Never Let Me Go: Dystopian Fiction for Human Beings; Current Reality for Other Animals

Abstract

 Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go (2005) is often described as dystopian, assuming that it reflects an unacceptable injustice by proposing the exploitation of clones of humans, 'donors' of organs for their original humans. However, the concept of dystopia cannot characterize the situation described in an absolute way, since for the original humanity there really is no social malfunction; for his part, despite suffering organic alienation and the restriction of their freedom, in the novel, there are neither clone rebellions nor humanitarian crisis suffered by the clones. Despite being able to reflect a utopia, it instead provokes outrage and is categorized as a dystopia on the assumption that the clones are also human or should count as such because they seem to be. The bias of the dystopian categorization reveals a certain prejudice that prevents us from seeing that such is the condition that cattle currently face in our societies. Their exploitation is not categorized as dystopian or unjust, despite the fact that they share the same form of legitimacy in their exploitation as clones ("that's what they are for") and the same limitation to articulate resistance on their own in a collective and systematic way. I connect this reflection with analyzing two areas in which non-human animals are used for non-human purposes: biomedical experimentation and livestock.