Deconstruction And Ethics

As one of the most important contemporary British novelists,Julian Banes has published more than a dozen books up to the moment,of which The Sense of Ending is the winner of 2011 Man Booker Prize.In Bames's writing career of more than three decades,it is possible to draw a three-phase distinction based on two brief interruptions and changes of topicality.His works of early phase present a thorough concern about history and historiography.In his middle phase of writing,his novels are primarily set in the geographical space of Britain,hence giving rise to great amount of refiections on issues related to Englishness.His recent writings concentrate extensively on the influence of memory on individual psychological space.The three phases of Barnes's writing have been marked by a shift in spatial backgrounds,and a corresponding non-shift in his overall concern over topics related to the past,which combine to form the themes of history,Englishness and memory for each phase respectively.As a result,research on Barnes has grown to be increasingly versatile.To be more specific,earlier research has focused on his new historicist approach to history while English,English brings forth the issue of Englishness as a widely-explored topic.Despite continuing with previous research perspectives,with issues related to memory,identity and ethics emerging,recent research also witnesses an increase in diversity of topics including memory,identity and ethics.Taking works including Flaubert's Parrot(1984),A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters(1989),England,England(1998),Arthur&George(2005),the memoir Nothing to Be Afraid of(2008)and The Sense of an Ending(2011)as major texts for detailed analysis,this study conducts an in-depth reading of the coexistence of deconstruction and ethics in Bames's writing of fragmentation.As to the research approach,the study explores on the one hand how Bames adopts techniques of fragmentation such as collage,list and episodic writing to achieve the deconstruction of totalized narratives in history,Englishness and personal memory;on the other hand,with the help of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's concepts including face of the Other,desire,and saying,the manner of individual's fulfillment in their ethical obligations towards the Other is examined in detail.The focus of this study lies in the inherent paradox of deconstruction and ethics in Bames 5s writing of fragmentation.As a writer in the postmodern context,Barnes inevitably encounters a situation in which almost all ideas of traditional Western thought have been shattered to pieces,as has already been evidently displayed by his writing of fragmentation in themes including history,Englishness and memory.However,Bames is never to be understood as a writer writing merely about the fragmented state of being,as for him the means of coping with such a state consists in the ethical actions of his characters who persist in facing the transcendental Other,and this is what the theory of Levinas values as essence.It is the facing towards the Other that gives Barnes's works a slice of positivity in their comprehensively deconstructional moves.Specifically,the paradoxical coexistence of deconstruction and ethics is presented in the fragmentation of history,Englishness and memory respectively.The fragmentation of historical metanarrative is realized through collage,which then enables the appearance of the face of the Other.Both in Flaubert's Parrot and A History of the World in 101/2 Chaptery Barnes has experimented with collage of narrative voices,genres and stories.He foregrounds several underprivileged voices that are previously suppressed in binary structures of western thought in the collage of narrative voices,which includes female voice of Flaubert's lover Louise Colet,animal voice of an imaginary stowaway woodworm in Noah's Ark,and a mad person's voice who accounted a story of“One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest".In the collage of genres,Barnes manages to include various genres such as bestiary,chronology and epistolary style within the boundary of a novel,hence deconstructing not only the genre of novel itself,but also the general distinction between fictional writings and non-fictional writings.What's more,it is through the collage of narrative voices and genres that he becomes capable of deconstructing the grand narratives in historic writings,which is itself a presentation of new historical ideas of the "textuality of history".Barnes's collage of stories,however,allows ethical significances to arise.In Flaubert's Parrot,three stories are imbedded into each other and in A History of the World in 101/2 Chapter,ten and a half stories are collaged horizontally so that the faces of the Other in ethical relations manifest for the protagonists in these two novels.The fragmentation of Englishness is realized by the construction and deconstruction of it through the employment of two lists,which thereafter lead to the transcendence from need to desire in Levinasian terms."Fifty Quintessences of Englishness" and the clue list for detection of Arthur's Conan Doyle are two vital lists that are crucial to the plot development in England,England and Arthur&George.Theoretically speaking,list is a structure that combines fragments together to form totality,which is upon first glance the functions of both above-mentioned lists,with the former acting as a blueprint for an amusement park,and the latter as a guideline for solving a crime.Yet Barnes's purpose is not to present such a process of reaching totality,but to parody it,and through parodying reveals the subjective construction of Englishness.Such a deconstruction of Englishness is a direct response to a "crisis of Englishness" in Britain at the turn of the century.Despite the deconstructional parody,with Martha's elusive admiration for an insane Dr.Jones actor in England,England,and Arthur's persistent zeal towards spiritualism in Arthur&George,Bames still manages to present an ethical pursuit of the infinite and insatiable desire,which is evoked by the alterity of the Other.In the fragmentation of memory,Barnes has achieved the deconstruction of memory and an ethical saying towards the other through presentation of episodic memories.He employs episodic memory as the basic unit of recalling the past in the novel The Sense of an Ending and his own autobiographie memoir Nothing to be Afraid Of.Drawing heavily on memory studies from the field of cognitive psychology,the current study applies the dynamic episodic memory system to analyze Barnes's writing of personal memories.As a result,it is discovered that by staging the complex interaction of many elements in the episodic memory system(e.g.original event and cognitive environment in coding phase,and recoding and retrieving cue in the retrieving stage),it is possible to reveal the non-static feature of memory in the original static medium of a novel.Such a process makes the cognitive errors in memory more apparent and renders the narrative of memory as unreliable narration,and deconstruction of memory is thus achieved.Nevertheless,the dynamic presentation of memory process becomes at the same time an action of saying in the Levinasian sense.Saying,as an ethical obligation,forces the memory narrators to break from the world of the said and hegemony of the self.Therefore,in the writing of fragmentation through episodic memories,stereotypes and misunderstandings are resolved,and individuals hence fulfills the ethical obligations towards the Others of their memories.Bames's writing of fragmentation is a representation of attitude towards the postmodern context that involves both deconstruction and ethics of transcendence.It is an insistence on the deconstruction of history,Englishness and memory,all of which essential to the construction of identity,and a display of the fragmentation of totality in personal narratives and metanarratives.In addition,it is a relentless striving for carrying out the Levinsian ethical obligation towards alterity,that defies the ruins of relativity and nihilism caused by postmodern deconstruction.By analyzing the coexistence of deconstruction and ethics in Bames's writing of fragmentation,the significance of this research lies in the following aspects.Firstly,as a prominent feature of Bames's oeuvre,fragmentation in form and content has not received enough attention,not to mention systematic study.Therefore,a comprehensive study on the writing of fragmentation would offer a new perspective for the interpretation of Bames's works.Secondly,although the deconstructional dimension of Barnes's writing has been discussed by relatively large amount of research,a positive dimension that can be revealed through ethical behaviors of his characters has been generally ignored.The application of the coexistence of deconstruction and ethics into Bames's works allows a more full-fledged insight into the writer.Lastly,the combination of postmodern deconstructional thoughts with Levinasian ethics of the Other brings about a new multi-disciplinary approach of interpretation.