The Remains of theEmpire

-Depicting the Colonial Wreck in The Remains of the Day-

The face of literature has, unquestionably, changed in the most unpredictable and
outstanding ways through time, up to the blurry-margined and boundary-crossing
contemporary mask it wears in the present. The continual shift in form and pattern, the
ever-metamorphosing face of literature has, nevertheless, a strong relationship with the
tumultuous and agitated flow of historicity. This palimpsestic relationship can be
explained by the mere definition of the palimpsest: Originally the term for a parchment
on which several inscriptions had been made after earlier ones had been erased. The
characteristic of the palimpsest is that, despite such erasures, there are always traces of
previous inscriptions that have been overwritten (Ashcroft/ Griffiths / Tiffin,
2001:175).
Thus, each tumble of events leaves a distinct print on the palimpsest of each and
every culture, creating in this manner the distinct pattern of literature, art, music, politics

and so on. In the light of the palimpsestic feature of the cultural heritage post-colonial
reactions can be explained as such:
Place itself, in the experience of the post-colonial subject, is a palimpsest of a process
in language: the naming by which imperial discourse brings the colonized space into
being, the subsequent rewritings and overwritings, the imaging of the place in the
consciousness of its occupants, all of which constitute the contemporary place
observed by the subject and contested among them (Ashcroft/ Griffiths / Tiffin, 2001:
175).

In other words, the post-colonial space retains all the traces of a cultural horizon
created by way of merging and blending together of two very distinct cultures, languages
and human forms. The cross-breeding of almost opposite cultural backgrounds gave birth
in the colonialized spaces to a hybrid third form materialized in many forms as:
linguistic, cultural, political, racial etc.
Hybridity has frequently been used in post-colonial discourse to mean simply crosscultural exchange. This use of the term has been widely criticized, since it usually
implies negating and neglecting the imbalance and inequality of the power relations it
references. By stressing the transformative cultural, linguistic and political impacts on
both the colonized and the colonizer, it has been regarded as replicating assimilationist
policies by masking or whitewashing cultural differences (Ashcroft/ Griffiths / Tiffin,
2001:119).

Thus the process of mutation and hybridization does not affect only the colonized
space, it has the power to overthrow the domination scale of relationship between the
empire and the colonies. Hybridity thus gives rise to a synergy and a transculturation
process between the dominated and the domineer. The hierarchy is not in this manner
negated, nor is the process of influence and exchange completely equal. The most
important aspect of this mutuality is the rise of a common discursive medium between
colonies and empires.
Kazuo Ishiguros The Remains of the Day is, in this respect, of the utmost
importance as it is written not from the once-colonized perspective, but from the oncecolonizing. Even though Kazuo Ishiguro is undoubtedly Japanese, the novel is decidedly
British, both in tone and in thinking. The core of the novel is the character of Stevens, an
old-fashioned English butler who takes the reader along a intertwining road of his service
days to Lord Darlington before World War II. Even though the novel doesnt seem to pass
knowledge of the British history surrounding the war, the events swirl around without
any intention of resolution. With an ever-present shadow of historic events on the
background of Stevens memories, the novel becomes very complex and multi-layered.
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This ongoing process of dialectic between the colonized and the colonizer invokes
a response and a reaction of decolonization, consisting in a process of continual
dismantling of the British and European cultures by their peripheral subversion of them.
Since it is not possible to create or recreate national or regional formations wholly
independent of their historical implication in the European colonial enterprise, it has
been the project of post-colonial writing to interrogate European discourses and
discursive strategies from a privileged position within (and between) two worlds; to
investigate the means by which Europe imposed and maintained its codes in the colonial
domination of so much of the rest of the world (Ashcroft/ Griffiths / Tiffin, 2003: 95).

Kazuo Ishiguro perfectly makes a plead for this trait of post-colonial literatures by
probing the mind and spirit of a British character on one hand and by realizing a thorough
critique of imperialism and empire, on the other. The title of the novel itself recalls of a
nostalgia for the old British Empire, outlining the historical context in which the voice of
Stevenss letter resounds; the shadow of the 50s brings along an atmosphere of decay of
Britains overseas empire, marking the decline of the former hegemonic kingdom.
The problem of the hybrid results in a very particular view point of the colonized
individual: As my argument maintains, the hybrid writer is already open to two worlds
and is constructed within the national and international, political and cultural systems of
colonialism and neocolonialism. To be hybrid is to understand and question as well as to
represent the pressure of such historical placement (Ashcroft/ Griffiths / Tiffin,
2003:144).
It is precisely what Kazuo Ishiguro obtains as an effect all throughout the novel,
by deconstructing in a very subtle manner the political, social, cultural panels in the
British civilization. The main technique used is the subtle insertion of different critiques
in the speech of the main character.
This critique begins at the very first page. Stevens begins by explaining that he
will soon take a voyage, one suggested by his new employer, an American named
Faraday. He goes on to wander mentally into discussions of Mr. Faraday's manners and
customs. One curious incident foreshadows the text to come: Stevens relates Mr.
Faraday's habit of "bantering" as he phrases it, and his own efforts to do the same,
mentioning his last attempt, when some gypsies had wandered loudly by the house in the
night and, the following morning, Mr. Faraday had asked "I suppose it wasn't you making
that crowing noise this morning, Stevens?" And Stevens responded "More like swallows
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than crows, I would have said, sir. From the migratory aspect". When his witticism is met
with confusion, Stevens reflects that ". . . of course, my witticism would not be easily
appreciated by someone who was not aware that it was gypsies who had passed by,"
(Ishiguro, 1990:17). It is the sort of confusion which will continue to haunt Stevens
throughout the novel.
Ishiguro brilliantly makes use of the overly consumed British literary form, the
novel of manners, to deconstruct British society and its imperial history. Permanently
alluded to, even though permanently elliptical, historical events represent the powerful
absences which shape the character and the entire narrative. In The Remains of the Day
the British colonial empire is mentioned and dismantled by the mere mentioning of the
date on which the narrative begins, which provides the determining historical context of
the characters attitudes and aspirations.
The date of July 1956 represents the moment of the nationalization of the Suez
Canal by the Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser, marking thus the decline of
Britains long reign as the worlds foremost colonial power. The fact that on this
particular date Stevens sets out on his journey across England is, by no means a
coincidence. In this process of discovering the post-war England, the quintessential
English butler recovers the truth about his life of servitude, a past undoubtedly bound to
that of the history of the country.
Moreover, just as England is bound to face the rise of America as an imperial
power, Stevens, after having served Lord Darlington for 35 years, has to adjust himself to
serving and American master, Mr.Farraday, who has bought Darlington Hall because he
wanted a genuine grand old English house and a genuine old fashioned English
butler (Ishiguro, 1990:124) to go with it. As the thoughts and memories of Stevens
unfold along with his cross country trip, we learn more than Stevens himself is willing to
reveal (either to himself or to the reader) about the years of his misguided devotion to
Lord Darlington.
This continual self-abnegation of his years in the service of his master
reverberates with larger implications about British politics. In this way, the personal
values to which Stevens subscribes, such as the benevolent paternalism of his employer

and the rigid hierarchies that structure their relationship, are values shared by the
colonialist ideology.
Another invitation to a postcolonial reading of the text is the intertwining of the
personal history with the hints to world history marking events. In this respect James
Lang makes a note of the fact that Ishiguros novel creates a permanent link between
personal history and the public memory and identity:
The competing strategies of historicization in The Remains of the Day official,
public, diplomatic history in contrast with the private memories of the diplomats
butler find a parallel in the slow movement, on the part of twentieth-century
historians, away from the grand narratives and grand characters of earlier
historiography toward the lives and experiences of the ordinary, the mundane, the
marginalized, and the dispossessed (Lang, 2000: 147).

Thus, the merit of the author is that of connecting Stevenss narrative and its
touch of personal history to the political in just a single way, offering an alternative to a
public historical record that usually elides the voice of those dominated by the colonial
power, or, more specifically, in Stevenss case, by an unyielding class system.
The importance of history in the postcolonial discourse is very well rooted in the
modern origins of historical study itself, and the circumstances by which History took
upon itself the mantle of a discipline (Ashcroft, 2001: 83). In the light of all this, the fact
that the story that decides what happened is a story that determines what actually is, can
be considered to be the triggering of post-colonial strongly historical and political literary
reactions.
Moreover, the post-colonial heavy load of historic meaning is meant to
deconstruct, at the same time, the previous colonial view on history. Derek Walcott states,
in relation to views on history, that colonial writers reject the idea of history as time for
its original concept as myth, the partial recall of the race. For them history is fiction,
subject to a fitful muse, memory. Their philosophy, based on a contempt for historic time,
is revolutionary, for what they repeat to the New World is its simultaneity with the Old
(Ashcroft/ Griffiths / Tiffin, 2003:370).
Language itself is a key concept in the post-colonial writings as, through language
itself did the alteration of the colonized took place, especially the use of British English
inherited directly from the mother-empire. In this light, Mikhail Bakhtins theory on
language is quite significant. According to the Russian theorist, both the act of
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performance and the meaning of an utterance are a direct link to a historical and social
significance. The important concept in this previous sentence is utterance, a key feature
of Bakhtins theory on language:
Not only the meaning of the utterance but also the very fact of its performance
is of historical and social significance, as, in general, is the fact of its
realization in the here and now, in given circumstances, at a certain historical
movement, under the conditions of the given social situation.
The very presence of the utterance is historically and socially significant
(Bakhtin/Medvedev, 1978: 120).

Language, thus, clearly revolves around the human being, with a very specific
role in social life, while meaning represents an interaction between distinct individuals in
a clear-cut context. On the same note, Bakhtin gives a definition to the word, by stating
that in language the word cannot pertain to a single individual it is, at the moment of
speech, half someone elses. For the Russian theorist the word can never belong to a
single individual; even if an act of appropriation is performed, traces of other words and
uses pervade and take apart the impression of wholeness and completeness. Language as
a whole is to be seen, according to Bakhtin, entirely as a heteroglot entity, heteroglossia
stemming from the Greek words hetero, meaning other, while glot is Greek for
tongue. This heteroglot language represents the co-existence of socio-ideological
contradictions between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past,
between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies, schools,
circles and so forth, all given a bodily form (Bakhtin, 1981: 291).
With all this in mind, the language employed all throughout the novel suddenly
unveils a deep significance for the reading of the text. Not only does Ishiguro create an
oblique relation to historical context but, at the same time, the mannerism and formal
style of the language represent a sociological and ideological pattern, outlining once more
the vital importance it plays in the context of social life and relations. The relationship
between Mr. Farraday and Stevens is of vital importance in this respect, as it is mainly
affected by the language barrier. The cultural differences come alive at the level of
speech, determining in this way a true inability for a common dialectic between the
characters.

Bill Ashcroft explains, precisely in this respect, that a cultural difference is always
installed through a text, rather than a cultural identity:
Post-colonial writing affirms the primacy of the message event because the immense
distance between author and reader in the cross-cultural or sub-cultural text
undermines the privilege of both subject and object and opens meaning to a relational
dialectic which emancipates it. This emancipation, however, is limited by the absence
which is often inscribed in the cross-cultural textthe gulf of silence or metonymic
gap (Ashcroft/ Griffiths / Tiffin, 2003: 370).

Language is closely connected to the class system omnipresent throughout the

text, intersecting therefore in very important ways with the cultural implications of the
colonial domination. Bill Ashcroft explains the link between class and colonial power by
outlining that class was an important factor in colonialism, firstly in constructing the
attitudes of the colonizers towards different groups and categories of the colonized
(natives), and increasingly amongst the colonized peoples themselves as they began to
employ colonial cultural discourse to describe the changing nature of their own societies
(Ashcroft/ Griffiths / Tiffin, 2001: 38). Ishiguro himself declared that the fact that he used
the figure of the butler as the nucleus of the novel was meant to be a metaphor of the
subordinate position, in relation to power, of ordinary people in contemporary society.
This is closely connected to the concept of marginality, undoubtedly associated
with the post-colonial discourse, referring to a consequence of the binaristic structure of
various kinds of dominant discourses, such as patriarchy, imperialism and ethnocentrism,
which imply that certain forms of experience are peripheral (Ashcroft/ Griffiths / Tiffin,
2001: 135). In this respect Ishiguro comes once again with an explanation on the
intentionality of this marginalized group, explaining that the novel became a kind of
parable in which he explored the personal and collective damage caused when people
internalise a national ideal that entails the denial of their own emotional needs.
This expansive exploration of marginalized people and classes is closely
connected to the location of Ishiguros imagined world, somewhere between realism and
fabulism. This effect is realized by the incredulity of the metanarrative. That is to say,
historical reality is accessed through a different version of narratorial perspective. The
first-person narrative does not offer an authoritative alternative to the historical canon
but, moreover, the Western reader is prone to infer a lack of objectivity.
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Stevens spends almost the entire novel reminiscing his days serving Lord
Darlington, and undergoes considerable effort to defend that man's actions, which, one
learns over time, ultimately came under heavy public criticism. Lord Darlington was, by
all accounts, "a classic English gentleman. Decent, honest, and well-meaning" (Ishiguro,
1990:102). As such, he made an effort to dabble in politics, trying to ease the pains of
Germany in the years following World War I. To him, the situation was "deeply
disturbing. It does us great discredit to treat a defeated foe like this. A complete break
with the traditions of this country" (Ishiguro, 1990:71). Thus Lord Darlington's political
dealings start innocently enough: hosting informal conferences aimed at convincing the
powers that be to ease the burden of reparations, acting essentially out of goodwill.
Things darken, however, as he becomes more involved with the Nazi party, more
sympathetic to those ideas. He dismisses Jewish servants, consorts with Black Shirts
(who, the astute reader notices, were the British fascist party), and ultimately holds a
conference aimed at appeasement, involving Neville Chamberlain (again, the
contextualized reader notes that Chamberlain was the master of appeasement, of "peace
at any cost," who defended his actions on the grounds that "I have Mr. Hitler's word, and
Mr. Hitler is a good Christian gentleman.") and others. Indeed, Chamberlain is referred to
only as "the prime minister," and historical knowledge only provides his actual identity.
In the light of all this calculated representation of history a denunciation of
Stevenss moral choices should be considered. On the one hand, Stevens seem to strive
for a clear and objective narrative, on the other he seems increasingly embarrassed by his
own enlightenment of the past (Shaffer, 2005:499). In fact, all his dialogues and
interrelations in the present of the narration seem quite anxious to pardon his own naivety
while also protecting his previous allegiance to Lord Darlington.
While Stevens had envisioned himself as glorified by his lordships political
prominence and ascension in world events in the 1920s and 1930s, the pride of the butler
diminishes gradually and considerably when, at the dawn of 1950, the world starts to
understand the devastating results of fascist politics.
The heightened political climate of the earlier period has produced in Stevens an
exaggerated sense of self-importance; but with the daemonization of Darlingtons
politics by the end of World War II, when Darlington Hall is also empty and gloomy,
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Stevens is left with his own solitary self. Lacking an employer to please and now
managing a large and desolate estate with a greatly decreased work force, Stevens loses
the grounds by which to measure his self-worth.
The overall impression of the narrative is that of an inability to eradicate the past
completely, Ishiguro expressing in this way Stevenss dispossession of a meaningful life.
The portrayal of the character is very masterfully paralleled with the authors critique of
the British empire. As one reads along, one realizes that none of Stevenss facets can be
considered as especially admirable. He is void of importance in a grand historical
context, he is cold and odious as a butler and, in the end, he proves to have been
tragically mistaken and short-sighted in the service of Lord Darlington.
From a post-colonial and postmodern point of view, as a response to colonialism
and its aftermaths of hybridity and sense of loss, Kazuo Ishiguro manages very skillfully
to take the mask of conservative narrative in order to deconstruct the backbone of the
former empire. Thus, while the style seems to be of a certain classic nature, the deep
meanings and consequences of the discourse are highly postmodern and post-colonial at
the core. The mere fact is that Ishiguro creates, by way of almost intangible hints and
details, a very organized and multi-layered daemonization of a culture, of a history, of a
political system and of a way of life.

Bibliography

Ashcroft, Bill, Post-Colonial Transformation, Routledge, London, 2001.

Ashcroft, Bill/ Griffiths, Gareth/ Tiffin, Hellen. Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies,
Routledge, London, 2001.
Ashcroft, Bill/ Griffiths, Gareth/ Tiffin, Hellen. The Post-colonial Studies Reader,
Routledge, London, 2003.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: four essays. (Trans. By C. Emerson and M.
Holquist), Austin Texas: University of Texas Press, 1981.
Bakhtin, Mikhail/ P. N. Medvedev. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: a
critical introduction to sociological poetics. (Trans. By Albert J. Wehrle), Baltimore MD
and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day, Faber & Faber Limited London, 1990.
Lang, James M., Public Memory, Private History: Kazuo Ishiguros The Remains f the
Day, Clio, 29, 2, 2000.
Shaffer W., Brian. A companion to the British and Irish novel 1945-2000. Blackwell
Publishing, Oxford, 2005.

Rusu Diana-Iulia
British Cultural Studies, 1st Year

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