Sex, love and multiculturalism

"There are some fucks for which a person would have their partner and children drown in a frozen sea," writes Hanif Kureishi in his suspiciously autobiographical novel, Intimacy.

There is something poignant about this statement, and although we might vehemently deny the truth of it, it tugs at something deep. Whether it’s guilt, longing, or maybe even a glimmer of understanding, most are not brave enough to make such an outrageous claim. Only Kureishi—or his fictional proxy—has the balls to actually say it out loud.

Kureishi has never been one for being coy. The entire front cover of his latest novel, Something to Tell You, is a mosaic of countless copulating figures. He is even known to have supported himself financially by writing pornography under a pseudonym.

Kureishi, however, puts me right straight away. What you call sexuality is really love, or the desire to be close to somebody. All writers are concerned with the different forms of love in some way  or another, and sexuality—although a limited form—is certainly one of them. Kureishi is neither a pornographer, a misogynist, nor a reckless hedonist- he is simply concerned with love in its multiple forms.

But there is also something distinctly political about his explorations of sexuality. Right from the beginning, his 1985 Oscar-nominated screenplay My Beautiful Launderette presented a homosexual relationship between a white working-class neo-fascist and an enterprising second generation Pakistani in Thatcherite Britain. It elicited many a raised eyebrow, often criticism, particularly from Britain's Asian community. At a Pakistani Action Committee demonstration, banners condemned the film as the product of a vile and perverted mind.

The culturally specific backlash is revealing; Kureishi’s struggle for liberation is not just sexual, but also political and cultural. During the 1980s, he was at the vanguard of the fight against what he calls “the white patriarchy” in Britain. The struggle of homosexuals, the struggle of black and Asian people in terms of racism, and also the struggle of women through feminism, became a sort of unified struggle for liberation.

Many of these struggles, thanks to authors like Kureishi, have now come to an end. Kureishi is already itching to embark on new ideas with new struggles. Once an ardent advocate of the concept of multiculturalism, he now dismisses it as archaic, limited, and simply “too boring”. He explains, “I think it was a very good idea back when we lived in a world of monoculturalism. It seems to me more interesting now to either look for universal values, or other forms of hybridity.”

Throughout our conversation he has been casual and unassuming. Here is the first betraying sign that the man I am speaking to is exceptionally bright. “Hybridity?” I ask, knowing it to be a niche word used mainly by postcolonial scholars.

“Yeah” he throws off casually, slipping back into layman’s terms. “More complex forms of seeing yourself in relation to other people in the world, rather than seeing yourself as though you were only a Muslim, for instance.”

Even sexual liberation, Kureishi argues, is now in danger of becoming “muddled up” with pornography. “In pornography, there aren’t any real people. There are just bodies moving in space. I don’t think that’s very interesting at all. It doesn’t tell us anything about the place of love in a person’s life, and what they are using their sexuality to do.”

The focus of Kureishi’s work has shifted accordingly, and no longer pushes overtly political messages, but deeply personal narratives. “Oh I’m still interested in the political,” he assures me, "Race, liberalism, free speech. But I’m also concerned with love, marriage, children, or what people describe as personal relationships. It’s all connected though,” he adds, pointedly.

Even Kureishi’s earlier reputation as a hippie harbinger, occupying what’s now a hackneyed world of “sex, drugs and rock and roll,” is well behind him. “You have to find other ways to live that are more satisfying, and consistent with your age. I’d hate to be doing what I was doing in my 20s,” he mutters wearily. “I can’t think of anything more tedious.”

Kureishi is in fact a very disciplined worker, and extraordinarily prolific. “I get up at about half 6 or 7, and work until I’ve got other things to do; take the kids to school, or do interviews, or teach. I do quite a lot of teaching. I like to get something done, move something forward, everyday.” Ultimately, he writes because “ It’s a real passion.”

And how does he relax? Swill a glass of Merlot and kick back with Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle? “Watch the football, hang out with the kids. But yeah, I’ll be swilling a glass of Merlot. A large glass.”