ABSTRACT

For Kazuo Ishiguro’s characters, institutions endure as ghosts long after their original functions have ceased. Though such institutions appear in Ishiguro’s work from Japan to Shanghai to central Europe, this essay argues that Ishiguro’s English institutions register his subtle yet deeply-rooted critique of the British state’s particular modern crises, exposing its attempts to replace political plurality and historical contingency with an essentialist ideal. Ishiguro’s institutions are themselves repeatedly complicit in such attempts, whether oriented towards racial nationalism in The Remains of the Day or the ‘Originality’ that governs Never Let Me Go - ideologies that ultimately destroy these institutions. The circumstances of that destruction nevertheless expose, ironically and elegiacally, the institution’s lost potential. This essay argues that despite their compromised status, these institutions have a real ethical value and even subtle radicalism in haunting Ishiguro’s Britain from the pre-state landscape of The Buried Giant to the late modernity of Never Let Me Go. Beginning by identifying this ethical and political potential, proceeding to describe how it registers through the institutional access enjoyed by Ishiguro’s protagonists, and finally exploring Ishiguro’s provocative response to Britain’s recent history, this essay offers a revised interpretation of Ishiguro’s English institutions and of their collective significance.

摘要

对于石黑一雄笔下的人物来说，机构在其原有功能停止后很长一段时间都像幽灵一样存在。尽管这些制度出现在石黑浩的作品中，从日本到上海再到中欧，但本文认为，石黑浩的英国制度记录了他对英国国家特定现代危机的微妙而根深蒂固的批判，揭示了它试图用一种本质主义理想。石黑一郎的机构本身也多次参与此类尝试，无论是面向《今日遗迹》中的种族民族主义还是《永不让我走》中的“原创性”- 最终摧毁这些机构的意识形态。然而，这种破坏的情况，讽刺地和挽留地暴露了该机构失去的潜力。这篇文章认为，尽管它们的地位受到损害，但这些机构具有真正的道德价值，甚至是微妙的激进主义，在石黑浩的英国从《被埋葬的巨人》的国家前景观到《永不让我走》的晚期现代性中萦绕不去. 从识别这种伦理和政治潜力开始，然后描述它是如何通过石黑一郎主人公享有的制度准入进行登记的，最后探讨石黑一郎对英国近代历史的挑衅性反应，本文对石黑一郎的英国制度及其集体意义进行了修订解释.