Posthuman Ethical Interpretation In Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go is Kazuo Ishiguro’s first dystopian science fiction.In several interviews,Kazuo Ishiguro has made it clear that the novel is set in a future world where clones are created as substitute organs,but the survival of modern human is his real concern.The novel foreshadows a posthuman scenario in which natural selection and evolution have been overturned,enabling people to reconsider the relationship between the subject and the intelligent entity in the future.Focusing on the truncated young lives of the clones,Never Let Me Go metaphorizes the dilemma of human existence and explores the dilemma of defining the identity between clones and human beings in the context of the coexistence of mankind and technology,further exposes the hidden bioethical crisis,suggests that removing anthropocentrism and establishing a community with a shared future for mankind can provide an effective way to solve the posthuman bioethical crisis.This thesis contains four chapters.The first chapter introduces the life and literary works of Kazuo Ishiguro,then is about the current status of the research on Never Let Me Go at home and abroad as well as the significance.Finally,this chapter organizes and explains the posthumanist theories to lay the theoretical foundation for the text analysis.Main parts about text analysis lie in chapter two to four.Chapter two deals with the dichotomous situation between human beings as masters and posthuman as slaves.On the one hand,clones are controlled by the sovereign for the purpose of organ transplantation and deprived of the right to reproduction and career choice,being forced to give up the right to life.On the other hand,clones also have a sense of autonomy and want to take back the right to their bodies,at which point clones are no longer the "others" but the subjects.When posthuman surpasses human beings in terms of humanity,posthuman will be liberated from the master-slave discourse,blurring the boundary between human beings and posthuman,thus entering the posthuman era.Chapter three analyzes the bioethical crisis caused by the enslavement of cloned human beings from the perspective of posthuman ethics and bioethics.The alienation of science and technology makes clones face the crisis of life dignity of being objectified and enslaved.The enslavement of their bodies and the manipulation of their minds put clones in an ethical crisis of identity,leading to a life full of identity confusion in which clones are manipulated and emasculated.Clones fail to construct a subject identity and finally gain identity transformation through death.Chapter four takes "philosophical posthumanism" as the basic standpoint for proposing a solution to the posthuman bioethical crisis.Human beings must first step out of the world of anthropocentrism,respect universal vitality and establish posthuman communities,then try to reconcile with the clones and move towards the posthumanist era,reconstruct the posthuman "nomadic" subject and realize "the posthuman ethic of joy".By depicting such a future world,Kazuo Ishiguro conveys the fact that in the process of highly developed biotechnology and genetic engineering,human slavery to other species can still be seen.This is the dilemma caused by the concept of human development.The novel warns people to re-examine the relationship between human and nature,human and non-human life,and human and the world.“Life"(which extends to animals and non-human life)should no longer be coded as an exclusive right of a particular species,but rather move towards a"zoe-centred egalitarianism".The purpose of this thesis is try to find a solution to the bioethical crisis in the posthuman era by analyzing the posthuman ethics in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go,and to highlight the author’s humanist concern for the fate of humanity in the context of a community of life between man and nature,while hopefully having some critical effect on issues such as the superiority of the species existing in the real world.