Satirical Gaze on Self-righteous Reductionism in Zadie Smith's White Teeth

独善的還元主義への諷刺的まなざし : ゼイディ ・ スミス 『ホワイト ・ ティース』小論

Satirical Gaze on Self-righteous Reductionism in Zadie Smith's White Teeth

Creators Takamoto Takako

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000) is commonly considered to be a novel describing multiculturalism in contemporary London, but the scope of the novel is actually far larger than that. The author’s main concern is to depict satirically the characters who devote themselves wholeheartedly to particular doctrines； they presume those doctrines will provide them with clear-cut solutions to any complicated problem in life, even that of preserving a sense of one's own personal identity. Throughout the novel, we detect hints that self-righteousness derived from monistic reductionism can lead to dangerous exclusivism. Smith shows that such concepts as can be found in reductive ideologies - “purity” , “truth” and “roots”- are nothing more than illusion, and that their quests can be morally dangerous； rather, she encourages mixing of peoples in order to make the world a better and safer place to live. Moreover, by adopting intertextuality, she also targets her criticism of reductionism at those ideologists who allegedly abused Nietzscheanism, including Francis Fukuyama and Nazi philosophers. Her “superman” is, unlike theirs and even Nietzsche’s, a man who does not resort to any particular dogma as easy means to seek out a sense of identity but accepts existential anxiety as well as eternal recurrence.

[ISSN]0370-9361