History, Memory, Trauma in Contemporary British and Irish Fiction

Returning to Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel When We Were Orphans (2000) from a current period of crisis in international responsibilities, the abandoned child at the novel’s centre gains renewed significan...

/pdf/ishiguro-and-the-abandoned-child-the-parody-of-international-2yku78peaj.pdf

Ishiguro and the abandoned child: the parody of international crisis and representation in When We Were Orphans

Although labeled as an immigrant writer, Ishiguro is not a typical one. His writing is not a repetition or successor of the diasporic literature. The various subjects and diversified locations of his works have been appropriately corresponded to his claim as “a kind of homeless writer”. He has always been locating himself in different cultures as well as engaged in a de-cultural writing, providing insights into the relationship between the subjective and the other, which shows his ambivalence dangling between different cultures. It is arguable that Ishiguro has several “deaths” before becoming a cosmopolitan. Nevertheless, the “killed” identity is inextirpable. The longing for subjectivity in his novels does not directly come from the cosmopolitan identity with whom he identified. Reading Ishiguro in the global context enables the detection of his compromise as a cosmopolitan writer constructed by a deliberate de-privileging and cultural alienation. Cosmopolitanism itself has been a paradoxical term in that its orientation points to the mutually inclusive “world” and “region”. Its implication is full of irreconcilable resistance and negotiation. The study is going to explore the ambivalence of cosmopolitanism in Ishiguro’s writing, to trace the progress of the making of the novelist as a cosmopolitan as well as embracing multiple cultures but denies clear boundaries, and to widen the scope of the discussion of globalization, localization, diasporic study, or postcolonial study.

/pdf/ambivalence-of-cosmopolitanism-a-study-of-kazuo-ishiguro-s-255yl5ltdr.pdf

Ambivalence of Cosmopolitanism: A Study of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Writing

This thesis explores Kazuo Ishiguro's six novels written in first-person narrative mode: A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of the Day, The Unconso/ed, When We Were Orphans, and Never Let Me Go. The focus is on how Ishiguro's narrative techniques allow him to explore the themes of psychological disorder with which his work consistently engages, which will be identified here through use of ideas drawn from Sigmund Freud and from literary studies of trauma fiction. The argument will be divided into six chapters. In each chapter, one of Ishiguro' s novels will be studied thoroughly. Distorted narrative and the technique of transference of Etsuko in A Pale View of Hills are explored in chapter I. In chapter II, the research concerns particularly how Masuji Ono, the narrator of An Artist of the Floating World, who suffers from his demand to be respected and his indecisiveness in defining the sense of respect especially as a great artist. Chapter III deals with narrative of Stevens, an English butler, in The Remains of the Day, whose problem concerning his professional achievement in its relation to the idea of id, ego and superego. Chapter IV argues that The Unconsoled engages with how the dream-like narrative technique is developed in order to reveal Ryder's psychological problem, and how Ryder uses the dream-work mechanisms, especially displacement, to deal with his problem. Chapter V explores how When We Were Orphans works as detective fiction and how this relates to Christopher Banks' psychological problem, and, finally, in chapter VI, I examine the particular psychological problem articulated by the clone narrator of Never Let Me Go.

Psychological disorder and narrative order in Kazuo Ishiguro's novels

This thesis explores Ishiguro’s novels in the light of his preoccupation with emotional upheaval:the psychological devastations of trauma, persisting in memory from
childhood into middle and old age. He demonstrates how the first person narrators maintain human dignity and self-
esteem unknowingly,through specific, psychic defence mechanisms and the related behaviours,typical of narcissism.
Ishiguro’s vision has affinities with the post-Kleinian Object-Relations psychoanalyticliterature on borderline states of mind and narcissism. I propose a hybrid,critical
framework which takes account of this, along with the key aspects of the traditional humanist novel, held in tension with certain deconstructive tactics from postmodernist
writing. Post-Kleinian theory and practice sit within the humanist approach in any case, with both the ethical and the reality-seeking imperatives, paramount. Ishiguro presents humanism in the ‘deficit’ model and this framework helps to bring it into view. 

The argument is supported by close readings of the six novels in which the trauma concerns different forms of fragmentation from wars, socio-historic upheaval,
geographical dislocation, and emotional disconnection. All involve psychic fragmentation of the egoin the central character,through splitting and projection. 
Ishiguro,himself, perceives some sorts of object-relations,
psychic mechanisms,operating at the unconscious level,which he calls ‘appropriation’ and which the post-
Kleinians have theorised. They have found a range of variants of projectiveidentification into the ‘other’ with there-introjection of a distorted self,suffused with
narcissistic phantasy. While these defences are protective, Ishiguro seems aware that excessive projection comes at a cost: depletion of affect, weak identity, limited symbol formation,thinking and self-knowledge, and a diminished capacity to give meaning to relationships. These
factors are all borne out in his narrators’ omnipotent behaviours–in re-enaction.

Ishiguro’s narrative methods produce figurative representations of the narrators’ internal worlds through his external worlds of settings, while other conventions of the novel,such as plot, character, genre and so on,are reconfigured in their deficit versions.

Identity, identification and narcissistic phantasy in the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro

List of Illustrations.- List of Abbreviations.- Preface B.Shaffer.- Acknowledgements.- Notes on Contributors.- Introduction: 'It's Good Manners Really': Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethic of Empathy S.Groes & B.Lewis.- PART I: CRITICAL OVERVIEWS.- Kazuo Ishiguro's Not Too Late Modernism P.Waugh.- The Pedagogics of Liminality: Rites of Passage in the Work of Kazuo Ishiguro V.Sage.- Lost and Found: On the Japanese Translations of Kazuo Ishiguro M.Shibata.- 'One Word from You Could Alter the Course of Everything': Discourse and Identity in the Work of Kazuo Ishiguro K.Stamirowska.- PART II: THE EARLY 'JAPANESE' WORKS .- 'In the Best of Faith': Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist if the Floating World in Japan M.Sugano .- 'Cemeteries are No Places for Young People': The Representation of the Child in Kazuo Ishiguro's Early Works C.Bennett.- PART III: THE REMAINS OF THE DAY.- 'I Can't Even Say I made My Own Mistakes': the Ethics of Genre in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day M.Hammond.- Novelistic Practice and Ethical Philosophy in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day L.Cooper.- Reading Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day: Working Through England's Traumatic Past as a Critique of Thacherism C.Berberich.- PART IV: THE UNCONSOLED.- Into the Labyrinth: Reading Ishiguro's Surrealist Poetics in The Unconsoled J.Baxter.- Waiting for the performance to Begin: Kazuo Ishiguro's Musical magination in The Unconsoled and Nocturnes G.Smyth.- Into Ever Stranger Territories: Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled as Minor Literature T.Jarvis.- PART V: WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS.- 'In the End it has to Shatter': Ironic Doubleness of Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans C.Ringrose.- When We Were Orphans: The Double Bind and the Vocational Imperative A.Webley.- PART VI: NEVER LET ME GO.- The Concertina Effect in Kazuo ishiguro's Never Let Me Go B.Lewis.- Something of a Lost Corner: The Representation of East Anglia in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go S.Groes.- 'Okay, this is as far as we can go': Scientific Discourse in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go L.Lochner.- Never Let Me Go and 'Outsider' Science Fiction A.Sawyer.- The New Seriousness: Kazuo Ishiguro in Conversation with Sebastian Groes.- Bibliography.- Index.

Barry Lewis

Papers

Kazuo Ishiguro: New Critical Visions of the Novels

Introduction: ‘It’s Good Manners, Really’ — Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethics of Empathy

“The Concertina Effect: Unfolding Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go”

Thirty Two Short Paragraphs About The Gold Bug Variations

“Vertical Perfection, Horizontal Inevitability in Richard Powers’ The Gold Bug Variations”