Bioengineering, AI Spirituality, and Environmental Crisis: Ishiguro’s Posthuman Humanism

Abstract

We argue that Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel, Klara and the Sun (2021), portrays an “ustopia” (Marga-ret Atwood)—a near-future vision that articulates an unresolved tension between utopian and dystopian premis-es, humanist concerns and posthuman possibilities, anxiety and hope. Klara and the Sun is narrated in the first person by Klara, a child robot endowed with affective, cognitive, and learning capacities, who experiences a world shaped by climate emergency, bioengineering, and AI. Ishiguro’s novel builds on familiar sci-fi dystopian motifs, conveying a humanistic anxiety about new forms of inequality generated by genetic enhancement and identity issues arising from the possibility that humanoid robots could replicate and replace humans. However, in contrast to humanist interpretations of Ishiguro’s novel, we argue that it also presents the possibility of a “posthuman supplement” to the humanist tradition. Humanoid robots like Klara, capable of creativity, curios-ity, and selfless care, open the possibility of a logic of différance (Jacques Derrida), and thus, novel forms of existence and human-posthuman relationships. The novel envisions meaningful bonds between humans and human-like singularities, as well as new possibilities for mutual learning connected to the creation of AI-driven ecosophical beliefs (Félix Guattari) that could counter environmental degradation and alienation from nature.