가즈오 이시구로의 『남아있는 나날』과 포스트제국주의 우울증

Abstract

This paper aims to examine Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day through Paul Gilroy’s theory of postimperial melancholia, and then shows that Stevens is a postimperialist who cannot embrace the loss of the Empire but instead insinuates its glory. Gilroy argues that postimperial melancholia results from people’s refusal of acceptance of “the loss of a fantasy of omnipotence” (99), in which the multilayered trauma, political, economic, cultural and psychological, is generated. According to Gilroy, the postimperialists’ inability to mourn the loss of empire induces shame and guilty and on the other hand displays antipathy toward immigrants and aliens. Stevens, as a butler, is unable to conceal his postimperialism, revealing his ethical immaturity about racialism and multiculturalism. He identifies his concept of dignity with Englishness, by advocating the greatness of Lord Darlington who was anti-Semitic or had association with the British Union of Fascists. In this, reading The Remains of the Day through postimperial melancholia reveals that Stevens is unwittingly bound up with the rehomogenization of his lordship and at the same time he tries to adjust to his new American host’s bantering in revitalizing the Darling Hall with American capitalism.