A Deconstructive Study Of Kazuo Ishiguro’s National Image Writing

The issue of national image is that Kazuo Ishiguro is good at thinking and writing.From the perspective of his creating background,his unique national identity and cross-cultural growth experience make him actively think about "nation","race","national image",etc.And his active involvement in political movements and social work has deepened his understanding of the above concepts on a practical level.From the perspective of writing practice,among the seven novels he has published so far,there are five that involve the writing of the national image.Kazuo Ishiguro has always had self-consciousness to write the national image in the novels.Looking back on the national image writing in the history of British literature,we can find its isomorphism with the construction process of the British nation-state,and under the influence of essentialist thinking,it has formed the characteristics of shaping ideals,suppositional and fictional.Kazuo Ishiguro contradicts the national image writing tradition in the history of British literature,and uses different deconstruction strategies to disassemble the traditional national images.This article takes Kazuo Ishiguro’s five novels as the research object,and expounds the ways and characteristics to deconstruct traditional national images in his novels from the following aspects.First,changeable memory and fluid national image.After realizing the essential characteristics of traditional national image writing,Kazuo Ishiguro tried to reverse it in his novels.The first deconstruction strategy he choose was to present the traditional national image in the protagonist’s fluid memories.Protagonists’ subjective memory is characterized by fragmented,arbitrary,and unreliable.With every recollection behavior of the protagonist,the traditional national image faces the danger of derailment between the signifier and the signified,and the uncertainty of memory disintegrates the solid foundation for the formation of the traditional national image,questioning the clarity and accuracy of its meaning,thereby realizing the deconstruction of the traditional national image.Second,polyphonic dialogue and diverse national image.The second deconstruction strategy of traditional national image in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels is to place it in two dimensions inside and outside the text,and to eliminate the unity and homogeneity of the traditional image through the differences and diversity produced by the dialogue.In the text,Kazuo Ishiguro makes the protagonists interpret their own understanding of the national image.In the process of constant debates,the connotation of the national image is infinitely delayed.Thereby breaking the single point of the traditional national image’s meaning.Between the texts,Kazuo Ishiguro interprets each other between the national image in the novel text,the historical text,and the real text,forming an intertextual relationship,and realizing the deconstruction of the traditional national image from the above two dimensions.Third,unexpected events and de-territorialized national image.Kazuo Ishiguro places the traditional national image in "unknowable events",such as atomic bomb explosions and the outbreak of war.Such sudden and disruptive events have reversed the established development trajectory of the traditional national image and broke through its unified schema.It completely changed the connotation of the traditional national image from the material and spiritual levels,and became a major turning point in the development of the national image.At the same time,Kazuo Ishiguro also placed the protagonist in his novel in a series of "unpredictable event".Through accidental encounters and different ways of thinking,breaking through the subject’s cognitive framework and vision of expectation,and subverting his solid foundation of original national image.Kazuo Ishiguro deconstructed the traditional image through the strategy of event writing.Kazuo Ishiguro realized the deconstruction of the traditional national image through anti-essence,anti-routine,anti-heroism,and anti-myth writing methods,revealing the facts that have been concealed for a long time.He endowed the new connotation of the national image by the way of fluidity and becoming.