Transmodern Mythopoesis in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

The Buried Giant is Ishiguro’s exploration of the collective memory of historical traumas. In a context in which violence seems omnipresent, he eschews the treatment of a specific local history and explores instead the potential universality of a semi-mythological landscape. A central concern in this chapter is Ishiguro’s interest in myth as a noble lie (Plato) through which the whole human community can be addressed across space and time through a transmodern mythopoesis and an ethical commitment which are transnational and transhistorical. A crucial theme of the chapter is the psychagogic virtues of falsehood, whose relevance in psychotherapy, philosophy and Memory Studies is outlined by way of introduction to Ishiguro’s mythopoetic creation. Then, the manifold cultural sources which give shape to the seemingly plain imagery of the novel are unveiled in order to appreciate the transcultural nature of Ishiguro’s tropes. The close of the chapter interrogates the ethical concerns of the novel, by considering how, in The Buried Giant, memory acquires a collective dimension and is conveyed through a disembodied narrative voice, which is the voice of History. Through this reminiscing abstract narrator, Ishiguro commemorates metaphorically all the traumatic past(s) of humanity, suggesting, in transmodern fashion, the interconnectedness of human communities across time and space.