Kazuo Ishiguro' s An artist of the floating world and When we were orphans: floating histories, memories and identities in the pacific-asian theatre of the two world wars
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Data
2019-02-05
Autores
Tellini, Silvia Mara
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Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp)
Resumo
Ao posicionar os protagonistas em áreas de conflito, recontando suas memórias fragmentárias e turvas, Kazuo Ishiguro dá a possibilidade de vislumbrarmos a sociedade de uma perspectiva singular, observando a transformação de valores, bem como as consequências profundas para os personagens que já não encontram mais abrigo na segurança imaginária de um mundo racional positivista. Do mesmo modo, suas obras possuem a capacidade de oferecer um vislumbre na subjetividade e instabilidade interpretativa do leitor ao inventar uma técnica concisa de narrar caracterizada por reprimir e esconder os verdadeiros significados e por deslocar o movimento e as ações para os bastidores das cenas. Visando a uma leitura comparativa da trajetória do protagonista do segundo romance do romancista Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World (1986), com a do narrador do seu quinto livro, When We Were Orphans (2000), este estudo enfoca as interrelações dos conceitos de memória e identidade, aliados ao contexto histórico, sob a luz de teorias ligadas aos estudos culturais, pós-coloniais e psicanálise. Assim que o detetive Christopher Banks de Orphans retorna a Shanghai em busca de seus pais desaparecidos, passa a projetar em sua narrativa um universo estranhamente fantasmagórico e onírico, expresso em uma memória que se fragmenta paralelamente à intensificação do caos provocado pela invasão japonesa durante a Segunda Guerra Sino-Japonesa. Da mesma forma, o pintor Ono de An Artist também apresenta ao leitor lembranças perpassadas por duras perdas familiares e sociais durante a Segunda Guerra, que se projetam em uma narrativa instável, abrindo-se a amplas possibilidades interpretativas. As personagens, buscando dar sentido a um mundo sem sentido, através da busca em vão de coerência e continuidade em suas estórias, manifestam a capacidade humana de se auto-iludir, como apontado pelo comitê do prêmio Nobel de 2017 concedido a Ishiguro. O romancista possui a capacidade de explorar as identidades construídas nesse limiar entre memória coletiva e individual, entre esquecimento e lembrança, entre negação e desejo, usadas como mecanismos de sobrevivência e de renegociação com o passado.
Kazuo Ishiguro allows us to investigate societies from singular perspectives, as he sets his novels during wartime while he scrutinizes the changing values and the profound impact upon the characters, who are no longer able to cling to rationalizations. Similarly, his novels comprise the reader’s unstable subjective interpretations of events, stemming from the tight narrative technique he invents, characterized by suppressing and hiding away meaning and by moving the action to the backstage of the scenes. Aiming at a comparative reading between the trajectory of painter Masuji Ono, the protagonist in Ishiguro’s second book, An Artist of the Floating World (1986), and detective Banks’s narration in his fifth novel When We Were Orphans (2000), this study focuses on the interrelations between memory and identity, while not disregarding the historical backdrop, in the light of theories in Cultural and Post-Colonial Studies as well as in Psychoanalysis. As soon as Banks arrives in Shanghai searching for his parents who disappeared when he was a child, his narrative projects an uncanny and dream-like world expressed through fragmented memories in parallel to the deepening of the chaos provoked by the Japanese invasion during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Similarly, Ono presents a story imbricated in painful familial and social losses during World War II, projected onto an unstable narrative, leading his readers to broad interpretations. These characters seek meaning in an ultimately senseless world as they struggle to develop a coherent story, whereas what they actually end up displaying is self-deception, as outlined by the 2017 Nobel Committee, when Ishiguro was granted the award. The novelist possesses the ability to explore these identities in the threshold between collective and individual memories, between forgetting and remembering, between denial and desire, used as mechanisms of survival and renegotiation with their pasts.
Kazuo Ishiguro allows us to investigate societies from singular perspectives, as he sets his novels during wartime while he scrutinizes the changing values and the profound impact upon the characters, who are no longer able to cling to rationalizations. Similarly, his novels comprise the reader’s unstable subjective interpretations of events, stemming from the tight narrative technique he invents, characterized by suppressing and hiding away meaning and by moving the action to the backstage of the scenes. Aiming at a comparative reading between the trajectory of painter Masuji Ono, the protagonist in Ishiguro’s second book, An Artist of the Floating World (1986), and detective Banks’s narration in his fifth novel When We Were Orphans (2000), this study focuses on the interrelations between memory and identity, while not disregarding the historical backdrop, in the light of theories in Cultural and Post-Colonial Studies as well as in Psychoanalysis. As soon as Banks arrives in Shanghai searching for his parents who disappeared when he was a child, his narrative projects an uncanny and dream-like world expressed through fragmented memories in parallel to the deepening of the chaos provoked by the Japanese invasion during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Similarly, Ono presents a story imbricated in painful familial and social losses during World War II, projected onto an unstable narrative, leading his readers to broad interpretations. These characters seek meaning in an ultimately senseless world as they struggle to develop a coherent story, whereas what they actually end up displaying is self-deception, as outlined by the 2017 Nobel Committee, when Ishiguro was granted the award. The novelist possesses the ability to explore these identities in the threshold between collective and individual memories, between forgetting and remembering, between denial and desire, used as mechanisms of survival and renegotiation with their pasts.
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Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World, When We Were Orphans, Estudos culturais, Memória, Identidade, Cultural studies, Memory, Identity