Idealism, Farce and International Heterotopias. Aristocracy in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day

The aim of the essay is to explore the ethical dimension of The Remains of the Day, moving beyond the historicist, narratological, postcolonial and (bio)political interpretative parameters prioritised to this date in the interpretation of the novel. The essay argues that The Remains of the Day, published in the heyday of postmodernism, has less to do with cultural relativism than with the awareness that human nature is fundamentally aporetic, in that it is founded on unsolvable dilemmas and more specifically on the conundrums that revolve around the concept of idealism. The desire to contribute to something larger and meaningful for humanity is critical for any understanding of this novel or, for that matter, of Ishiguro’s production as a whole, but he presents this idealist thrust as a double-edged sword, which can also produce farcical effects.