This article argues that Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (2021) represents an attempt to synthesize modernist and postmodernist conceptions of surface and depth in a positive way. In doing so, it ...parallels moves by metamodern and transmodern theorists, who are in the process of attempting to divine the dominant artistic mode following postmodernism. However, Klara and the Sun differs from most meta- and transmodern work in that its synthesis give surfaces primacy over depth. Surfaces possess three qualities in the novel. The first is that they can act as a bridge between individuals and groups by expressing hypothetical scenarios that enable cooperation between different parties. The second, explored through the image of the horizon, is that surfaces can be dynamic, and can combine a modernist sense of groundedness with postmodern relativism. Finally, positive surfaces are framed by soft borders, and as such the frames that delineate an image or field of vision can be recognized as subjective while still allowing communication to take place. Taken together, these factors suggest that the concept of depth is a misleading mirage, while positive surfaces are the medium by which empathy and understanding can be achieved.
Ishiguro abandoned his familiar mode of unreliable, first-person narration in The Buried Giant. This article argues that this formal shift is the culmination of an increasing tendency to deny ...consolation to his protagonists, a move that represents an increasingly critical and reflective stance towards cosmopolitan values. The article begins by drawing on Stoic thought to outline the relationship between consolation and cosmopolitanism, and by positing a distinction between professions of openness towards others and a genuine ability to engage and negotiate with difference. The first half of the article proper argues that Ishiguro's early narrators were only superficially cosmopolitan; however, from When We Were Orphans onwards, the fact that consolation is denied to the protagonists prompts a more transformative engagement with the world. The second half of the article argues that these tendencies reach a fuller stage of development in The Buried Giant, with the presence of a third-person narrator impelling the protagonists to reconsider their personal situations within the context of universal aspects of human experience; in this way, the novel advocates genuinely transformative cosmopolitanism.
Kazuo Ishiguro used his 2017 Nobel lecture to suggest that liberal democracies have failed to take advantage of the opportunities presented in the late twentieth century, and a new sense of anxiety ...is evident in The Buried Giant. While Ishiguro's early novels celebrated the freedom of expression available to those living in democratic societies, The Buried Giant explores the tensions between narrative and historical responsibility, and suggests that an excess of such freedom inevitably leads to conflict. The novel conducts this exploration through its use of fantasy, and specifically through the way that the landscape makes literal what would otherwise be figurative ways of discussing memory: memory is eroded by a magical mist, is buried beneath the ground, and is irrevocably erased by a journey across water. This landscape embodies the dangers of two opposing views. These are, firstly, the postmodern notion that history is a narrative construction and, secondly, the idea that history is an objective truth that can be retrieved. The article concludes by arguing that The Buried Giant seeks to mediate between these two extremes, proposing that ethical narrative must be constructed on the basis of a recognition of others' experiences of the past.
The rationale for the study is the developing state of Bhutanese higher education, and Bhutanese students' current tendency to employ reproductive learning strategies. This research therefore aims to ...determine whether using non-linear, semi-autonomous learning activities encourages Bhutanese students to adopt constructivist attitudes towards learning. It does so by measuring Bhutanese students' attitudes towards their own learning, and by collecting qualitative and quantitative data about their behaviours and attitudes towards completing research assignments. The study used a mixed-methods design to examine the attitudes and approaches of students at Royal Thimphu College and Gaeddu College of Business Studies towards completing multi-stage written coursework assignments. Iterative pre- and post-tests of both sub-samples attempted to isolate effects of the two independent, yet similar, implementations of learning activities that required students to work semi-autonomously through non-linear research and writing processes. Since both subsamples were undergraduate students with similar demographics, equivalency of groups was presumed. However, statistical analysis did not support this assumption; controlling more for this factor may be an improvement for future scholars in this context. In addition to the pre- and post-test survey, a smaller number of students were interviewed in order to gain a more in-depth understanding of their attitudes. The results revealed that some students shifted towards constructive behaviours and attitudes after the learning activities, but that many continued to exhibit reproductive behaviours. Of particular interest were students' focus on micro-level error correction and enjoyment of autonomy in research assignments.
This article examines the under-acknowledged presence of carnivalesque elements in W. G. Sebald’s prose fiction. While the carnivalesque holds a less prominent position than melancholy in Sebald’s ...work, it is nevertheless a persistent aspect, although its presence decreases in his later texts and is almost entirely absent from Austerlitz. The article argues that these elements form part of Sebald’s resistant stance towards the dominant discourses of modernity. On this basis, the article discusses the carnivalesque in Vertigo, The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn from two perspectives. First, it examines the presence of carnivalesque figures and locations, arguing that these are evidence of carnival’s exhaustion, and of the way that modernity has closed down the possibility of licensed transgression. Second, it argues that the narrators themselves are duplicitous, ‘masked’ figures whose inconsistencies and ethical transgressions are central to Sebald’s project of unbinding modern subjectivity.
This article responds to the numerous comparisons between The Wire and realist or naturalist novels. It argues that The Wire's mimetic qualities depict many of the problems facing Baltimore and, by ...extension, neo-liberal America. However, it argues that the show does not just
articulate complaints, but also proposes solutions, and that these solutions can be identified through two other concepts associated with the novel: polyphony and minor literature. The article uses Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of polyphony to examine that way that different voices compete
and interact in the series, but notes that, where the relationship between discourses remains conflictual, long-lasting or fundamental change remains unlikely. The article suggests that where more significant change does take place is through the creation of the collective voices associated
with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of minor literature.
This thesis examines the nature of complicity and its relationship to narrative in the novels of W.G. Sebald and Kazuo Ishiguro. The effects of atrocity have been addressed in a significant body of ...scholarship which focusses on victimhood and trauma: a strand of work identifying and examining representations of perpetrators is also emerging. However, comparatively little research exists on the representation of complicity , a central concern of both Sebald and Ishiguro, in literary texts. This thesis therefore seeks to address the ways in which complicity originates, and , drawing on the attempts to theorise witnessing and testimony conducted by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, the ways in which narrative may act to perpetuate or deny such complicities. The thesis examines complicity on three levels. Firstly, it identifies the ways in which the authors' choice of protagonists permits an examination of complicity. Both Sebald and Ishiguro employ narrators who occupy intermediate positions, being subject to history, but possessing sufficient agency to contribute to the discourses and structures that shape the historical forces out of which atrocity grows. The first use of first person narration also makes visible a second form of complicity, which is that of the protaginists' denials of culpability. Both writers are concerned with the way I which narrative may deny or obfuscate culpability in historical events, and their use of first person narrations allows them to explore this potential. Finally, I argue that both authors display an awareness that complicity may be entered into through the acts of reading and interpretation, and as a result they employ narrative form to encourage reflexive and critical modes of reading, which in turn promote engagement with narrative as an ethical mode of witnessing.
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