Author(s)

Shu-Yuan Chang

Corresponding Author

Shu-Yuan Chang

Abstract

In his fourth novel, The Unconsoled, Kazuo Ishiguro deals with postcolonial concerns of community, homeland and host nations. The protagonist Ryder wanders through the unconnected places and situations that represents people within transnational and postnational process no more attaching to an identifiable place, situations and history. In this article I attempt to discuss Ishiguro’s dilemma in national and cultural identity and citizenship from Ryder’s indeterminacy and disorientation in the unnamed European city. Homi Bhabha’s theories of cultural hybridity and in-betweenness, and diaspora studies will be applied to discuss Ryder’s indeterminacy, Ishiguro’s ambivalence and the un-locatable features in The Unconsoled.

Keywords

Diasporic; Transnational; Identity; Indeterminacy; Ambivalence; In-betweeness