Suspicion, Event, Finance: Reading Ishiguro’s Enigmas

Abstract: This essay distinguishes between two kinds of suspicion: intrinsic suspicions are those that are prompted by the process of deciphering the literary text, and which usually resolve when the reader uncovers an element of plot or story, whereas extrinsic suspicions are those brought to bear on the text by critical methodology (for example, the hermeneutics of suspicion), as it tries to identify a relationship between art and life. The distinction derives from a higher-level one, between interpretation and criticism, where interpretation is understood as the determination of a text’s semantic substance and criticism is understood as the consideration of that substance in light of contextual frames. Taking the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro as particularly apposite cases, I show that the recent tendency to characterize his fiction as influenced by the hermeneutics of suspicion is mistaken, insofar as Ishiguro critics misapprehend the proper purview of Paul Ricoeur’s phrase, which was meant to describe suspicions at play in criticism, not in interpretation. Their misapprehension is the result of appropriations of the phrase, most notably in Rita Felski’s work, that frame critique as a “mood” as well as a method; in contrast, I establish the grounds for reframing the hermeneutics of suspicion as a worldview. This series of corrections authorizes a reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels in terms of Marxist hermeneutics.