Although various approaches to psychotherapy have been applied to The Remains of the Day in the aforementioned analyses, none have linked it to Role Theory, as defined in the context of Psychodrama. However if the abnormal importance that Stevens attributes to becoming a perfect butler is taken into account, The Remains of the Day is practically saturated with textual evidence of how social role imbalance is the source of Stevens’ dilemmas both in the narrated and the narrating time. Although whether it was Ishiguro’s intention to create this effect is unclear, the setting of the novel in a world that is transitioning from the war eras to modernity moreover fits in all too well with the sociological aspects of Role Theory. In brief, it has been proposed that changes in society that render certain social roles obsolete put pressure on the individuals that hold these roles to either adapt or renew themselves in pace with societal developments. Stevens, being a butler, would have felt such strain acutely, being that the decline of the great British houses over the aforementioned period led to a sharp decline in domestic service professions at the time. (Lee, 1988)Drawing upon both the Psycho-dramatic and the Sociologic aspects of Role Theory, this paper aims first of all to propose that Ishiguro’s main character in The Remains of the Day suffers from an over-developed occupational role, which has eliminated or at the very least marginalized his other social roles. Secondly it will argue that the latter’s’ reflections that are brought about over the course of the plot are a consequence of role strain, which as a palpable yet indirect plot element forces him realize that his occupational role is slowly but steadily becoming a thing of the past. In facing such a fate, he is in turn forced to confront how his extreme commitment to his job has left the rest of his life empty, for which he begins to look back at and reconsider the roles that he could have had but neglected in life. On top of outlining this approach to rationalizing the events of the novel, the paper will theorize upon that in choosing to tell such a story, Ishiguro is promoting a view of the world as a place in constant motion, in which, like the post-modernist perspective, there are no set or universal values that withstand the test of time. Juxtaposed against the satirical undertones of the novel, as well as against the time period in which it is set, this statement will in turn be interpreted as critique against the destructive qualities of conventions in society.

Adopting historical perspectives, this thesis explores domestic, aesthetic, and cultural conflicts in modern Japan surrounding Masuji Ono, the protagonist in Kazuo Ishiguro¡¦s An Artist of the Floating World, as he looks back on his past. His memory narrative reveals his transformation from an iconoclastic young artist to a militarist propagandist in pre-war time, and finally to an old man who comes to terms with the loss of his prestige through none too reliable remembrances. Reading Ono¡¦s narrative in cross reference to historical texts, I argue that his transformation is in step with Japan¡¦s shift from a thriving nation to a militarist empire, and ultimately to a defeated nation subject to the Occupation after World War II and subsequent social changes. These changes are induced by democratization and disarmament engineered by the American army, which drastically undermine Japanese values, including the apotheosis of the Emperor, patriarchy, and social hierarchy. Forced to redefine themselves in the midst of the drastic social transformation, the Japanese harbor mixed feelings toward the emperor, regarding him as a guardian of the nation and a traitor. This ambivalence is profoundly felt by Ono, whose fall parallels the emperor¡¦s, since his authority as a father and a painting master is interrogated by the younger generation, most notably his daughter. In particular, his interaction with his grandson, who is brought up with American values, registers the Japanese attitudes toward the American, considering the occupier as both a welcomed authority and an alien monster. By examining three prominent authority figures in the novel¡Xfather, master, and monster¡Xthis thesis uncovers Ishiguro¡¦s agenda for negotiating an interface between history and personal memory.

A multidisciplinary approach is needed to critique the frequently invoked but seldom questioned notion of "human dignity," a discursive tool that is subtly serving abusive power structures while seemingly promoting human rights. The discourse of human dignity misrepresents the meaning of empowerment for modern citizens, making them interested more in political gestures and less in profit, comfort and protection from abuse. Dignity‘s epistemes—self-assertion, recognition, political action, public-spiritedness, responsibility, resistance, the denial of animal instinct, sacrifice—should not be human ideals, for they are exactly the opposite of the sovereign‘s characteristics and because they are responsible for recursive violence that preserves the status quo. They should be replaced with ethics based on sensuous interest, instinct, and natural-spiritedness (a sense of mystical oneness with other living beings). This dissertation answers Foucault‘s question about how the modern state endows citizens with a political subjectivity while simultaneously subjecting them to a totalized system, exposing human dignity as just the link between individuation and totalization. It questions Agamben‘s notion of the indistinction between political life and natural life, arguing that sovereign power, using the discourse of human dignity, creates a clear distinction. The human dignity discourse keeps the human within political life, representing such life as the middle point between the instinctive life of the animal and the mechanical life of the laborer. In reality, the dissertation shows, these two demonized modes of life are the same mode, which should be championed as a valuable and empowered state of being. In the literary field, a close examination reveals that J. M. Coetzee‘s fiction subverts the human dignity discourse while Kazuo Ishiguro‘s work is enmeshed in it. Coetzee generates sympathy for humans who lack the sense of human dignity and act on mere instinct. He offers ―disgrace‖ as a spiritual-ethical state of sensuality, acceptance and humility and promotes an agenda of desire-based rights in lieu of dignity-based ones. His writings also eschew authorial dignity as they discount the values of newness and originality in favor of expression attuned to desire, even when such moves appear selfish and politically irresponsible.

This thesis attempts to analyze Japanese British writer Kazuo Ishiguro¡¦s The Remains of the Day by tracing Ishiguro¡¦s engagement with such problematic issues as the recuperation of history, the negotiation with Englishness, and the fetishization of professionalism. To critically study the thematic concerns of Ishiguro¡¦s novel¡Xits examination of the conflicts between memory and history, its critique of the discursive formation of Englishness, and its scrutiny of psychic costs of the subject formation of a professional butler, I adopt a critical stance that is hybridized in nature and read The Remains of the Day as an incisive deconstruction of the colonial cultural legacies that the English both embrace and disavow. The first chapter explores the ways in which the macronarratives of the nation¡¦s history impact and influence the micronarratives of personal memory. Stevens¡¦s yearning for the glorious past of colonial Britain and his disavowal of his shameful memory well reflect the collective symptom of post-imperial melancholia that the British people experienced in the ¡¦80s. The second chapter applies Homi Bhabha¡¦s ideas of ¡§stereotype¡¨ to study the discursive formation of Englishness through acts of cultural coercion and problematize the concepts of Englishness as discursively constructed fetishes. By paying concentrated attention on English imaginaries of the landscape of English country side, the English country house, and the English gentleman, Ishiguro mocks and questions, if not ridicule, the concepts of Englishness by making parodies of these three prototypes of Englishness. By using Michel Foucault¡¦s concepts of discipline, sexuality, and subjectivity, the third chapter studies Stevens¡¦s professionalism, his conflicts between personal affections and desire and his professional principles. Even though Ishiguro proffers a critique of Stevens¡¦s blind loyalty and exposes the political consequences of the butler¡¦s non-political stance, the novel ends with an open ending that leaves undecided how Stevens is to face the ¡§remains¡¨ of his days, or, as an analogy, how the English are to tackle with the ¡§remains¡¨ of their days.

This dissertation examines the trope of filiation in novels by three contemporary British writers: John Banville, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. The trope of filiation and the related theme of inheritance has long been central to the concerns of the British novel, but it took on a new significance in the twentieth century, as the novel responded both thematically and formally to the aftermath of the two world wars. This study demonstrates the ways in which Banville, McEwan, and Ishiguro each situate their work in relation to this legacy, by means of an analogy between the inheritance structures figured within their novels and the inheritance performed by their engagement with the genre itself. This study relies on an instructive analogy to similar treatments of the larger problem of cultural filiation by the theorists Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Levinas exposes in his work the ethical and political problems of modernist temporality by critiquing modernity’s rejection of filiation, a rejection modeled also in the lost children, and barren and celibate men and women of modernist novels. Derrida meanwhile provides a way forward with his representation and performance of inheritance as a critical and transformative act, which is characterised on one hand by an ethical injunction, and on the other, by a filtering or a differentiation which changes the tradition even as it reaffirms it.

This dissertation examines the trope of filiation in novels by three contemporary British writers: John Banville, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. The trope of filiation and the related theme of inheritance has long been central to the concerns of the British novel, but it took on a new significance in the twentieth century, as the novel responded both thematically and formally to the aftermath of the two world wars. This study demonstrates the ways in which Banville, McEwan, and Ishiguro each situate their work in relation to this legacy, by means of an analogy between the inheritance structures figured within their novels and the inheritance performed by their engagement with the genre itself. This study relies on an instructive analogy to similar treatments of the larger problem of cultural filiation by the theorists Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Levinas exposes in his work the ethical and political problems of modernist temporality by critiquing modernity’s rejection of filiation, a rejection modeled also in the lost children, and barren and celibate men and women of modernist novels. Derrida meanwhile provides a way forward with his representation and performance of inheritance as a critical and transformative act, which is characterised on one hand by an ethical injunction, and on the other, by a filtering or a differentiation which changes the tradition even as it reaffirms it.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-03-31Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:53:10Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 capellatojunior_el_me_arafcl.pdf: 276039 bytes, checksum: 43006ced07fc1f75b1fe226bee0f10fa (MD5) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Este trabalho analisa o romance When We Were Orphans, de produção do escritor Kazuo Ishiguro, focando o emprego da memória no texto literário, como forma de examinar as estratégias empregadas pelo escritor. A principal preocupação estética do autor britânico volta-se para a maneira como seus personagens lêem e interpretam suas histórias de vida e para como eles percebem as forças que conduzem seus destinos e como reescrevem tais detalhes. A estratégia narrativa adotada é a do emprego da memória marcando a percepção a posteriori que caracteriza o relato. O estudo, portanto, aponta a técnica narrativa ligada aos processos psíquicos constituintes da memória, e auxilia na exposição do sofrimento humano, na crítica sutil ao imperialismo e colonialismo do século XX, tema e motivo de seus romances. Dessa forma, o autor enfatiza as técnicas que as pessoas usam para encobrir e às vezes até para suprimir suas emoções e, em particular, a maneira pela qual tais emoções são estimuladas pela memória. O trabalho terá como suporte teórico os estudos freudianos sobre a memória, o estranho e as experiências ocorridas na infância, particularmente considerando a atuação do narrador, o personagem Christopher Banks, como foco central. / This study analyses the novel When We Were Orphans, as part of the writer Kazuo Ishiguro’s production, focusing the application of the memory in the literary text, as a form of examining the strategies used by the author. The British author’s main aesthetical concern is turned to how his characters read and interpret their life story, and to how they apprehend the forces which lead their destiny, and how they write such details. The adopted narrative strategy is one which engages memory, determining the posteriori perception that characterizes the narration. The study, therefore, indicates the narrative technique linked to psychical processes which constitute memory, and help with the exposition of the human anguish; with the subtle criticism to the 20th century’s imperialism and colonialism, theme and motif of his novels. For that reason, the author emphasizes the techniques people use to cover, and sometimes even to supply their emotions and, particularly the way from which such emotions are aroused by memory. The paper shall have, as theoretical support, the Freudian studies about memory, the strange and the experience occurred during childhood, especially considering the narrator’s performance, the character Christopher Banks., as essential focus.

Gerald Dworkin's influential account of Personal Autonomy offers the following two conditions for autonomy: (i) Authenticity - the condition that one identify with one's beliefs, desires and values after a process of critical reflection, and (ii) Procedural Independence - the identification in (i) must not be "influenced in ways which make the process of identification in some way alien to the individual" (Dworkin 1989:61). I argue in this thesis that there are cases which fulfil both of Dworkin's conditions, yet are clearly not cases of autonomy. Specifically, I argue that we can best assess the adequacy of Dworkin's account of autonomy through literature, because it provides a unique medium for testing his account on the very terms he sets up for himself - ie. that autonomy apply to, and make sense of, persons leading lives of a certain quality. The examination of two novels - Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady - shows that Dworkin's explanation of identification and critical reflection is inadequate for capturing their role in autonomy and that he does not pay enough attention to the role of external factors in preventing or supporting autonomy. As an alternative, I offer the following two conditions for autonomy: (i) critical reflection of a certain kind - radical reflection, and (ii) the ability to translate the results of (i) into action - competence. The novels demonstrate that both conditions are dependent upon considerations of the content of one's beliefs, desires, values etc. Certain of these will prevent or hinder the achievement of autonomy because of their content, so autonomy must be understood in relation to substantial considerations, rather than in purely formal terms, as Dworkin argues.

Résumé du roman: La fréquentation de l'horreur et de la violence ont épuisé Damien Martel, photographe de guerre. Après un tragique incident qui le touche de proche, il glisse lentement vers le désespoir. Le directeur de son agence de presse l'envoie se reposer à Québec, avec la mission d'écrire un roman dans lequel il réglera leur compte aux démons qui le hantent. Dès les premiers instants de son séjour, Damien rencontre des personnages bien réels qui se sont donné rendez-vous pour lui faire revisiter le passé. Certains pourraient s'être échappés d'une bande dessinée, d'autres d'un récit d'aventures. Heureusement, tout le monde finit par trouver sa place dans l'éternel roman de la vie. Résumé de l'essai: L'entrelacement de la musique et de la littérature romanesque n'est plus à découvrir. De nombreux auteurs ont pratiqué la musicalité dans la fiction, que ce soit sous forme de thématique musicale ou d'analogie formelle. L'usage de variations sophistiquées sur un thème initial et la composition en contrepoint propres à la fugue invitent à s'interroger sur les chemins communs parcourus par les deux arts. Le roman Auprès de moi toujours de Kazuo Ishiguro sert d'exemple dans cet essai pour étayer l'intuition de la narration contrapuntique. L'auteur de ce mémoire propose cet essai à la suite du roman intitulé La violoncelliste est disparue, qui ne prétend pas à la forme musicale, mais certainement à sa thématique.

The use and firing of clay to make art instead of vessels was a revolutionary concept in Japan when it first was introduced by Hayashi Yasuo in 1948 with Cloud, and expanded upon by Yagi Kazuo in 1954 with Mr. Samsa’s Walk. Although both avant-garde artists were major forces in the advancement of abstract, nonfunctional ceramics, Yagi is usually given sole credit and occupies a prominent place in the literature, while Hayashi’s name can scarcely be found, despite his numerous international awards, large body of work and career spanning seven decades. This thesis seeks to identify the factors that influenced the direction of their careers and the unbalanced reception of their work. It compares their backgrounds, personality traits, avant-garde affiliations, and positions on art and ceramics, in relation to the norms and prerequisites for success in Kyoto’s deeply stratified, convention-bound ceramic community. The pervasive practice of rating and society’s emphasis on affiliation and rank were significant forces in this situation, as were issues that divided Japan’s art world -- the separation and unequal ranking of fine art and traditional craft, or the value of individual expression versus technique and tradition. Ultimately, this study reveals an insular world during a decade (1946–56) of crisis and transition that is rarely studied in the West from the perspective of ceramic art.