Nationalism and Conservative Politics in the Remains of the Day

11 “A Genuine Old-Fashioned English Butler” DOI: 10.2478/abcsj-2018-0014 American, British and Canadian Studies, Volume 31, December 2018 “A Genuine Old-Fashioned English Butler”: Nationalism and Conservative Politics in The Remains of the Day EMILY HORTON Brunel University, Great Britain Abstract In the context of twenty-first century global conservatism, where anti- immigrant sentiment is everywhere apparent, the importance of Ishiguro’s writing arguably lies in its on-going challenge to this perspective’s faulty logic and its capacity to reveal the radical violence behind nationalist political attacks on minority and immigrant populations. In this article I explore this challenge explicitly through a politically-oriented reading of The Remains of the Day (1989), highlighting this novel’s joint critique of Thatcherite nationalism and late twentieth century global entrepreneurialism. While this focus obviously represents a response to an earlier socio- political moment, defined by its own unique amalgam of ideological anxieties, nevertheless what emerges most prominently through this reading is the novel’s topical condemnation of cultural essentialism and its attendant hierarchies, concerns which remain of utmost critical significance within the twenty-first century. Thus, by making this assessment explicit, highlighting British conservatism’s devastating psychological and material implications for affected individuals, ranging from repressed and traumatised psychologies to radical economic precarity, this novel can be seen to register Thatcherite prejudice in a poignantly relevant manner. Indeed, the pseudo-respect granted to the ‘genuine old-fashioned English butler’ in this novel might also be seen as comparable to Trump’s pseudo-populism or Brexit nostalgia, both of which likewise ignore the pressing reality of imperialism’s historical violence. Keywords: nationalism, tradition, Thatcher, New Right politics, heritage industry, imperialism, conservatism, entrepreneurialism, new world order, humanism, cosmopolitanism American, British and Canadian Studies / 12 Shane Meadows’s 2007 film This Is England , which explores the skin- head culture of 1980s Britain, features a representative BNP member addressing his supporters with the following nationalist statement: There is a forgotten word . no, a forbidden word. That word is ‘England.’ I want to rescue the word ‘Englishman.’ People call us racists. We're not racists, we’re realists. Some people call us Nazis – we’re not Nazis, we’re nationalists. As an example of the ‘loyalist’ thinking of 1980s politics, this form of expression is familiar. Thus, while the New Right was not always so direct in its racism – claiming likewise to reject the example of Nazi Germany – Thatcherite expressions such as “Britain’s Great Again” and “This country might be rather swamped by people of a different culture” (qtd. in Stolcke 3) make clear an underlying assertion of nationalist prejudice. Commenting on this aggressive anti-immigrant vocabulary, Paul Gilroy writes, “The new racism is primarily concerned with the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. It specifies who may legitimately belong to the national community and simultaneously advances reasons for the segregation or banishment of those whose ‘origin, sentiment or citizenship’ assigns them elsewhere” (45). In Ishiguro’s previous novel, An Artist of the Floating World , he arguably explores an authoritarian element of this 1980s socio-cultural discourse, where the search for “law and order” issues itself in calls for hard-work and a rejection of weakness and “decadence” (64). Examining a form of competitive ambition ultimately reflective of right-wing individualist dogma and comparable both in its repressed and neurotic elements, An Artist of the Floating World can be read as a parody of New Right moralism, where a narrow-sighted aspiration entails a prioritisation of personal success and national sovereignty over community well being and cross-cultural mixture. The other side of this discourse, which emerges in The Remains of the Day , is more subtle in its ideological implications. It romanticises about the unique specificity of English culture, its unified identity and supposedly glorious past. In place of moralism, it encourages nostalgia and national feeling, exchanging didactic dogma for a calmer embrace of 13 “A Genuine Old-Fashioned English Butler” memory and sentiment. Tom Nairn explains, “Divested of Empire and barred from Europe, Britain could still rejoice – indeed rejoice ever more fervently – in its own soul, in the brilliantly refurbished emblems of a phoenix-like civilization and the ample customs so reassuring to gentlemen toiling in the craft-workshops of old truth” (233-34). Despite its pose of innocence however, the implicit violence of this heritage ‘traditionalism’ is revealed in its invocation of Empire and/or ‘pure Englishness’ as the emblem of national glory. Summarising this ‘Powellist’ mentality, Patrick Wright remarks, “[It] stands close to pre- war anti-Semitism in its assertion of threatened tradition, valued geography and other incommunicable ‘great simplicities’ (Powell’s redolent phrase) of nationhood” (126; qtd. also in Sim 127). Encased in the upper-class context of inter-war England, this modern-day social concern is initially disguised in The Remains of the Day , hidden beneath a veneer of manor-house comedy and Victorian pastoral seemingly removed from present-day metropolitanism. Bumbling about in his daily routine, devising improved staff-plans, Stevens is a prototype manor-house butler, a paragon of repression and order re- enacting the ‘upstairs-downstairs’ hierarchy of imperial Britain. Within this semi-comedic genre, Stevens’s narrative is ostensibly one of repression and lost love: claiming to enjoy the English countryside, he sets out a memoir of past obedience unfailing in its commitment, but also thick with a sense of regret and missed opportunity. He writes, “The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost. [...They] will discard it when, and only when, [they are] entirely alone” (43-4). The irony of his statement as a description of Stevens’s professional autonomy is implicit in its dependence upon a metaphor of disguise, where Stevens hides beneath a suit of professionalism (and denial) which obstructs his personal fulfilment. 1 The tragic consequences of this enactment are visible in Stevens’s disillusioned conclusion, which eludes his wilful optimism. Confessing his longing for Miss Kenton, he laments, “There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable” (188-9). In other words, he quickly betrays his sense of remorse at what he has let escape him. American, British and Canadian Studies / 14 Read simply as a generic romance, of failed love and lost hope, this narrative is revealing, affectively illuminating Stevens’s disillusionment in his professional pose. Commenting on this explicitly, Brian Shaffer remarks, “ The Remains of the Day is one of the most profound novelistic representations of repression masquerading as professionalism”; through its “mock nostalgia,” the “grandeur of Stevens’s ‘professional dignity’” is “[thrown] into question” (87-8). Here, in effect, Stevens’s so-called English ‘stiff-upper-lip’ is read as betrayal of personal feeling and affective integrity. Nevertheless, in so far as Stevens’s narrative also encompasses a history of political fascism – his master Lord Darlington ultimately revealed as a Nazi supporter – the larger concern in this novel is arguably not with repression or denial per se , but rather with the nationalist ideology of traditionalism itself. Adopting a historical mythology of ‘Englishness’ and national ‘loyalty,’ with Hitler at its core, Remains exposes the exclusivism of New Right nationalism; however ostensibly ‘glorious’ this discourse claims to be, its prejudice is here implicit. One central mode by which this message is offered is through a parody of the colonial travelogue, the latter’s ideology of conquest here made explicit through the language of “greatness” (28). Thus, having embarked on a six day road trip across the south of inter-war England – ostensibly with the purpose of refilling a depleted professional staff-plan – Stevens here records his daily thoughts on the beauty of old-world England, including its rolling fields, high church towers, and friendly villages (26). With this observatory framework in place, what is notable from the start is Stevens's inflated tone, which mythologises the landscape with attributes of “greatness” (29) and “dignity” (33) resonant of an earlier era. He writes, “We call this land Great Britain, and there may be those who believe this a somewhat immodest practice. Yet I would venture that the landscape of this country alone would justify the use of this lofty adjective” (29). In one sense, as Wai-chew Sim notes, this description emerges as a typical old-fashioned patriotism, where in accordance with the tacit rules of the colonial travel-guide, the “sweeping” view from above, with its panoramic vista, reinforces a “fantasy of dominance” familiar to 15 “A Genuine Old-Fashioned English Butler” imperialist rhetoric (135). Commenting on this common aesthetic practice, Mary Louise Pratt notes its “distanced and self-effaced stance', wherein the land itself ‘commands’ what falls within its gaze” (143). In effect, this language positions the

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