The Copy and the Real: Language-Games of Personhood in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
This article explores personhood and its constitution within the backdrop of the rules of the infrastructures in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. By choosing human clones as the oppressed, Ishiguro challenges humanistic legacies of personhood at deep and complex levels, and thus locates the discriminatio...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Lasting Impressions Press
2020-01-01
|
| Series: | International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.eltsjournal.org/archive/value7%20issue4/11-7-4-19.pdf |
| Summary: | This article explores personhood and its constitution within the backdrop of the rules of the infrastructures in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. By choosing human clones as the oppressed, Ishiguro challenges humanistic legacies of personhood at deep and complex levels, and thus locates the discrimination not in the marked bodies but rules and language-games that go beyond such discernable differences. Never Let Me Go aims to unmask the fallacious definitions that establish the bedrocks of the modernized forms of life. Drawing upon Wittgenstein’s notions of rules, meaning, and language-games and complementing them with Marya Schechtman’s mapping of self-constitution in the person-space, this article claims that the features of personhood are not to be found in the contents of the body, but within the forms defined by the rules of the infrastructure of personhood. NLMG exposes the deception of the forms that create the illusion of content in the most foundational norms and practices of humanistic discourse. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2308-5460 2308-5460 |