Qureshi 1

Group 2 (Muhammad Nauman Qureshi, Aleena Batool, Mubarrah Javed, Sheeza Riaz, Tariq
Raheem and Zermeen Sajjad)

MPhil-1st-Eng-Lit

Instructor: Ms. Samia Bashir

The Death of Whiteness and the Birth of a New World: A Critical Phenomenological
Reading of The Last White Man

Introduction:

“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.” (Keats)

The novel The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid is a story of a white man who woke up one day
and found out that his skin color was changed from white to brown. This novel stands tall as the
testament to the great literariness of Mohsin Hamid, how he portrayed the changing interactions,
beliefs and status of Anders, the protagonist of the novel.
The novel is set in an unnamed town, the novel is about the story of Anders and his girlfriend,
Oona. Anders was the first person whose skin color was changed, later on many other people’s
skins color also got changed from white to brown, including his girlfriend’s. The town was
initially inhabited by the white people who had some hatred for the black people. Anders was a
gym instructor, his interactions with his clients and colleagues were disrupted significantly. At
first, he used to hide is transformation, afraid of how other people will react. Later when almost
everyone’s skin color got changed, the concept of whiteness started to vanish from the town.
Anders and Oona, they liked each other. Oona had to deal with the conspiracies theories of her
mother related to the color transformations in the society. They built a strong bond as they both
supported each other in the times of chaos and anxiety.
The novel does not clearly specify about the cause of transformation, like there was no disease,
no magical aspect and no science fiction. Nevertheless, the main focus of the novel is the
reaction of the people how all the people in the town react to this transformation. Some of the
people resisted the shift, some panicked and some accepted the change and took skin color as a
biological matter instead of socially constructed norm.
This research paper adopts critical phenomenology to analyze The Last White Man, focusing
particularly on the works of Sara Ahmed and Maurice Merleau. This framework questions the
lived experiences of individuals within a society focusing on the habits, identity formation and
mechanisms through which power operates in the society. When applying this framework to the
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novel The Last White Man, we will be able to discover structures of racial identity and the
processes through which the whiteness is both constructed and deconstructed. Through the
character analysis we will be able to analyze the societal responses to the transformations and
portray how the novel questions phenomenology of the race and identity. This research paper
will also prove that whiteness not merely a racial category however a power dynamic structure
that is formed by individual and collective experiences.

Literature Review:
The study of The Last White Man has been the center of attraction for many scholars around the
globe across different disciplines. A review of existing literature shows a range of perspectives
and findings on the novel. The main focus of scholars was on the race theory and postcolonial
perspective. Yet, the application of critical phenomenology is relatively unheard of when it
comes to The Last White Man. The theory, critical phenomenology examines how social
structures shape lived experiences which is really helpful in the understanding of racial
transformation and identity of Anders, Oona and others in the novel.
When it comes to analyzing the novel from the critical phenomenological point of view, there
exists almost none scholarly work to begin with. Keeping these contexts in mind, here are a few
scholars works which are not specifically on the critical phenomenology however these works
give us a better understanding of the novel through different lens which will significantly help in
the narrative building.
Sidra Khan in INTERSECTION OF RACE, IDENTITY AND POWER IN HAMID’S THE
LAST WHITE MAN (2025), portrays the multiple experiences experienced by people of the
contemporary society of Hamid's The Last White Man, her research focuses on the analysis of
experiences, based on cruelty, racism and identity crises which alienated Anders inside out. Her
research also shows the weaker part of society as being brutal and harsh. Also, it shows how
characters feel as being excluded from their society and face such consequences as Anders did
when his boss expressed his views regarding his changed appearance. Anders experienced racism
as his skin turned brown. Apart from facing exclusions from society, the characters had to go
through emotional trauma which can do more harm than anything else. It also creates a sense of
inferiority complex into them, as a result of racial discrimination. As the father of Anders is the
last white man, depicted by Mohsin Hamid, his changed appearance also caused his father to
create certain distance from his son, thus affecting familial bonds. The superficiality of society is
represented as how it judges people merely on the basis of their skin color, thus resulting in the
creation of social prejudices. As this research purely deals with the experiences of marginalized
people, it shows their lives before and after the change of appearance, as well as, how they
suffered through such prejudices and their journey of navigating through it.
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Hira Ali and Naila Khadim in “Postcolonialism in Hamid’s The Last White Man” (2024) focuses
on postcolonial lens of Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man, explaining the transformation of
whiteness as a metaphor for identity and its collapse. Through the experiences of Anders, the
research article shows how whiteness which was once a position of invisible privilege is now
unstable. His self and reality become increasingly alienating and got distanced by those who,
once, accepted him unquestioningly. This transformation of color portrays the death of whiteness
as a secure social category. As whiteness vanishes, so too does the illusion of racial superiority
and Anders is forced to confront a world that no longer prioritizes his presence.
Kalsoom Jahan in “Discursive Shifts in Identity: Racial Transformation and Societal Power
Dynamics in The Last White Man” (2024) used Ruth Wodak’s Discourse Historical Approach
(DHA) and Critical Discourse Analysis to focus on how language shows the fragility of race and
power structures. Their research paper shows through changing experiences of Anders, how
racial identity is socially constructed and sustained by discourse. Through the loss of whiteness
of Anders, he lost social privilege and sense of belonging. The article also shows the
consequences of racial identity shifts such as the confusion, fear and alienation of the characters
of the novel.
Nida Masroor in “Exploring Racial Dynamics and Counter Narratives in The Last White Man:
Application of Critical Race Theory” (2024) highlights that the race is not natural, it is actually a
man-made idea. The Last White Man can be a powerful example of how race and identity evolve.
This article claims that Hamid challenges the ideas of race by Ander's character. It shows that
how identity is socially constructed, how easily it can change and how deeply society is attached
with old ideas of color. This article used the lens of critical race theory, postcolonialism and
intersectionality to explain how Hamid reveals the painful reality of racism and give us a vision
of hope. This article highlights the Americans civil right movement in the mid of 20th century
which is marked by the leaders such as Martin Luther king Jr., Malcolm X and Rosa Park. Later
this movement was marked as progressive against racism. Also, the age of enlightenment was
really influential after the abolishment of slavery in the 19th century.
The existing literature on The Last White Man provides valuable knowledge with a range of
perspectives and theories. Research scholars have extensively examined the themes of race and
postcolonial elements, however, despite these scholarly works, notable gaps and inconsistencies
remain there, especially in the domain of critical phenomenology, like how the skin color is used
as a tool so it projects power and what kind of emotional turmoil does a character go through.
While there are quite a few researches which helps in the better understanding of the novel The
Last White Man, but the is definitely a gap to review the novel from other angles as well.
Addressing to these gaps is vital as it would develop more comprehensive perspective. This
research paper aims to bride the foresaid gap exploring The Last White Man within broader
critical phenomenological discussions and seeing how Hamid’s narrative makes readers to
rethink the concepts of race, mind, power, structures and perception.
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Research Methodology:
The investigations of experiences, situations and viewpoints is the main method used in this
qualitative research project. It is qualitative attempt to understand the full picture by focusing on
what things mean to people. This method allows for a more profound understanding of how
characters like Oona and Anders navigate transformed realities and how race operates as both a
social construct and biological marker. The research follows a mixed method approach
assembling both inductive and deductive reasoning. The deductive component is rooted in
established theories particularly the works of Maurice Marleau Ponty and Sara Ahmed to analyze
how bodily alterations overlaps with the phenomenology of whiteness and social otherness.
Simultaneously the inductive aspect arises through analysis and close reading of the novel. The
lived experiences of characters, their altered social relationships, psychological uncertainty are
examined to identify the structure of power, alienation and resistance. The primary data
collection method used is textual analysis which involves the selection of key narrative moments,
character interactions and symbolic representations of skin, color races transformation. The
analysis is interpretative rather than descriptive integrating with phenomenological aim to reveal
how identity is shaped through perception incarnation and socio-cultural contexts. This
methodology encourages an investigation of how The Last White Man critiques racial hierarchies
and exposes whiteness not as static racial category but as a dynamic site of power privilege and
stability.

Theoretical Framework:
This research article takes critical phenomenology as its theoretical lens to uncover the themes of
embodiment and identity transformation in The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid. Critical
Phenomenology is an evolving field which is based on classical phenomenology’s emphasis on
subjective embodied experience while keeping insights from critical theory which explores how
such experiences are shaped, constrained and violated by social, political and historical forces.
Phenomenology emerged in the early 20th century with Edmund Husserl, who wanted to study
consciousness from the first-person point of view. After that, Martin Heidegger came, he
emphasized “being-in-the-world”, arguing that we don’t just think, instead we live, move and
interact with the world.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Embodiment:

The core of phenomenology is the stance that consciousness is always the consciousness of
something. It is intentional, directed and engraved in this world. Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his
famous book Phenomenology of Perception (1945) said that body is not an object like other
objects in the world, instead, the lived body gives us the perception of how the world is
understood. He challenges, Cartesian dualism and the separation of mind and the body.
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MerleauPonty argued that perception begins in the body. He further argued that our body is our
access to the world, it knows before “cognition” intervenes.
In this framework, bodily habits, such as gestures and movements are not just physical, but are
linked with a person’s sense of self in the world. So, when these habits are disturbed by disability
or traumatic event or in the case of The Last White Man, a sudden change in skin color, the
person feels disconnection between themselves and the world. Their embodiment disrupts their
expectation and the social norms around them.
In The Last White Man, the protagonist Anders undergoes a sudden darkening of his skin color.
This transformation is not just responsible for the shift in how others see him but how he
experiences his own body, as he has become the object of suspicion, fear and hostility, and
Merleau-Ponty has termed it as “body schema”. Anders should learn to navigate in the new
world as his lived experiences becomes altered by racial meaning imposed on his body.

Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology:

Sara Ahmed, a renowned American scholar and writer, has broad collection of theories including
affect theory, feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory and of course postcolonialism.
Her renowned work “Queer Phenomenology” (2006), a critical analysis of phenomenology and
it’s link with race, sexuality, orientations and objects. In the final part of her book, she argued
how habit spaces develop around individuals and how disoriented people like queer people or
people of certain race felt in and out of that place. Her primary focus is on queer and racialized
experiences which are not aligned with the straight lines of world or society who have
constructed such idea of universality.
She established her argument on classical phenomenology proposed by famous philosophers like
Husserl, Heidegger, and Marleau-Ponty. Phenomenology is the study of lived human experiences
which aims at to understand and analyze human consciousness. It focuses on subjective nature of
world or objects as they appear to us. She negotiates and challenges concepts of center (white
straight people or Europe), who have constructed certain lines (idea of straight lines are
corresponding to certain normative routes taken by hetero-sexual and white bodies who are
meant to travel) spaces and social conventions excluding certain people (Othering). Space is
oriented favoring or supporting certain bodies (white, straight and male) while pushing others to
be felt as “out”.
Her extension towards idea of racism she elaborates how institutions and workplaces act as white
spaces, unwelcoming non- white people and see them as deviations. This phenomenological
dissonance allows whites to move freely in such spaces forcing others to continuously being fit
and adjusted in these “habitual spaces” which are of course developed by repetition of actions of
white bodies. To support her arguments, she seeks help from Fanon’s “Black Skin, White
Masks”, highlighting invisibility of lived experiences of black people in dominant narratives but
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“hyper visible” in surroundings, thanks to their colored bodies. This results in “disorientation”
where one feels both present and absent at the same time, being ‘in’ yet ‘out’ of it.
These disoriented bodies are to be reoriented to develop new perspectives and orientations.
Marginalized bodies or queer bodies tend to produce new possibilities rejecting straight lines of
dominant concepts. Such bodies expose fragility of whiteness and heteronormativity. Sarah
Ahmed challenges the concepts of classical phenomenology and race theories that spaces are
never neutral or universal but different for disoriented bodies who have different lived
experiences. Her theory of disorientation offers a tool to analyze how marginalized or ‘out’
people act, react, negotiates and resist dominant and universal narratives. Her focus is to see the
world as it is, how the imaginary lines which are constructed can be redrawn.

Discussion and Analysis:

This research examines the unique perspectives completely or partially ignored by the
researchers. Critical Phenomenology helps uncovering the hidden social dynamics and power
structures which are not completely obvious in a sense that it is not eminent in the general view.
Through this very lens, this paper will explore the fact that skin color is socially constructed
rather than just a biological fact by the help of multiple examples from the novel. Similarly, the
power of love and its impacts on demolishing racial stereotypes that are prevailing in the society,
will be discussed as follows:

Skin Color as a Social Construct:

Skin color has remained as a significant factor for judging and criticizing people. Throughout the
history, the black people have been marginalized and subjugated by their white counterparts.
White people have always maintained their supremacy over the black people or brown people. A
new born baby does not know what skin color means in this world, it’s us, who give them the
notion that white people are superior. In The Last White Man, Anders’s shock at his changing
body color, shows that race is socially constructed rather than a biological. Anders’s
transformation is not explained by science or biology. Instead, it triggers existential and social
crisis, suggesting how race is not a fixed biological reality but a socially constructed experience.
The first reaction of Anders to his dark skin color was frightening, “He wanted to kill the colored
man who confronted him here in his home” (Hamid, 2022, p. 8). This is not a rational response a
sane person would give, instead it gives the feeling of being seen as “other”. Here, Anders was
really worried about his skin color as he knew he might be subjugated from the society.
According to Merleau-Ponty, the body is not just an object but the subject of perception which he
gets from the experiences of the world. Anders’s body was unnoticeable to him when he was
white, and suddenly it became the matter of worry for him when he would be facing racial
 Qureshi 7

difference. Anders became really furious and found himself in the alienated side of the society,
all which was not from his physical appearance but from the social implications of his new
appearance that how others will see and treat him with his new skin color.
“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present
inaccessible.” (Maya Angelou, 1986, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes)
In Queer Phenomenology, as Ahmed argued about the disruption of the orientation, she said,
bodies are directed by the spaces they live in and how they are received by others. For example,
a man living in a posh area of a city feel superior than the one living in a mediocre area of a city,
it suggests that, indeed bodies are directed by the spaces they inhabit. Anders who once found
himself oriented in white spaces, is now disoriented. The people around him avoid him or do not
recognize him. “He recognized the clerk who scanned his purchases but the clerk did not
recognize him, and Anders had a moment of panic after he handed over his credit card, but the
clerk did not glance at it, not at his name, not at his signature, and he did not acknowledge
Anders’s mumbled thanks and goodbye, did not budge or even blink, as though Anders had not
spoken at all.” (Hamid, 2022, p. 10) This shift shows social reclassification as his body portrayed
differently, as he was no longer a white person.
Anders’s girlfriend, Oona presents the same point when she expressed, “he looked like another
person, not just another person, but a different kind of person, utterly different”. (p. 14) The
phrase “different kind of person” does not talk about biology, instead it talks about the difference
imposed by the society. The internals of Anders remains the same but social world does not see
him in the same way any longer.

Societal Resistance to Shifting Perceptions:

The stunning thing is, the novel does not end with Anders. The trend propagates. Gradually,
systematically, others start to change as well. The town is resisting. Panic spreads. It is not only a
physical transformation but an epistemological one. It is not that people are afraid to lose color
but they are afraid to lose a system where color makes definite sense. No riots, yet violent
whispers. The townspeople are resisting not to what is but to the disappearance of the prevailing
vision they had had. As Anders’s boss said, “I would have killed myself… if it was me” (Hamid,
2022, p. 24)
The distinction between fear and acceptance is not in the veracity of the transformation, but in
how said transformation could be incorporated into their preexisting frameworks. It is the genius
of Hamid that he makes people see how they are resistant not because reality has changed but
their narrative about reality has become invalid. The more that people evolve the more difficult it
is to sustain the illusion. This mass panic resembles what Ahmed calls the emotional economy of
whiteness that fear and resentment flow through white bodied when their superiority is
threatened.
 Qureshi 8

This is the case with the mother of Oona, who is obsessed with right-wing theories and secret
chat rooms online, as she tries to preserve a story that does not challenge her worldview. “It was
the usual sort of thing, this time about white people suddenly not being white”. (Hamid, 2022, p.
17) She is a voice of a population that is incapable of embracing the shift in perception, not
bereaved by a biological loss, but a corrosion of an inherited supremacy. Sooner or later, the
resistance starts to fall apart. The change propagates till it becomes, so to speak, normal.
Individuals cease to question. They learn to live with it. This is where Hamid brings out an
important fact that society will always adhere to the prevailing perception and not the reality. The
real reality that people have altered is fixed all through. However, the societal response alters.
Eventually, Anders starts to see that people are less fearful of him. “Oona’s mother thought, we
three feel like a family.” (Hamid, 2022, p. 83). It is nearly unseen in its plainness, yet this
sentence takes it all in. He is no longer a hero but an ordinary man not because he has
transformed once again but because the eyes of the society have been transformed. The world
reconstructs its perception framework.

The Death of Whiteness and the Birth of a New World:

The father of Anders, who was, probably, the most silent, yet strongest character of the novel. He
is a man anchored in the past modes of existence, not a racist in the open sense, but utterly
focused on the world in which being race is a primary determinant of the belonging. He is a
creation of the generational rule, of a period when whiteness was implicit, yet everywhere. When
his son appearance alters, he retreats, not in anger, but in perplexity. He is hardly aware of
Anders. But this is what he does not really appreciate, the world itself. His separation out of life
is not a physical disease, it is existential emigration. “Anders’s father, a cigarette in his mouth,
one hand holding on to the fabric of his son’s sleeve, the other rigid at his side, and he wept, he
wept like a shudder, like an endless cough, without a sound, staring at the man who had been
Anders”. (Hamid, 2022, p. 19). He ceases to read, to walk, to eat little.
His body schema has collapsed in the words of Merleau-Ponty. The gestures and rhythms which
provided him a sense of coherence can no longer work. His death is not figurative, it is
phenomenological. He is unable to exist in a world whose structures of perception have ceased to
be favorable to him. And when he passes away something great occurs. Anders mourns, yet not
hopelessly. It is peaceful, or almost lucid. He inters not only a father, but an attitude to the world
and a racial orientation. The death of the father is the death of ancient regime of being. The
whiteness he represented can no longer exist, not because people wished to eliminate it, but
because the circumstances that made it unseen and dominant no longer obtain. “And his father
was bent over, just a bit, he who had always stood so straight”. (Hamid, 2022, p. 37) The genius
of Hamid is in the gentleness with which he allows this death to occur. No political manifestos,
no explosive reckonings. Merely a man who gradually finds himself obsolete in a world which
no longer holds his underlying assumptions.

Transcending Race Through Unconditioned Love:

 Qureshi 9

After the loss of the father, there is a new possibility with Anders and Oona. The most significant
margins of transformation occur in their relationship. Their mutual vulnerability is reached when
the skin of Oona changes as well. Yet rather than breaking up, they grow together. Their love
does not depend on the similarity or stability. It is based on the awareness, not of appearance but
of presence. One of them is when Oona caresses the face of Anders and the novel halts, dwelling
upon the sensation of their skin that. In a world that is crazy about differences in skin, Hamid
directs us to the similarity of contact. No racial terms are used, no moral statements. Simply the
bodily proximity of two individuals whose flesh is no longer marked by subordination. This is
the place where Hamid suggests his silent revolution. He provides a post-racial future not
through denial of race, but disarmament, through Anders and Oona. Their affection is turned into
an episode, an attitude to the world that is not racialized. “Oona held Anders’s hand, and with his
other hand Anders held his father’s hand, and as they sat and lay there, the three of them
connected in a kind of chain”. (Hamid, 2022, p. 69)
Love, in this case, is not abstract as it would be argued by Ahmed. It is a bodily re-orientation. It
rearranges the way in which Anders and Oona live in space, the way in which they look at the
world as a couple. In love they no longer are white and brown, they just are together, touching
the world and this is not idealism. The transformative intimacy between Anders and Oona proves
post-racial future grounded in love. “maybe the fact that Anders no longer looked like Anders
allowed her to see her relationship with him in another way, or maybe the fact that Anders
remained Anders regardless of what he looked like allowed her to see the Anders in him more
clearly, but whatever it was, she was glad to be there with him, glad and human, her need not
mechanical, not a mechanism, but organic, and so more complicated, and also more fertile.”
(Hamid, 2022, p. 40) Hamid does not mean that love vanishes away race. Instead, he is telling
that love sets race free of power. The town itself starts to change not only in skin but in social
atmosphere. Whispering comes to a halt. Children lose their memory about what it was to be
white. The old categories are not destroyed, but forgotten. They have become unusable. And
instead of them, gradually new modes of existence are being born and modes not based on
supremacy but on mutual instability and novel proximity.
And as we see in the last pages, when Anders and Oona start living together quietly, we observe
how a new world is being born, not an ideal world, not a world without a history but with a
different orientation. People could not recall what people used to look like. That forgetting is not
a erasing but a sort of liberation. Perceptual grid has shifted. Those children who will be born in
this world will not question a person about what color he or she was previously. They will not
give a hoot. The transformation is achieved, not on the body level but on the level of collective
perception. Therefore, Hamid does not provide fantasy or utopia. He provides a
phenomenological experiment of what occurs when the structure of race, namely whiteness is no
longer dominating not through argument but through the body itself. What occurs when
perception and not politics becomes the locus of revolution and the answer is not easy. The
response is dis-ease, sadness, struggling and last but not least, with enough courage, change.
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Qureshi

Anders panicking to coming to presence, being alone to making love is not merely the journey of
a single man. It is the narrative of our generations, as we learn to live in a world that is no longer
organized in terms of invisible hierarchies.

Conclusion:
Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man is not just a narrative about physical transformation,
instead, it is a phenomenological examination of race, perception and identity. Through the lens
of Critical Phenomenology, this research has proven that skin color is not just a biological fact
but a socially constructed element to showcase power structures. The distress of Anders after his
transformation is not from his body itself, but from how society will see and reacts to that body,
this shows that race is a lived, social experience shaped by perception. The resistance of society
to change, as we have seen in both the townspeople and characters like Oona’s mother, shows
how communities defend their inherited narratives even when they no longer align with the
reality. Moreover, as perception shifts, so does acceptance is found, this suggests that social order
is maintained by collective vision of the people. The death of Anders’s father symbolizes the
collapse of an old view about whiteness and the love between Anders and Oona shows a
postracial possibility that there is a way of life which goes beyond hierarchy, grounded in
presence, vulnerability and mutual care.
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Qureshi

Work Cited:

Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, Duke University
Press, 2006.

Ali, Hira, and Naila Khadim. “Postcolonialism in Hamid’s The Last White Man”. Pakistan
Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 12, no. 2, June 2024, pp. 2111-7,

Angelou, Maya. All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes. New York, Random House, 1986.

Hamid, Mohsin. The Last White Man. Riverhead Books, 2022.

Kalsoom Jahan, Umaimah Riaz Malik and Sumaira Mukhtar. “Discursive Shifts in Identity:
Racial Transformation and Societal Power Dynamics in The Last White Man”. Journal of
Applied Linguistics and TESOL (JALT), vol. 7, no. 4 (2024), pp. 279-92,
Keats, John. The Letters of John Keats. Edited by H. E. Rollins, vol. 2, Harvard University Press,
1958, p. 81.
Khan, Sidra, et al. “INTERSECTION OF RACE, IDENTITY AND POWER IN HAMID’S THE
LAST WHITE MAN”. International Premier Journal of Languages & Literature, vol. 3, no. 1,
Mar. 2025, pp. 33-53,

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London, Forgotten Books, 1945.

Nida Masroor, Shafaq Khalid, and Shazia Rajab. “Exploring Racial Dynamics and Counter
Narratives in The Last White Man: Application of Critical Race Theory”. Panacea Journal of
Linguistics & Literature, vol. 3, no. 1, June 2024, pp. 215-24,
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