Imagining a New Spatiality: Re-Examining Ishiguro’s Literary Trajectory

Abstract

The discourse of migration from the periphery to the Centre is incorporated with a sense of Deterritorialization and traumas of belonging to a fixed spatiality as a universal articulation. The rhetoric of migration from the peripheral to the Centre is infused with a feeling of reterritorialization and traumas of belonging to a fixed spatiality. Kazuo Ishiguro, the Anglo-Japanese author, was subjected to a situation of multiple spatiality due to his migrant experiences from Japan to England. Yet as Japan was not a country subjected to the direct discourse of Postcolonialism, Ishiguro was uprooted from the direct Japanese upbringing and (re)positioned in a different territory that deviates from the usual cartography of a crown colony. The research employs Ishiguro’s selected novellas, ‘A Pale View of Hills’ (1982), ‘Remains of the Day’ (1989), and ‘Never Let Me Go’ (2005) as the research sample. The selected sample offers Ishiguro’s acclamation of a new spatiality through memory. It is obvious that Ishiguro elevates the notion of nostalgia as an emotion equivalent to a concept of idealism which deviated from the traditional cartography of nostalgia which always derives a nostalgic regret by leaving the past. Moreover, this novice concept deviates Ishiguro from characterizing himself as a migrant writer enticed to Japan as the place of his ‘becoming’ through his narratives. This social space suggests a sense of Prohibition of his identity, creating a gulf between him and his consciousness. The disturbed identity offered him a space whether he belonged to both Japan and England, neither both nor to a new spatiality. The notion of an Abstract spatiality is empowered by his negation of cultural hybridity and deviation from nostalgia which offers him a New Transcendental space beyond a migrant. Ishiguro’s transition is new when compared to other migrant writers and through that, he re-constructs the identity affirmation of migrant subjects. Ishiguro’s exploration of a Third space in the West provides a deeper awakening for postcolonial subjects to be free from cultural in-betweenness and to find a unique and distinct space in the West.