem” (Smith 250).). While overseas, Magid becomes “more English than the English” (303), which greatly upsets Samad who had staked all his hopes on his eldest-by-two-minutes son. As one of the only “KINKY-HAIRED BIG ASS BITCHEZ” in her school, Irie sees her thick hair and full figure as inferior to flippy hair and a slim silhouette (227). Clara, who used to be a Jehovah’s Witness just like her zealous mother, ran away from that life and those beliefs after a disastrous outing with Ryan Topps, so she, too, has developed her identity in relation to the individuals in her life. Archie placed at the Olympics but has lost all proof of the fact, except for the letters sent to him by the man who tied him for the position, one Mr. Horst Ibelgaufts (13), who serves to reinforce Archie’s image of himself as an Olympic participant and somewhat-winner, the Jesse Owens of his workplace. All of the characters in Smith’s world, to some extent, derive their self-image from the others in their fictional world.
Not only do these characters derive their identities through interaction with other characters, but they also change their identities through interaction with other characters. In Powers’s The Echo Maker, it is easy to see the immediate differences in Karin when she’s with Daniel as opposed to when she’s with Karsh. Similarly, Mark is a different person when he’s with Karin as opposed to his buddies as opposed to Bonnie as opposed to Barbara as opposed to Weber. Some of this can be explained away in terms of chemical processes in the brain, as Powers points out at every availability, but it is also true that a lot of this has to do with what the characters in question give to Mark that enables/forces him to change his identity based on their interactions. In White Teeth, Samad becomes noticeably more charming and poetic when he courts Poppy. When he and Poppy meet at the restaurant after their break-up, their relationship redefines the way they speak to each other: Samad plays the deferential waiter and Poppy plays the disinterested, if not somewhat condescending, patron. In both texts, characters negotiate their identities when interacting with other characters according to the given circumstances.
In addition to this, the fact remains that individuals use language to construct, maintain, or deconstruct their identities (Jones 111067). A loss of language, as terrifying a thought as that is, can result in nothing else but the loss of the self, the loss of identity (Gauch 214). This is why Mark is so scary and almost unapproachable to Karin while he learns to speak again: without language, he is not her brother. Without language, he is barely human.
“G-G-G-go goo god damn. Damn it to hell. God shit piss bitch. Suck a flaming cunt up your ass.”
He smiled proudly. She gasped and pulled away, and his face fell. She fought off the rush of tears, took his arm again in fake calm, and turned him back toward the building. “It’s a goose, Mark. You remember them. You’re kind of a silly goose yourself, you know that.”
“Shit piss fuck,” he chanted, studying his shuffling feet. (Powers 45)
Unable to find the proper words, Mark resorts to a string of vulgarities, pleased enough at having been able to find them, say them, and string them together in a somewhat sensical way. (‘Suck a flaming cunt up your ass,’ while ridiculously vulgar and offensive, is nevertheless an imperative command that contains the requisite subject, object, and predicate verb.) Karin, however, is nowhere near as pleased with this litany and her expression lets Mark know that she rejects his attempt at language and asserting himself through that language. Karin is so affected by this outburst that has to fight a rush of tears and struggle to maintain her composure. The loss of language here leaves Mark as a stranger, little better than an animal, and it is almost too much for Karin to handle at this moment in the text. The loss of language is the loss of self, and she can’t bear to see her little brother, once a coherent young man of average intellect, reduced to this meaningless gibberish that seemingly flouts any attempt at communication, whether such a thing is intentional on Mark’s part this early in the text or not.
Another important aspect of the individual identity is that it “places the presence of others deep inside us” (Maleuvre 174). The best example of such a phenomenon of identity is Mangal Pande in White Teeth. Samad identifies (a tricky little word) tremendously with the figure of his great-grandfather, the Indian war hero that took on the British soldiers. Every time he enjoys a personal triumph, he thinks of Mangal Pande. His musings make Mangal Pande an iconographic figure throughout the text, and the other characters, like Archie, occasionally point this out. While out walking during the early period of their affair, Poppy and Samad are accosted by Mad Mary. Amazingly enough, Samad manages to talk his way out of an altercation and leaves Mad Mary standing, stunned, on the sidewalk as he and a shaken Poppy breeze on past. Reveling in his eloquent triumph, “Samad, increasingly given to visions, saw that great-grandfather of his, Mangal Pande, flailing with a musket; fighting against the new, holding on to tradition” (Smith 150). It is because he identifies so closely with this figure that inspired him not only during his own war but during the course of his civilian life as well that Samad frequently imagines him and aligns himself with him. In creating his identity not around but certainly in relation to Mangal Pande and always measuring himself up against the standards of the past, Samad’s own identity as a Bengali Muslim struggling to keep the sins of an Eastern father from being visited on the Western sons invites in the presence of the (arguably) great Mangal Pande.
If identity is intuition of difference and belonging, and if it is constructed, maintained, and deconstructed through human interaction, and if it invites into the individual the presence of many other individuals, then language is not very far behind at all. Language and identity are so tightly bound up that it is almost impossible to create the basis for any sort of separation of the two. Language use is “conceptualized as unavoidably wearing an emblem of identity” (Zhou 531). If one believes that language shapes thought, one might believe that those who do not speak the same language as the individual in question could not possibly think about the world in the same way, either. This brings back ethnolinguistic concerns about one and the Other and the disconnect between two such identities – a disconnect traced unerringly back to language.
There exists generally one central dichotomy of language that is pertinent to this discussion. Derrida believed that language constituted the consciousnesses; Lacan put forth the assertion that “psychological development is predicated upon entrance into the "symbolic order" of language plant identity, language, and power firmly on even ground” (Ramsdell 166). Scholars working with these ideas investigate the manner in which the self or the identity is developed by the language that is used to narrate the life story – in the case of the texts, the characters are born from the language that forms the narrative of the text (167). However, other scholars and theorists resist this notion. Derrida, while believing that language constituted consciousness, also believed that language was not inherent to the self (that is, the original language is not created by the person who speaks it or operates within its constructs) but that it was obtained and learned from others, so language “emerges under the sign of what does not belong to me, nor to other people, who also merely share in it by using it “ (Maleuvre 171). This claim can be drawn out further: since no notion of human selfhood can exist without language, then it does not make sense to say that language is either “ours” or “not ours” (172). And if the self can never inhabit language this way, then it means that the self must in some way transcend language (or perhaps the other way around?) and if the self transcends language then the transcendence by definition must be mute. Such a construction of self and language provides an argument for why language cannot be a sort of “safe-deposit box” where an individual can lock up and safeguard his or her identity and culture (174). This dichotomy allows for a bit of context in terms of what is at stake when discussing language in relation to identity politics.
William Carlos Williams claimed that modernism (and to a certain ironic and inverted extent, postmodernism) had at its heart a commitment to “the reality of the word” (Michaels 38). In regards to postmodernism, it is difficult to stake any claims as to the ‘reality’ of anything, much less the word. One of the most important and most troubling characteristics of the postmodern tradition is the commitment to not privileging one reality over another and never giving the reader a safe place to rest in the onslaught of words. In the postmodern tradition, meaning is a set of shifting, mutable interpretations and ideas of equal credibility: that is, all ideas have the potential to be equally valid and worthy of consideration. What is left, then, but the language used to espouse these ideas? Following this idea, it might be worthwhile to consider the primacy of language over the ideas. With particular respect to White Teeth, language can be seen as a tool or means of making the characters ‘real’ to themselves (as real as they can be) and ‘real’ to the readers; language thus becomes proof that an individual belongs to a particular group or nation (Jones 1064).
The subtlety of language makes it very valuable when it comes time for identity work or, to the use the sociologist’s term, face work. Language enables us to “examine the vagaries of identity construction by individuals” and “attend to the diverse meanings given to identities, and the ways in which participants draw upon, ignore or reconstruct their identities” (1063). Language can be used to tease out the variations in identities in larger and smaller groups alike (an example of which was seen in Millat’s exchange with the ticket man over his use of ‘Paki’ language). Also, the ability to construct and negotiate one’s identity by means of language is even more significant when the subtleties of linguistic difference are recognized and appreciated. People can change their speech styles when they want to be more like or less like those that they interact with, or they can change their speech styles according to factors independent of the interaction. In White Teeth, Clara reverts back to her vernacular, like she does when she finds out that both she and Alsana are pregnant, whenever she is excited (Smith 55). Individuals will also emphasize their speech style when they feel like their identity – built through language – is threatened or under attack by whoever they are interacting with at the time (Jones 1065).
Part of the subtleties of language is the potential for fractured language. What is meant by fractured language can be seen in White Teeth when Samad and Poppy have what might be their first argument as lovers:
Poppy moved to the other end of the bench and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees. “I know,” she began slowly, “that this is no more than it is. But I won’t be spoken to like that.”
“I am sorry. It was wrong of me-”
“Just because you feel guilty, I’ve nothing to feel-”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I have no-”
“Because you can go if you-”
Half thoughts. Stick them all together and you have less than you began with.
“I don’t want to go. I want you.”
Poppy brightened a bit and smiled her half-sad, half-goofy smile.
“I want to spend the night…with you.” (Smith 151)
The sentences here are all half-finished; the thoughts here are all half-finished. The part of the thought with the most implications (possibly, “-to speak so rudely to you,” “-guilty for,” “-right to take my frustrations out on you,” “-want to, back to your wife and sons,”) all remain unsaid and unwritten, unexpressed in either one of the ways of expressing language. The sentences really don’t make much sense, but when juxtaposed in this guilty, rambling loop, they become much clearer. Still, the sentences and thoughts here are fragmented and fractured – just as fragmented and fractured, arguably, as the characters. Though Poppy is not dealing with the same weight of guilt that Samad is because she is unmarried and has not made promises to any other, she is still what one would call a home wrecker. Samad is the one who feels the most guilt because he is cheating on his wife and destroying the family structure he wants to reinforce and keep intact for his two sons. The characters at this point (again, most likely Samad more so than Poppy) are conflicted and fragmented, a concern mirrored in the language that they use and the writing that Smith uses to illustrate this point. Here, the characters are their most self-referential (hence the repetition of the pronoun “I”) and least coherent, and their disintegrating position as coherent (and cohesive?) subjects coincides with the breakdown of coherent and cohesive symbolic language use (
Perhaps just as important as language here is no language – the silence. In this case, an example from White Teeth seems to be more appropriate than any discussion of the articulation or language of silence. While Clara and Alsana are pregnant with Irie, Magid, and Millat, the two of them sit with Alsana’s Niece of Shame and discuss traditional views on marriage in relation to Neena’s startlingly progressive (and to Alsana, blasphemous) views:
“[…] The truth is, for a marriage to survive you don’t need all this talk, talk, talk […] you do not want to know what is slimy underneath the bed and rattling in the wardrobe […] When you are from families such as ours you should have learned that silence, what is not said, is the very best recipe for family life […] Yes, I was married to Samad Iqbal the same evening of the very day I met him. Yes, I didn’t know him from Adam. But I liked him well enough […] Now, ever time I learn something more about him, I like him less. So you see, we were better off the way we were.” (Smith 65)
Here, Alsana views language as something that continuously chips away at this image of Samad Miah that she had: someone who was handsome enough, with a sweet voice and a high and well-formed backside for a man his age. Here, the idea that language is tied up in identity is problematic for her – because she realizes that it is true. Every time the silence is broken (by language), Alsana learns something new about Samad which causes her to ‘like him less.’ Language creates his identity from the null-identity (perhaps just an image, a feeling) that Alsana has of him from that breakfast room on a steaming
The most perfect example of the intersection of language and identity is certainly the name. Novelists like Smith and Powers reproduced the real life choice of parents at the level of fiction, and in doing so they inscribed this tangibly human and secular process on naming, making the fictional character more real especially to readers who might share that particular name (an exemplary innovation in eighteenth century fiction), but also abandoning the claim that names arise outside fiction, in the patterns and types they resemble (Lupton 1213). The change in the way characters were named, notably in the eighteenth century, corresponded to a change in the way characters were read: they were seen “no longer as strictly designating destinies to which the reader appeals for moral example, but as instances much more loosely related to a patterned or prophetic understanding of the world outside the novel” (1214). It follows then that if the characters’ names function as clues as to their ‘character,’ or what is to be expected of them, their names appear as signs within the reality of the fiction; “the significance they accumulate has to do with their place within a system and not with their referencing universal truths to which the novel is answerable” (1214).
Names are especially poignant in White Teeth, and to a lesser degree in The Echo Maker. Mark is straight out of the Bible, and the name Joan also carries religious significance in that it is reminiscent of the saint Joan of Arc. Because of this text, a kind of suffering, the implication of trials and tribulations, prematurely informs the reader’s reading of these characters, and with good reason as the narrative progresses. The name Karin, however, is not spelled the traditional way and ever since the beginning hints at Karin’s eventual fate of being the government spy, a foreign (not in terms of nationality, either) agent dropped into the Schluter family instead of the loving sister. Bonnie and Barbara both have names that begin with the same letter, and both characters help Mark along in his recovery in a way that Karin does not and perhaps cannot. The name Daniel is also a strong name from the Bible, the name of a book just like the Book of Mark, which places them on a level plane in some senses. This fits in that the two boys were once inseparable before their lives took off in different directions, and it is why Daniel’s possible love for Mark at one point during their younger years makes sense. Karsh’s name, of course, sounds like the word ‘harsh,’ a fact that taints and informs the reader’s perception of him as a developer that is part of the reason why Daniel’s beloved cranes are facing extinction. All the names represented in The Echo Maker, to some extent, inform the reader’s view and reading of the characters, and some names prove to be more accurate in such a light than others.
Names are incredibly important in White Teeth, a novel that emphasizes hybridity and Other-ness. And what better marker of hybridity and Other-ness is there than the name, that absolute marker of ethnolinguistic difference and identity and creed? The names in White Teeth, in addition to dealing with all of this, also suggest an illusory notion of centrality: who is really at the center of power, of society, of the narrative (both within the narrative of White Teeth and the narrative White Teeth itself)? Does the center even exist if it is currently split between so many warring forces? Does the center reside in the margins?
The best example of Smith’s attempt to deal with such questions is the Halal butcher shop, outside of which Archibald Jones attempts to kill himself.
Overhead, a gang of the local flying vermin took off from some unseen perch, swooped, and seemed to be zeroing in on Archie’s car roof – only to perform, at the last moment, an impressive U-turn, moving as one with the elegance of a curve ball and landing on the Hussein-Ishmael, a celebrated halal butchers. (Smith 4)
First, it is simply brilliant for the author to fairly bathe Cricklewood in pigeon excrement since the people of Cricklewood are minorities of darker coloring, peoples associated with bringing filth and disease to England. It is extremely fitting that the pigeons, instead of defecating on white Englishman Archibald’s car, choose to return to the Hussein-Ishmael butcher shop to do their dirty business.
The name Hussein-Ishmael is particularly important to notions of identity, creed, and centrality as expressed through language. First off, the butcher shop is foreign and Other in that it is a Halal shop, which sells only those animals who have been slaughtered in the name of God, their heads partially severed to let the blood drain out before the meat is divided into portions. Its identity functions within the realm of ethnolinguistic difference: there are clear distinctions drawn between the Hussein-Ishmael shop and other butcher shops by virtue of its name alone. And of course, the fact that it is a Halal shop differentiates it linguistically in terms of creed. The name also brings up questions of centrality and marginality in that the two men the shop is named after, Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (S), and Ismail, Ibrāhim’s son with Hajirah, are marginalized religious figures. The names of Imam Hussein and his brother, Imam Hassan, bring to mind the split between the Shiite Muslims and the Sunni Muslims. The Sunnis believe that Abu Bakr (R) was the rightful first Caliph due to the voting process in place among the early Muslims. The Shiites believe that the Caliphate should have been passed along family lines to the Prophet Muhammad (S)’s nephew and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib (R), and then his sons with the Prophet (S)’s daughter, Fatima (R), Hassan and Hussein. The Shiites have adopted Hussein as somewhat of a patron saint, in some sense, and champion Imam Hussein’s memory at the expense of the other Caliphs and prominent early Muslims. It is significant, of course, that the Shiites are the Islamic religious minority. The use of the second name insinuates larger religious difference between two of the world’s three great monotheistic faiths. Ismail, the son of Ibrāhim, is the one that Muslims believe was almost sacrificed atop the mountain while Christians maintain that it was in fact Is’haq. The two forgotten sons (in one case, grandson) are the ones invoked by the simple process of naming this butcher shop, and ‘Hussein-Ishmael’ comes to stand in as a proper name just like Samad or Millat or Zinat.
The use of names like Ibrāhim, Ismail, and Is’haq instead of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac brings up an important point about naming that Powers pokes fun at in The Echo Maker. Proper names are like social security names: even though there may be two men named John Doe in the world, each John Doe is a different John Doe. The name “follows its referent wherever [it] goes and whatever happens,” and even the slightest modification raises serious doubts as to whether or not it is still the same individual that is being referred to (Margolin 109). This might be why non-Arabs express confusion when hearing Ibrāhim, Ismail, and Is’haq instead of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac: the names sound different and look different, so the referent must be different as well. This is why Mark’s conversation with his friends is so amusing in light of this name-changing concept:
[…] Are you familiar with the concept of jihad? Here’s the thing the State Department doesn’t understand about the Islamicists. They can’t help belonging to a foreign country.
Islamicists? I thought they were called Muslims. Am I wrong in calling them Muslims?
Well, “wrong.” Wrong is a relative term. Nobody’s going to call you “wrong,” per se… (Powers 66)
Ironically enough, Mark is the only one who unintentionally points out the fact that there isn’t any different between ‘Islamicists’ (based on the term itself independent of political connotation, understood as those that practice Islam or those that are the subjects of Islam) and ‘Muslims’ (those that practice Islam). Though the words are not the same, he still understands them to be bound to the same referent: bearded, tunic wearing, oil hoarding people that kiss the earth five times a day and don’t eat pork and go through bouts of asceticism about once a year for thirty days at a time, presumably for no reason that makes any semblance of sense. His friends agree that no one would call him wrong, but the addition of the Latin ‘per se’ implies that Mark still is wrong somehow in understanding Islamicists to be Muslims. This is, of course, due to the political connotation: as a term of discourse, Islamicists are those Muslims that favor a strict and literal interpretation of the Holy Qur’an and use militancy to achieve their aims. Mark’s view, and then the converse view argue for the way that proper names, or proper terms like ‘Islamicists’ and ‘Muslims’ that refer to a specific group rather than a specific individual, can be misconstrued in terms of identity and that once any misconstrual or modification occurs, the referent loses some, if not all, of its integrity in relation to the name.
Zadie Smith addresses this notion of the name as a mark of language and its unchanging referent in Samad’s distaste for being called anything other than Samad:
“Sam? Sam? You don’t look right, Sam. Please, they’ll be here in a minute…Sam?”
[…] “Don’t call me Sam,” he growled, in a voice Archie did not recognize, “I’m not one of your English matey-boys. My name is Samad Miah Iqbal. Not Sam. Not Sammy. And not – God forbid – Samuel. It is Samad.”
Archie looked crestfallen. (Smith 94)
Archie, in his worry and concern over Samad’s condition, repeats the affectionate nickname ‘Sam’ over and over again perhaps as a nervous tic, one that Samad does not appreciate. ‘Sam’ is a foolish, inconsequential English matey-boy like perhaps the insufferable Roy; ‘Samad’ on the other hand is strong, solid Islamic name. Samad’s rejection of ‘Sam,’ ‘Sammy,’ and the Biblical ‘Samuel’ are evidence of his desire to maintain the name-referent bind and at the same time serves as another kind of ethnolinguistic difference: Samad is an Arabic name meaning Eternal, ascribed to God Himself in the chapter of the Qur’an that when recited three times is as good in reward as reciting the entire Qur’an, while Sam or Samuel is a ridiculous nickname or a name from a rival holy text respectively.
The meanings of these personal names by which the characters both are identified and identify are also of particular importance. Individuals are introduced into the “mental representation of a domain” as soon as they are named, and this name is what makes all communication possible; it can also serve as a clue to the character’s character or destiny (Margolin 109). Such a consideration further illuminates the characters in White Teeth. First, there is Samad Miah Iqbal who is so very insistent upon being called Samad instead of Sam, Sammy, or Samuel. Exploring the name adds an entirely different dimension to this character. Very simply translated, ‘Samad’ is an Arabic term meaning ‘eternal.’ This makes sense enough: arguably enough, Samad and Archie are the two main characters in the early portion of the text until Irie, Magid, and Millat replace them in significance. Still, Samad remains an eternal presence whether he’s a soldier lining the inside of his eyelids with morphine, a father taking his firstborn to the airport, or a concerned Muslim man attending a genetic engineering presentation. Samad is never far removed from the reader’s consciousness even if he is not the central figure of the chapter.
Translated more accurately and comprehensively, however, the name ‘Samad’ takes on a different meaning: ‘He who is not dependent on any, but upon whom all are dependent.’ Furthermore, this is one of the ninety-nine Arabic names for God, who is Eternal, dependent on none, and upon whom all are dependent. This definition gives us an interesting way to reexamine, if not reconfigure, Samad’s identity. Specifically, we see the contradiction inherent in his name. This character is not an independent one. He depends on characters like the infidel pork-eater Archie to reinforce his identity as a pious Muslim man (can’t say fairer than that). He depends on his son Magid to turn out a certain way to prove to his community and his wife that he was right all along in separating the twins and sending the older one overseas. He is dependent on Miss Poppy Burt-Jones to give him a “new lease on living” (Smith 10), ironically the same thing he said he received when he married Alsana Begum. And as for everyone being dependent on him, that certainly didn’t turn out to be the case. Alsana is hardly the submissive little Indian woman; Millat is out drinking and smoking and potentially impregnating just about every English Rose that crosses his path; and Magid becomes more English than the English. All three characters eventually learn to lead their lives independent of Samad, the Eternal, the Independent, upon whom all are dependent. We see, then, because of this disconnect, the silence in Samad’s name if we understand the name to be indicative of personality (identity) and destiny.
The twins have very interesting names. The firstborn has “A GLORIOUS NAME LIKE MAGID MAHFOOZ MURSHED MUBTASIM IQBAL,” a long string of names beginning with what his mother thinks of as the strongest letter (126). Each name is religious in its origin, and ‘Magid’ means ‘illustrious’ and is one of the ninety-nine Arabic names for God. Mahfooz refers to one who is safeguarded; Murshed is a guide; and Mubtasim most likely refers to one who is faithful to God. There is a similar ‘silence’ in Magid’s name: by the end of the book, he has rejected Islam and become a man of science and, much to Samad’s dismay, a pork-eater. His name, the one best marker of identity, rejects its own constructed identity. Magid is illustrious, but not in the same sense that God is illustrious; Magid is safeguarded in his new serenity and his scientific approach to life, but he is hardly safeguarded like a Muslim is safeguarded due to his belief in God; he is a guide, but a scientific one instead of a spiritual one; and he is not one who is faithful to God, unless it’s the Deus ex Machina or Clockmaker God that put in place all of the laws of science and then disappeared. In regard to Samad and Magid especially, we see how Lacan’s notion of the name is pertinent: our name, given to us by an outsider, is “the source of our life-long méconnaissance, our self-misrecognition, our sense of strangeness and impersonality in the world” (Caws 6). Samad and Magid are the two characters in White Teeth that suffer most from self-misrecognition, a misrecognition of their own identity, that which makes them what they are.
Millat is an interesting case as well because unlike the others, his name fits. Though he deals with his fair share of self-misrecognition, in the boy that lost his virginity at age thirteen and a half becoming the boy that swears off music and movies and active sexual intercourse (as opposed to passive ejaculation), his name and the identity it constructs independent of Millat actually corresponds with the identity Millat creates for himself. The second Iqbal son’s full name is Millat Zulfikar Iqbal, and his name fits in that it recognizes a crisis of identity that Millat as a person really has no choice but to live up to and into (much in the same way that one grows into a pair of shoes that were once too big). ‘Millat’ means ‘nation’ and refers to a group of people that form a collective religious, ethnic, political, or geographic (and thus arbitrarily assigned) body politick. If we are to understand Millat as standing in for the masses, or for bridging two nations (England and Bangladesh) into one, then we can see why he is easily the most Western character in the whole text. He drinks, smokes, dresses in his stretch-to-fit Levi’s and black Converse sneakers, sleeps around, loves gangster movies, but also falls in with KEVIN and tries to learn how to pray and become a better Muslim (though ‘better’ is an entirely subjective term, especially here). Millat is also reminiscent of the Arabic phrase, millat Ibrāhim, mentioned in the Qur’an as the religion/nation of Abraham. Here, the analogy between Millat and the Abrahamic faiths is undeniable.
His middle name is Zulfikar, which refers first and foremost to Hadrat Ali (R)’s double sword, an important symbol of military might and conquest and an icon to Shiite Muslims. There are two blades, of course, which reinforces the dual identity we see in English-Bengali Millat; we can also read the two blades as an attempt for conquest of his English identity and his Bengali identity, that they might somehow be conquered and subdued when one rises above the other, so as to form a more harmonious ‘whole’ identity. But aside from referring to this legendary sword (that was purchased by wealthy businessman and third Caliph, Uthman (R) so that Ali (R) could use the money to provide Fatima (R)’s dowry, and was then returned to Ali (R) by Uthman (R) as a wedding gift, suggesting a kind of transient nature), Zulfikar was also the first name of the famous (or infamous, depending on who one talks to) Pakistani president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He was one of the greatest Pakistani leaders (or most corrupt, again depending on who one talks to) and was executed by Zia ul-Haq, who was put in power by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency. Not only this, but Bhutto’s oldest son died mysteriously, and his other son was murdered during the political reign of Zulfikar’s daughter, Benazir. The name Zulfikar in this context carries as much blood as the earlier connotation. Zulfikar was a figure whose life was ended prematurely, on the cusp of doing such good in Pakistan and uniting all the Islamic countries in the world into a functioning Muslim alliance, and his progeny also suffered and were killed in much the same manner. This connotation adds another dimension to Millat’s identity: he is a nation, certainly, the epitome of assimilation and Western-ness, but his life will come to a tragic and premature end. In this light, it is not difficult to see why literary critics interpret Millat as a symbol for the decline of the Western empire. Though there are many other clues in the text that suggest this symbolism, the most obvious one is Millat’s very name that carries his identity and his destiny.
Language and identity politics are related in exceedingly complex ways. Each concept is itself so complicated and unwieldy, still proving to be a locus of intense debate among scholars. Language and identity function together in very interesting ways in regard to how individuals view themselves and others, how they express their fractured language, and how they change their identities, among other concerns. The most significant and poignant intersection of identity and language is, of course, the name, which brings up all sorts of issues regarding ethnolinguistic identity and centrality versus marginalization, etc. Authors Zadie Smith and Richard Powers struggle with these complex ideas in their respective ideas, forever illuminating their readers as to the profound effects of language and the profound abyss of human identity.
Works Cited
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