Mohsin Hamid’s notion of “critical optimism” is about recognising that we have to come up with a future that we find desirable and is “more inclusive”.

Mohsin Hamid’s notion of “critical optimism” is about recognising that we have to come up with a future that we find desirable and is “more inclusive”.Credit:Getty Images

“I was 30 years old and had spent 18 years living in the West,with brown skin and a Muslim name – so I was not a white person. But I was somebody who,because I went to some elite universities and lived in liberal enclaves in the Bay Area and New York City,I wouldn’t say discrimination was one of the great challenges I faced,” Hamid,who was raised in Pakistan and the US,says. “It was a minor annoyance for the most part of my life.“

But after 9/11,Hamid found his position in society had suddenly changed. “A new category was being imposed on me,and in that category there was much more suspicion,much more of a sense of threat,much more of an idea of difference.”

Hamid explored the social and political repercussions of 9/11 in his best-selling 2007 novel,The Reluctant Fundamentalist, but while that was loosely based on some of his experiences and feelings at the time,the specific idea of race as a social construct (“and the way it gets imagined upon us and can be imagined differently” as Hamid puts it),and what that means for how we live and interact remained unmined in his work – until now.

His latest novel,The Last White Man,centres around a white-skinned character named Anders who wakes up one morning to discover he’s become dark-skinned. The metaphor isn’t subtle,but that’s part of the point. Anders can’t escape his changed reality. He goes from never having to think about race – living in a world where whiteness is seen as a default mode – to being confronted with it every day:on the street,at work,and in his relationships.

Credit:

Anders soon realises that his own sense of identity is shifting,in response to what he’s experiencing. Race,Hamid says,may be an artificial construct but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a real social force once defined and applied.

But the purpose of the book’s conceit is much broader than simply helping readers understand the constructed nature of race. Hamid sees humanity as a herd divided into tribes,those tribes in tension with one another. The Last White Man is trying to envisage a world in which humanity could be brought back together.

Advertisement

“We’ve had a lot of cultural imagination of the way when dark-skinned people will be treated equally,” he says. “What we haven’t had so much of is an imagining of what if whiteness itself disappeared? And we were just with people? I thought that was worth playing with.”

The opening lines ofThe Last White Man are written to deliberately evoke Kafka’sMetamorphosis,another novel about a man’s physical transformation. Hamid says that the nod is intended as a minor reference,but the work of modernist writers such as Kafka has informed the book.

“Of course,Kafka was not the first person to imagine somebody transformed. In fiction you go toThe Arabian Nights a thousand years before Kafka,you go back to Greek myths a thousand years before that,Hindu narratives thousands of years before that. It’s something that’s been happening in literature and religious texts for millennia.

“But writers like Jorge Luis Borges,Kafka,Virginia Woolf were playing with form in a time like ours,where you had mounting hatreds,technological change,wars being fought,and I think that’s a relevant moment in literary history.”

In particular,Hamid finds similarities between the religious persecution in the early part of the 20th century and what is being experienced across the globe today.

“InMetamorphosis Gregor Samsa,wakes up,and he’s a giant bug,and he is separated from the human herd. And he experiences this sort of alienation and dehumanisation,over the course of the story. This is at a time when the industrial revolution is making people feel that way. Because of their work they’re feeling alienated. And in terms of the cultural trends in central Europe where Kafka live,we’re heading in the same direction – where Jews and Gypsies and gays and other groups were about to be,in a sense,robbed of their humanity and subjected to the Holocaust.”

Grappling with themes of race,the resurgence of the far right and the acceleratory impact of technology in terms of spreading hate and division makeThe Last White Man at times a confronting read but,given the reality of what the world is going through,a necessary one as well. Its ending – ambiguous but vaguely optimistic – suggests Hamid feels more positive about the way things are heading than the themes of the story suggest.

“I think there’s a difference between a kind of ‘naive optimism’ and a ‘critical optimism’,” Hamid says. “A naive optimism is the position that says ‘Look,things are just going to work out,don’t worry about it’. I think that probably is a fairly disastrous strategy. In our current moment,the environment will just sort itself out and polarisation will just sort itself out and inequality will just sort itself out. I’m not convinced that these things are going to sort themselves out.”

A scene from the film version of The Reluctant Fundamentalist,the novel in which Mohsin Hamid explored the social and political repercussions of 9/11.

A scene from the film version of The Reluctant Fundamentalist,the novel in which Mohsin Hamid explored the social and political repercussions of 9/11.Credit:

In contrast,Hamid’s “critical optimism” is about recognising that we have to come up with a future that we find desirable and is “more inclusive”.

“Because if we don’t do this,” he says,“what happens is that we are left with a kind of fear of the future,that compels us towards a nostalgic politics,and that this nostalgic politics is about going back to what it was like 20 years ago,or 50 years ago,or 1000 years ago,you know,some time when there were less immigrants,or Islam was more pure,or Russia was still part of the Soviet Union.”

Like his critically acclaimed Exit West,which envisages a world without borders,Hamid is usingThe Last White Man to upend our assumptions and norms,and turn something that feels at first glance to be dystopian,or horror,into a vision of a more just society. The book is not a manifesto or a call to arms,but it speaks profoundly to our current moment and where we should be heading. Not just a diagnosis,but a potential blueprint for what could come next.

“It’s very important for me to not solely sound a warning about where we’re headed,but to counteract it – and begin to suggest other places to go. Because I really do fear the consequences of us not having that kind of optimism. I think that it’s a profoundly dangerous position for us to all agree that the future is terrible,and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

The Last White Man is published by Hamish Hamilton at $32.99. Mohsin Hamid appears at Melbourne Writers Festival on September 8 and 9 (mwf.com.au). He appears at Antidote Festival in Sydney on September 11 (sydneyoperahouse.com).

License this article

Most Viewed in Culture

Loading