Posthuman Subjectivity and the Fragility of Being in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

Year 2026, Issue: 5, 161 - 169, 26.01.2026

Tuncer Yılmaz , Fatmanur Kalkan

Abstract

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun presents the fragility of being as a shared ethical condition across human and artificial life. Drawing on Haraway’s cyborg metaphor, Braidotti’s posthuman subject, and Hayles’s theories of embodiment and technogenesis, the analysis shows how Klara’s sensory perception, relational identity, and emotional responsiveness challenge human-centred models of subjectivity. Situated within a literary tradition of artificial figures, Ishiguro’s narrative departs from earlier examples by granting an artificial being narrative authority and ethical interiority. Klara’s involvement in Josie’s precarious mortality and Chrissie’s replacement fantasy interrogates the limits of transhumanist attempts to perpetuate identity beyond biological life. By foregrounding embodiment and distributed cognition, Ishiguro suggests that vulnerability, rather than autonomy or durability, grounds ethical relation. In rethinking posthuman subjectivity, Klara’s experiences ultimately reveal that fragility, care, and mutual recognition form the basis of ethical life in a technologically mediated world. Taken together, this article offers a posthumanist perspective that deepens critical engagement with Ishiguro’s novel and contributes to broader discussions of embodiment, ethics, and technological coexistence.

Keywords

Posthumanism , Artificial Intelligence , Embodiment , Identity , Mortality , Ethics , Technoculture , Kazuo Ishiguro

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