Mastering Otherness with a Look: On the Politics of the Gaze and Technological Possibility in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

ABSTRACT

This article examines the transformative effects of adding gaze theory to the critical approaches that have focused on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021). Drawing on the issues of looking dynamics and surveillance in Michel Foucault’s epistemology of the gaze, the argument is that a Foucauldian reading of Ishiguro’s story uncovers the dependence of its power relations on gazing practices. By exploring the humanoid robot Klara’s storyline, I highlight the dual role of the gaze and related visual dynamics in Klara and the Sun as both facilitators of humans’ mastery of nonhumans and sites of nonhuman possibility. My analysis suggests that the novel articulates a complex disciplinary system in which the technological Other is constantly reified by both the human gaze and internalized practices of self-discipline. At the same time, against the reductive reading of Klara as a technological Other at the service of human selves, this article also proposes her figure as one of transgressive boundaries and gaze-engendered opposition, arguing that the novel’s social system is ultimately undermined by the visual acts of overconformity that Klara adopts.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).1996 1976

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Capitalization of familial roles and job titles is present in the original text.

2. What is interesting in this context is that the Mother – a female character – is the first to objectify Klara. Against the idea that Klara’s gender may contribute to her reification (Ajeesh and Rukmini para. 28; Mulvey), Ishiguro’s inclusion of female gazers playing a mastering role seems to invalidate a gender-informed reading of this novel’s power relations.

3. Another reading may suggest that Klara’s inability to exercise an objectifying gaze over humans is related to her human-designed programming. As such, Klara’s programming would prevent her from ever self-determining in terms that would play down the importance of humans. According to this interpretation, Klara could hardly be considered an agential individual. Jakob Stenseke investigates the matter of Klara’s agency in his article on Ishiguro’s novel (5) but fails to reach a definite conclusion. Unlike Stenseke, and as I will discuss below, in my reading I follow Sun in believing that, “even if the ethical standards surrounding her [Klara’s] creation are not openly declared … in so far as she violates her inbuilt codes in order to rescue Josie”, Klara remains “a vehicle of moral as well as technological choice” (6).

4. A link can be made between Klara’s refusal to look at Josie’s party guests and Rick’s refusal to look at Klara (69). Even though their choices are likely dictated by different motives – it is highly implausible that Rick was ever taught how to interact properly with a nonhuman robot – it may be worth exploring why both a human and a nonhuman social outsider are made to enact the same visual strategies.

5. Far from suggesting that Klara’s designers meant to undermine her agency, Klara’s human-devised attachment to the Sun would tie back to a more structural necessity, that is, her designers’ wish to guarantee her operational efficiency at all times.

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Notes on contributors

Nicola Simonetti

Nicola Simonetti is a Research Fellow in Literature/Digital Humanities at the University of St Andrews. His research interests include post-2000 models of the contemporary, the critical medical humanities, the digital humanities, normativity and dis/ability in works of science and speculative fiction, and the link between representation strategies of disability and the environment in contemporary Western literature.