Cartographies of Becoming: Hybridity, Deterritorialization and Identity in the Buddha of Suburbia

Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) subverts the traditional Bildungsroman by rejecting linear self-actualization in favor of an identity formation process marked by hybridity, deterritorialization, and perpetual becoming. Through the protagonist Karim’s negotiation of racial, cultural, and sexual subjectivity within 1970s Britain, the novel illustrates the fragmented, fluid, and performative nature of postcolonial identity. Engaging with postmodern and postcolonial frameworks—such as Homi Bhabha’s Third Space, Stuart Hall’s positional identities, and Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic subjectivity—this study explores how the novel destabilizes essentialist categories of selfhood, favoring instead a dynamic interplay of cultural multiplicity, mimicry, and dislocation. By incorporating Mikhail Bakhtin’s heteroglossia and Michel Foucault’s critique of disciplinary power, the analysis highlights how Kureishi’s narrative resists hegemonic inscriptions of identity, embracing instead a decentered, polyphonic mode of self-construction. Karim’s journey, marked by irony, performativity, and non-linear development, underscores the postmodern deconstruction of subjectivity.