Supposing the Law: Nomos and Categorical Imperatives in Never Let Me Go
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Annalisa Volpone
Annalisa Volpone is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Perugia and co-director of the CEMS (Centre for European Modernism Studies).
Abstract
This paper addresses the issue of posthuman bodies in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go against the background of organ transplants and prosthetic surgery. The novel posits a number of questions about what qualifies a human being and/or what distinguishes a human being from a clone, suggesting that art, perhaps, might be a discriminating factor. Further, it also raises questions about the kind of regulation should be applied to organs “donations,” especially when they are not voluntary, but part of a programmed response inscribed in someone’s DNA. Accordingly, the last section of the paper will investigate the social impact of the exploitation of the clones and the medico-legal issues pertaining to it.
About the author
Annalisa Volpone is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Perugia and co-director of the CEMS (Centre for European Modernism Studies).
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Digital Ontology and Epistemology. Between Law, Literature and the Visual Arts
- “The Earth Is Flat!” The Literary Complexity of Truth, Lies and Fake Knowledge
- Saving Content in Digital Surroundings: A Safe Solution?
- Digital Justice: Shining Future or Illusory Chimera?
- “Select before You Collect”: Uses and Abuses of Profiling and Data Mining in Law and Literature
- Supposing the Law: Nomos and Categorical Imperatives in Never Let Me Go
- Digital Voodoo: Who Does What?
- Forensic Iconicity: The Experimental Law’s Whatness in Digital Culture
- Research
- Digital Media, Fears, and Their Ontological Demagogic Power: Utopia, Homeland, Occupied
- Law as Literature: The Interdisciplinary Endeavour of Oudropo,, and Their Interdisciplinary Play with Text
- The Merchant of Venice and the Paschal Moon
- Book Reviews
- Daniela Carpi: Monsters and Monstrosity. From the Canon to the Anti-Canon: Literary and Juridical Subversions
- Jonas Ross Kjærgård, Reimagining Society in Eighteenth-Century French Literature
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Digital Ontology and Epistemology. Between Law, Literature and the Visual Arts
- “The Earth Is Flat!” The Literary Complexity of Truth, Lies and Fake Knowledge
- Saving Content in Digital Surroundings: A Safe Solution?
- Digital Justice: Shining Future or Illusory Chimera?
- “Select before You Collect”: Uses and Abuses of Profiling and Data Mining in Law and Literature
- Supposing the Law: Nomos and Categorical Imperatives in Never Let Me Go
- Digital Voodoo: Who Does What?
- Forensic Iconicity: The Experimental Law’s Whatness in Digital Culture
- Research
- Digital Media, Fears, and Their Ontological Demagogic Power: Utopia, Homeland, Occupied
- Law as Literature: The Interdisciplinary Endeavour of Oudropo,, and Their Interdisciplinary Play with Text
- The Merchant of Venice and the Paschal Moon
- Book Reviews
- Daniela Carpi: Monsters and Monstrosity. From the Canon to the Anti-Canon: Literary and Juridical Subversions
- Jonas Ross Kjærgård, Reimagining Society in Eighteenth-Century French Literature
