Discipline And Resistance

Never Let Me Go,a novel by the English-Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro,tells the tragic lives of a group of clones growing at Hailsham,whose existential value only lies in their vital organs for donation.The popular literary comments of the novel mainly focus on the confrontations of science technology and human morality from aspects,like ethics and trauma theories.Based on Foucault's power theories,this thesis analyzes the exploitation of the clones by the non-cloned people,and the clones' fruitless resistance,revealing the living predicaments of the clones who are at a disadvantage in power relations and thus are butchered by the dominant power in the society.Readers might be perplexed and indignant about the clones' indifference to the poignant society,about which this thesis contends it as an opposition that the clones as the marginalized have made attempts to struggle against the restricted and guarded system of the non-cloned majority,but disciplinary power has permeated every aspect of the clones,and they have been targeted as organ donors,confined in disciplinary institutions and demoted as the "invisible men" for better control and discipline in the omnipresent power relations.No matter how hard the clones have tried to defer their medical operations,their last hope of survival turns to be no more than another disciplinary method.Though their rebellions help with their concepts and identities as real people,the clones as ignorant individuals are too fragile and disfranchised to overthrow the overwhelmingly dominance of the non-cloned normal people,which also predestines the failure of the clones' resistance.The depiction of the clones' lives by Ishiguro alludes to the marginalized and the ignored in contemporary society,who are chinned by the modern ruling power and will never escape the disciplines of the society.The interpretations of the unjustifiable and absurd experiences of the marginalized individuals,and their resigned surrender to the social disciplinary power,can help to inspect the approaches of the disciplinary power to manipulate people.This paper tries to explore the micro and insidious way the disciplinary power,through space,discourse and body,dominate individuals,and tries to account for the failed rebellions of the clones in terms of Foucault's power theories.In addition to the clones in the virtualized England,the contemporary people have been confined and reformed by the disciplinary power in the modern panopticons with no way to escape but to be controlled and deceived,and perhaps the goal in life is to never let go of the most possible comforts and hopes in the short life just like the clones.