State Of Exception:Negotiating Bare Life In Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

Focusing on Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go(2005),this thesis explores the socio-political implication of the novel from an Agambenian perspective on social politics.Different from the former researches,most of which tend to focus on the ethical dilemma and the power mechanism reflected in the novel,this thesis mainly discusses the clones' political dilemma and its possible reasons.With this discussion,the thesis makes the argument that the writer's depiction of the clones' loss of political identity suggests a depoliticized form of life and the phenomenon of depoliticization beyond the novel's horizon.To make this argument,the thesis applies the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's socio-political thinking on homo sacer to the analysis of the clones' political identity.Particularly drawing from his perspective on the notions including bare life,sovereign power and state of exception,the thesis underpins the clones' stateless status as featured with the loss of juridical protection and political identity,which further indicates the political dilemma of those oppressed living among us.To be more specific,the body part of the thesis is divided into three chapters.Chapter one illustrates how the Hailsham guardians act in the role of sovereignty by ways of exclusion of the clones through geological seclusion and permanent surveillance.The analysis indicates that the geological seclusion facilitates the sovereignty to declare the sovereign exception,through which the sovereignty intervenes upon life by excluding it from the normal juridico-political order.Chapter two examines how the clone colony becomes a zone of indistinction in a legal sense for the prevalence of sovereign practices such as reshaping the inner order and normalization of the exception.The discussion suggests that the writer conceptualizes a fictional “state of exception” in which the exceptional becomes the rule and the sovereign power is facilitated to manipulate life without any interventions from the law.Based on the discussion in the former two chapters,chapter three unfolds that the clones could indeed be instantiations of homo sacer for their eventual loss of legal protection and political identity.By comparing the clones to homo sacer,the thesisemphasizes that Ishiguro's depiction of the clones' political dilemma uncovers a depoliticized form of life,which reveals the phenomenon of depoliticization lurking in our society.The thesis comes to the conclusion that an Agambenian reading of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go helps uncover the novel's socio-political implications.By depicting the clone as a depoliticized form of life mirroring bare life,which is featured with the loss of juridical protection and political identity,Ishiguro invites us to see the similarly depoliticized form of life,and the phenomenon of depoliticization beyond the fictional boundary.