АУТОБИОГРАФИЈА КАО РАЗОБ-ЛИЧЕЊЕ У "СЛИКАРУ ПРОЛАЗНОГ СВЕТА" И "ОСТАЦИМА ДАНА" КАЗУА ИШИГУРА
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS DE-FACEMENT IN AN ARTIST OF "THE FLOATING WORLD" AND "THE REMAINS OF THE DAY" BY KAZUO ISHIGURO

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores the narrative strategies employed by the homodiegetic narrators-protagonists of two novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day, to oppose the ironic de-facement of their narrative identi- ties, which they consider to be stable and ethically non-questionable. The analysis of the novels employs key terminology borrowed from deconstruction, hermeneutics, and the poetics of postmodernism, as well as theoretical insights regarding the dethron- ing of metanarratives which stipulate absolute presence. The interpretation of these novels points to an ironic deconstruction of both the diachrony and synchrony, i.e. the continuity and coherence of Masuji Ono’s and butler Stevens’ narrative identities, produced within their testimonies in the form of diary-like instalments, which aim at maintaining their identity configurations based on dignity that they had absolute faith in and, simultaneously, at partially rewriting them under the pressure of the new symbolical order which places additional demands for adjustment in each in- stalment. Perspectivism, i.e. Ono’s and Stevens’ narrow perspectives, de-face their autobiographical narratives; however, the formative narrative strategies eventually win over because the de-facement can only be performed and sustained within the limbic space, while the narrative iterations and intertextuality that produce subjec- tivity continue producing it even after the cathartic humbling of the protagonists.

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