石黑一雄小说中情感劳动的制度化悖论.
Emotional labor is the primary labor form of characters in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels, including Stevens’ butler work, Kathy’s nursing work, Klara’s companionship service, and Etsuko’s domestic labor. These all involve individuals adjusting and managing their emotions according to external expectations...
| Publicado en: | Foreign Literature Studies Vol. 48; no. 1; pp. 137 - 149 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Foreign Literature Studies
Feb2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | Emotional labor is the primary labor form of characters in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels, including Stevens’ butler work, Kathy’s nursing work, Klara’s companionship service, and Etsuko’s domestic labor. These all involve individuals adjusting and managing their emotions according to external expectations. The value of emotional labor in the novels is constructed through the interplay of social, ethical, and capitalist logics, continuously operating through emotional norms, subject internalization, and mechanisms of power reproduction. The institutionalization of emotional labor has led to the alienation of labor, humanity, technology, and gender, plunging the subject into a crisis of subjectivity. The ethical predicament in the novels stems from the fact that professional ethics suppresses other ethical identities, such as family ethics, while institutional ethical requirements cause individuals to lose their ethical judgment, and the emotional and ethical connections required by care ethics become distorted. Ishiguro’s novels thus transcend into a profound meditation on modernity: institutionalized emotional labor, while constructing an ethical order, increasingly erodes the depth of individual existence and the ethical substance of interpersonal relationships. 情感劳动是石黑一雄小说人物的主要劳动类型, 包括史蒂文斯的管家服务、凯 西的护理工作、克拉拉的陪伴服务以及悦子的家庭劳动等, 都涉及个体根据外部预期 调整情感的过程。小说中的情感劳动价值被社会、伦理与资本逻辑建构, 并通过情感 规范、主体内化与权力再生产机制持续运作。这一制度化进程引发主体的劳动异化、人 性异化、科技异化以及性别异化, 使主体陷入主体性危机。小说中伦理困境的产生源 于职业伦理身份压制家庭伦理等其他伦理身份, 制度的伦理要求反而使个人丧失伦理 判断, 关怀伦理所需的情感与伦理联结被扭曲。石黑一雄小说由此升华为对现代性的 深切忧思: 情感劳动的制度化在构建伦理秩序的同时, 正日益侵蚀主体的存在深度与 人际关系的伦理实质。 |
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