ABSTRACT
Seemingly echoing uses of the historic environment, Barnard Stiegler suggests territory anchors communal memory, noting that the relation of ethnic or national forms of community to time and space is determined by some territorial unity grounded in shared sensibility. White Teeth is preoccupied with negotiating relations with the past, on establishing a relationship free from the dead hand of the past while yet acknowledging the role of that past upon the present. Place is an ironic theme in the novel stemming from this uncertain relation to the past. The novel offers a tempered view of roots, for many such anchors figure negatively. Heritage is a covert narcotic, a treacherous habit hidden in seemingly innocuous rituals and rewards. Hilary Mantel's novel Beyond Black similarly complicates simple bequests of historic environments through collisions of place and past. White is for Witching gives voice to the historic environment through the Silver House, a structure whose speech betrays it to be a menacing ghost.
