Dancing in the Margins: Contemporary Postcolonial Identity and Intersectionality in Zadie Smith's Swing Time

Abstract

In order to understand the ways postcolonial cultural identity is formed, it is necessary to consider how race as link to colonial power is interspersed with further socio-economic categories in shaping the agency to create an empowering cultural identity. In line with Stuart Hall, colonialism’s material and cultural effect on the diasporic subject’s agency will therefore be jointly considered, with the material aspects and its further expansion into socio-economic dimensions of identity mainly covered by Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality. The analysis will show that the narrator in Swing Time and her friend Tracey develop differential agencies in relation to culture as a result of their individually nuanced socio-economic background.