Futurity, the life course and aging in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

Abstract

Abstract Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) in this article, we bring the perspectives of aging and posthumanist studies together to explore how the novel helps us to rethink our being and relationality in time beyond the boundaries of the human. In particular, we are interested in the novel’s critique of the anthropocentric privileging of youth and progress in the ways in which we imagine the future. Central to this form of imagination are generational continuity and the symbolism of the child: a new generation as a promise of the future, or rather, a better human future. Nevertheless, this novel does not simply employ the trope of generational futurity; instead, it interrogates and draws attention to the exclusionary way this type of thinking functions. Through its blurring of human and AI “child”, ultimately, Klara and the Sun suggests the dangers and the limits of a generational imagination that seeks to reproduce the same, progressive narrative of the future through the image of the child not “growing up and growing old” (Woodward 2020: 55; italics in original). Our analysis then suggests how fictional speculative modes might both engage with and yet also force us to reflect critically upon that form of future-orientated thinking.