Quotidian Resistance to Affective Biopolitics in Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Many questions come to mind when reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, one of which is: Why don’t the students attempt to escape their fate? Scholars such as Maren Tova Linett utilizes Giorgio Agamben’s concept of the homo sacer to analyze the novel from a biopolitical stance. In my paper, I add on to the research done these scholars and shift the focus to the seemingly all pervasiveness of this ‘organ harvesting programme,’ as there is no clear explanation as to why the clones do not attempt to escape their fate. My first aim is to investigate the bio-political use of affect through the framework of Michel Foucault on the students in Hailsham and beyond, that establishes a seemingly unequivocal system of organ harvesting. Next, this paper examines the organ harvesting program’s parameters by examining deferrals through what Lauren Berlant calls ‘cruel optimism.’ Finally, I analyze Kathy’s narrative through Saidiya Hartman’s concept of everyday resistance, reading her care for the donors as a form of resistance. In this way, I argue that even in a system that seems all-encompassing, there are possibilities of transient resistance.
Abstract
Many questions come to mind when reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, one of which is: Why don’t the students attempt to escape their fate? Scholars such as Maren Tova Linett utilizes Giorgio Agamben’s concept of the homo sacer to analyze the novel from a biopolitical stance. In my paper, I add on to the research done these scholars and shift the focus to the seemingly all pervasiveness of this ‘organ harvesting programme,’ as there is no clear explanation as to why the clones do not attempt to escape their fate. My first aim is to investigate the bio-political use of affect through the framework of Michel Foucault on the students in Hailsham and beyond, that establishes a seemingly unequivocal system of organ harvesting. Next, this paper examines the organ harvesting program’s parameters by examining deferrals through what Lauren Berlant calls ‘cruel optimism.’ Finally, I analyze Kathy’s narrative through Saidiya Hartman’s concept of everyday resistance, reading her care for the donors as a form of resistance. In this way, I argue that even in a system that seems all-encompassing, there are possibilities of transient resistance.
참고문헌 (12)
- Agamben, Giorgio, "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life" (1998), Stanford UP
- Ahmed, Sara, "The Promise of Happiness" (2010), Duke UP
- Ahmed, Sara, "Cultural Politics of Emotion" (2014), Edinburgh UP
- Berlant, Lauren, "Cruel Optimism" (2011), Duke UP
- del Valle Alcalá, Roberto, "Servile Life: Subjectivity, Biopolitics, and the Labor of the Dividual in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go", Cultural Critique, 10(2), pp.37~60 (2021)
- Foucault, Michel, "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" (1995), Vintage
- Foucault, Michel, "The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge" (2012), Vintage
- Gregg, Melissa, "The Affect Theory Reader" (2020), Duke UP
- Hartman, Saidiya V., "Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, And Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America" (1997), Oxford UP
- Hobart, Hiilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani, "Radical Care: Survival Strategies for Uncertain Times", Social Text, 38(1), pp.1~16 (2021)
- Ishiguro, Kazuo, "Never Let Me Go" (2006), Vintage International
- Linett, Maren Tova, "Literary Bioethics: Animality, Disability, and the Human. Vol. 3" (2020), NYU Press