Kureishi treats identity as fluid and resists the freezing of identity for political purposes

Evidence

Kureishi’s main objection to the identity politics that he sees taking over from class orientation is that it freezes identity in false shapes for political convenience. Against this, The Black Album, like its predecessor, records a young man in the process of wrestling with the challenges to identity that youth and new experience raise. True identity is seen as fluid, and the search for an authentic self is more fruitful than the possibility of finding it. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 172

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to Naqvi’s Home Boy — the fluid, costume-like identity of the ‘home boy’ protagonist navigating multiple selves. Useful counterpoint for the reader’s hinge between Morey and Naqvi.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the fluid-identity position itself risk a libertarian blindness to how race is ascribed regardless of self-conception — i.e., can Shahid’s costume metaphor account for how others impose identity on him?