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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
WEI Li, YUAN Jing-jing
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2019.05.003
Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot, China
The literary background of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go sets in a highly developed scientific and technological world where clones are created by human and “educated” in the Hailsham School for the sake of “donating” their vital organs to human three or four times before death. By depicting miserable fate of clones, the novel conveys deep concerns on the consequences of abusing technology in modern society. Ever since the burgeoning development of life science and artificial intelligence in the 1990s, the trend of posthumanism/transhumanism has emerged. Posthumanism promotes approaches to enhancing human body condition and organism, and extending human lifespan to augment human capacity and well-being by the advancement of technology. In literary field, contemplation on the relationship between human beings and technology has become a major concern of posthumanism. Putting Never Let Me Go in the context of posthumanism, this essay probes into the significant themes of the novel from three aspects: (1) clones’ torments in the existential predicaments imposed by human; (2) human’s violation to the principles of bioethics causing the existential predicaments of alienated clones; (3) appealing to human to ruminate on the relationship between scientific technology and ethics.
posthumanism, Never Let Me Go, human clones, alienation, existential predicaments, bioethical principles
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