Decentring Whiteness: A Critical Study of Race and Identity in Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man through the lens of Deconstruction. The study aims to explore the author’s approach to deconstruct the existing ideologies and his attempt to blur the boundaries of existing binaries. The theory of Deconstruction in general believes that the basic ideologies possess no concrete basis as they are constructed on the basis of language that itself is unstable, thus unreliable. The paper intends to explore how author has encountered with the basic stereotypical ideologies about the non-white races and how his work promotes the same racial stereotypes while trying to refute and debase them. The study digs out the embedded stereotypical representation of the non-white in the novel. The paper establishes that although Hamid debases the existing ideologies and implies the fluidity of boundaries of structured binaries, yet his representation of the non-whites is stereotypical and based upon the established perception of the non-whites by the white nations.