The Unhuman Other: the Cases of Ishiguro, Kureishi, and McEwan

Today, humanity is undeniably undergoing a monumental shift that has the power to end anthropocentrism as we know it permanently. In light of an unprecedented technological advance, the aim of this dissertation is to analyze how humanoid robots, organ-giving clones, and brain (or body) transplants represent a threat to man’s hegemony and could potentially enlarge - or perhaps erase - the unfixed definition of what it means to be human. Throughout history the concept of humanity itself has developed and has been modified by historical events, philosophical reasoning, and unanticipated rebellions, which repeatedly saw a dehumanized dominated class fighting for the recognition of their rights as humans. On the counterpart, the dominating class has always been composed of rich cisgender straight white men, who set the standards for being recognized as a human and whose predominance is still being fought against. To misquote Protagoras, we could say that “man of all things is not the measure anymore”. However, even if some “minorities” were not socially human in some point of history, they surely were biologically human, meaning that they were flesh, bones, and soul. So, what happens if one of these prerogatives is missing? Does it make a human less human? And how does this affect our life? I will try to provide an answer to these questions by exploring our relationship with the up-mentioned prerogatives and nowadays literary examples of humans-to-be, namely: McEwan’s Machines like me, Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Kureishi’s The Body. Therefore, this thesis aims to analyze two novels– McEwan’s Machines Like Me, and Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go – and one novella – Kureishi’s The Body – within the posthuman predicament, while giving paramount importance to the us/them relationship.