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Humanizing Artificial Bodies: Empathy and Camaraderie in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Klara and the Sun (2021)

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

Studies in World Literature

Abstract

Influenced by the massive rise of technology and digitization in the twentieth century, the Japanese-American writer Kazuo Ishiguro deals with the developments and repercussions of technology that particularly has to do with human replicas, whom he probingly assesses their influence on human society and human relationships. His two novels, Never Let Me Go (2005) and Klara and the Sun (2021) present a wide array of human emotions that clones and “Artificial Friends", as referred to in the latter, can practice in a world that is replete with illness, dysfunctional relationships, social ills and death. The Post-human Turn in humanities and literature questions the endurance of human agency and its role in controlling the governing state of affairs. With the advent of technology, the age-long central role of human beings has become more subsidiary, and more non-human creatures and inventions have started to take center-stage in the contemporary world. Notwithstanding the fact that they continuously struggle to survive in a world that does not wholeheartedly acknowledge them, these clones and Artificial Friend(s) are, ironically, presented as more humane than humans. The relegation of humans to the background and the centralization of post-humans brings the hidden psychological complexities of the latter to the limelight. As such, in the aforementioned novels, Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun, Ishiguro illuminates the sufferings, mishaps and, most importantly, the sense of empathy and solidarity that these post-humans can possibly form and express to counter the wrongdoings and evil tendencies that humans exhibit.

DOI

10.21608/tjhss.2024.331384.1281

Keywords

solidarity, cyborgs, Humanization, Empathy, post-human agency

Authors

First Name

Nada

Last Name

Zeyada

MiddleName

Alaa

Affiliation

Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University

Email

nadaziada@live.com

City

Alexandria

Orcid

-

Volume

5

Article Issue

4

Related Issue

50949

Issue Date

2024-10-01

Receive Date

2024-11-23

Publish Date

2024-12-04

Page Start

130

Page End

143

Print ISSN

2636-4239

Online ISSN

2636-4247

Link

https://tjhss.journals.ekb.eg/article_393919.html

Detail API

https://tjhss.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=393919

Order

393,919

Type

Original Article

Type Code

1,087

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Transcultural Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Publication Link

https://tjhss.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Humanizing Artificial Bodies: Empathy and Camaraderie in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Klara and the Sun (2021)

Details

Type

Article

Created At

25 Dec 2024