Saviors, naïfs, or orphans? The posthuman condition in literary and cinematic perspectives on human cloning

Abstract

This article focuses on cloning as a relevant trans-and posthumanist theme presented in the classical science fiction of the 1970s (Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang), 21st-century literary fiction (Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go), and streaming television series made in the 2010s (BBC America’s Orphan Black). With special emphasis on the sub-ject of human cloning, the article will endeavor to discuss questions of identity in a posthu-man environment, tracing the development from Wilhelm’s dystopian and post-apocalyptic scenarios in which clones and humans interact to disastrous ends, through Ishiguro’s psycho-logical and emotional exploration of the inner world of cloned individuals whose fates are narrated in a form similar to the Bildungsroman, all the way to the complex study of nature vs. nurture in the cloned characters of Orphan Black.