Also working on this...

Sublimely Post Human: An analysis of vibrant materialism, the soul, the body, and clones with discussion of Moon, Never Let Me Go, The Boys from Brazil, How We Became Posthuman, Vibrant Matter, and The Sublime.

(that is just the working title)

Within Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go the ethical treatment of the Hailsham clones rests upon the tenuous question of whether or not they possess souls. Ostensibly the art objects produced by the students are imbued with the metaphysical capability of determining the existence of soul essence. Unfortunately, the question poses a double bind as the determination of a soul places the practice of donations in a dubious position. Hence the “sham” of Hailsham and the failure of the project of ethics proposed by Ms. Emily. Nevertheless, the more interesting question seems to be unasked; whether humans possess souls at all. Within the context of the novel, the non-clone humans never question the existence of their own souls. That they are ensouled-beings rather than simply naturally-occurring-donor-bags is taken for granted within the text. This fact of a soul seems the defining characteristic of the human within the novel. However, too close an interrogation into the existence of the unseen essence that separates “human” from “clone,” is problematic from either side of the defining line. In my quest to understand this position I engaged in an analysis of immanence versus transcendence with an examination of the philosophic premise of the sublime as a method of answering the question of who exactly gets to be “human” within a tissue economy.