Post/Human Perfectibility and the Technological Other in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

This article seeks to examine the issue of mastery in Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (2021). While most of Ishiguro's earlier works engage with the fantasy of the "master race," his latest novel shifts the emphasis from human attempts to master other humans to human attempts to master nonhumans. These attempts are situated, in turn, in the context of debates around post/human "improvement" and "perfectibility." Such debates and the hopes they raise are ideologically suspect, linking android servitude to the subjugation of "lesser" humans, and creating technological others put at the service of human selves.