Precarious Lives in the Age of Biocapitalism

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2020

The paper aims to explore Hanif Kureishi’s (2002) “The Body” and Kazuo Ishiguro’s (2005) Never Let Me Go in order to throw light on the bioethical issues related to ageing, biocitizenship, organ transplantation, wasted lives and disposable bodies by extending the discussion from a human to a dystopian posthuman world where affluent sections of society replenish their aged degenerating organic body by incorporating biomatter from non-citizens and clones. The paper draws on and extends Nikolas Rose and Carlos Novas’s concept of biocitizenship, Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of wasted lives, Giorgio Agamben’s explanation of bare life and Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection in the context of literary studies in order to analyze the socio-political status of the engineered lives who are classified as biomedical fodders.

Global Social Sciences Review

Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (Never) exposes the oppressive role of ideology in imploding human identity through societal training, education, and the social roles of clones in the human world. Cloning is another marvel of biotechnology which has given birth to many optimistic as well as pessimistic narratives. The post human narrative is central to dystopia as it tends to put forward the regressive use of biotechnology that has the potential to disrupt the essential human identity and implement a sort of reduction-ism which manifest gratification and conformity. The desire to indoctrinate conformity indicates the late capitalistic tactics of commodification which results in an identity implosion. The paper asserts that ideological maneuvering and construction of imploded identities are exhibited through dystopian bio-technologies in the agency of post humanism, which represent com-modified identity politics. The post human, in this context, serves as the Other of stratified human ide...

Restoring the Mystery of the Rainbow: Literature’s Refraction of Science. A 2 Volume Set. DQR Studies in Literature 47. Ed. Valeria Tinkler-Villani and C.C. Barfoot. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2011. 379-94. , 2011

2017

Genetic technologies are now sufficiently advanced to alter the human genome. Indeed, gene editing is already practiced in some countries for medical purposes. However, future directions for the use of genetic technologies are unclear. Scholars of the “posthuman” future tend to speculate that genetic engineering (and other technologies) will create superhumans, and the term “human enhancement” is used to describe the practice of “improving” the human form. However, recent fiction on bioengineering themes envisages not a programme of enhancement, but rather the creation of a new genetic class system in which cloned or engineered human-like organisms form an oppressed and abused minority. These organisms – which I term genetic posthumans – have emerged as protagonists in numerous novels and films, allowing for a humanising view of the interiority of the cloned or engineered mind. This humanised mind is then juxtaposed to the genetic posthuman’s othered status. In order to establish the alterity of the genetic posthuman, storytellers strategically recycle modes of dehumanisation applied in historical race- or gender-based struggles. In each case, genetic posthumans are described in a manner recalling other oppressed outgroups: they are made secondary to unaltered humans, they are economically exploited, and they are treated as animals despite their evident humanness. This primes audiences to accept the purported differences of the genetic posthuman as social constructions rather than “natural” or biologically innate distinctions. This thesis proposes that contemporary genetic engineering fictions act as a corrective to the assumptions of posthumanist theory by positioning genetic posthuman characters as disadvantaged beings, using forms of dehumanisation made familiar by recent history. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005), and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2003-2013) are examined as key examples of fiction in this area. Other novels, plays, and films are also analysed, including George Lucas’s THX 1138 (1971); Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976); Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982); Fay Weldon’s The Cloning of Joanna May (1989); Michael Marshall Smith’s Spares (1996); Caryl Churchill’s A Number (2002); and Michael Bay’s The Island (2005). Each of these works contests the posthumanist assumption that genetic technologies will be used to improve the human form. Although human enhancement is a possible outcome of genetic engineering, these storytellers imply another scenario: that corporatized science could lead to the creation of economically useful, animalised, dehumanised creatures. These genetic posthumans could have human (or human-like) bodies and minds, but not human rights.

Although science-fiction novelist Octavia Butler claims to avoid "all critical theory" (in Potts, 331), the issues at play in her Xenogenesis trilogy are essentially those of the postmodern critique of the humanist subject: the critique of the individual as a rationally selfdetermining, self-defining being, and of individual identity as the source of agency. In these novels, humanity is confronted with an impossible choice: either extinction, or transformation through a genetic "trade" with an alien species, the Oankali. The human race here stands for the human being as we once knew it, facing a seemingly horrifying posthuman future. Like those films that Kelly Hurley classifies as "body horror," Butler's narrative tells of a "human subject dismantled and demolished: a human body whose integrity is violated, a human identity whose boundaries are breached from all sides . . . " (205). Yet Butler's critical dystopia suggests a resource for hope in these very violations and ruptures--indeed, in the evolution of the human toward a posthuman body, posthuman subjectivity, and posthuman form of agency.

2021

ivan lacko saviors, naïfs, or orphans? the posthuman condition in literary and cinematic perspectives on human cloning Post-and transhuman narratives in literary fiction and cinema often make use of a whole assortment of themes (e.g., human enhancement, cyborgization, rapid technological development, cyberspatial consciousness, humanoid artificial intelligence, and biohacking), thus allowing the application of a broad variety of storylines, plots, and characters. * a number of literary and cinematic works feature genetic engineering, DNa manipulation, and human cloning as intriguing and often controversial issues that enable powerful psychological, social, and political insights into posthuman societies. The aim of this article is to focus on three works of (science) fiction written between the 1970s and the 2010s to provide an analytical look at how characters who are human clones are used to discuss and address posthumanist and transhumanist issues. While the theoretical background for the analysis will make use mostly of posthumanist criticism and theory, philosophical posthumanism, and literary criticism, the analysis itself will deal with Kate Wilhelm's acclaimed science-fiction novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976), Kazuo ishiguro's successful dystopia Never Let Me Go (2005), and Space and BBC america's popular five-season television series Orphan Black (2013-2017). The objective is to present the fictional microcosms of these works as valid and relevant societies in which human cloning serves as a backdrop for creating characters who, in turn, serve as pertinent elements in a posthuman environment. The article seeks to use the three selected works as representatives of a development in the portrayal of clone characters-from an impersonal presentation of the clones' collective mentality and lack of imagination, to more fully developed psychological portraits. * This article was supported by the project aPVV-17-0064 "analysis of multidimensional forms of trans-and post-humanism".

English Dissertations, 2010

As a replacement for, or supplement to, the human, the posthuman produces figures that highlight the socially constructed nature of human identity. This dissertation undertakes to demonstrate how several British novelists have used the concept as a supplement or replacement for ...

2009

Stewardship and the Future of the Planet: Promise and Paradox, 2023

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro), the Xenogenesis trilogy (Octavia E. Butler) and The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood), invoke the full semantic scope of the term “steward,” which means “guard,” “overseer of workmen,” “one who manages affairs of an estate on behalf of his employer” and a “person who supervises arrangements,” all of which imply control, power and dominance. I propose that stewardship in eugenic dystopias such as these, while directed at the future of the human race in terms of its very continuity and existence, foregrounds what Rebekah Sheldon following Lee Edelman terms “reproductive futurism".However, the dystopian vision of Atwood, Butler and Ishiguro treats reproductive futurism as not (only) the creation of (improved) human bodies – in terms of cures for diseases, freedom from cancer, longevity, among others – but also, contra Sheldon, lacking a redemption from humanity’s political and social pasts of violence, coercion, oppression and discrimination. In other words, the stewardship for “continuing” humanity is founded on structures of power and knowledge that remain scarred by the political and social pasts of humanity and does not ensure a redemptive future.