HENA03924U English - Free topic 4: The Individual in/and the Group: Contemporary Multicultural British Literature (Exam form B)

In this class we will be exploring some recent multicultural texts that respond to complex and often contractory lived experiences in multicultural Britain. We will be reading these texts in tandem with socio-political theories about multiculturalism in general and multicultural Britain specifically. Focus will be on how such theories privilege the group as an analytical category and, consequently, how the individual is often neglected in this theoretical apparatus. Multicultural literature, in contrast, typically takes as it central theme the individual’s struggle to make sense of a world that wants him or her to represent the group. In the class we will explore such topics as the politics of recognition, the formation of parallel societies, radicalisation and assimilation, religion and racism, generational and gender differences, community feeling and transformative encounters – and the individual in/and the group. We will be exploring theories of multiculturalism put forward by thinkers such as Ali Rattansi, Charles Taylor, Bhikhu Parekh, Michael Murphy and Kwame Anthony Appiah. We will be reading the following texts:  Diran Adebayo, Some Kind of Black (1996), Naomi Alderman, Disobedience (2006), Nikita Lalwani, Gifted (2007), Sunjeev Sahota, Ours Are The Streets (2011), Julian Barnes, “East Wind” (2011), Sathnam Sanghera, Wedding Material (2013), and Zadie Smith, “The Embassy of Cambodia” (2013).