In s novel
, a dominant system of exploitation prevails in a world where clones are
raised for the sole value of their harvestable organs. The narrative follows students at the
Hailsham School, whose ultimate fate is governed by their status as disposable clones, perceived
by non-clones as lacking in humanity. In this world, this system of donation is perpetuated by
what Georg Lukacs calls reification of the mind in his Reification and the
Consciousness of the Proletariat. This is a form of alienation that works through
distorting the consciousness of the people within the system. However, also present in the novel
are structures of feeling, described by Raymond Williams in Marxism and
Literature. The novel seems to portray the small fragments of resistance which break
through the wall of reification, the structures of feeling, through the fervent fantasies of the
characters.
The idea of a structure of feeling is a
complex and subtle concept. As opposed to fixed forms of social ideology, structures of
feeling are present, active, and relational. They are concerned with meanings and values as
they are actively lived and felt, and the relations between these and formal or systematic
beliefs are in practice variable. Williams uses this term to more closely relate the personal to
the social. Consciousness, experience, and feeling are not removed from the structure of the
system as a whole. These are modes of thinking that are interrelated to the way people
understand the system and their own roles in it.
The
significance of a structure of feeling lies in its relation to the reality. It forms in the
true social present, and thus is the most relevant form of consciousness to an individual within
the system. Rather than representing something that is rigid and static, it represents something
that is constantly in flux. It is defining a social experience which is still in
progress. Because structures of feeling are still in progress, they are imbedded in
living processes. However, they are often indeed not yet recognized as social but taken to
be private, idiosyncratic, and even isolating.
In
particular, structures of feeling have a special relevance to art and literature. This
relationship indicates the strength of Williams concept, despite the understanding of structures
of feeling as inconstant and subjective. The idea of a structure of feeling can be
specifically related to the evidence of forms and conventionssemantic figurewhich, in art and
literature, are often among the very first indications that such a new structure is forming. As
employed in works of art, they can become a form of modification or disturbance.
In Ishiguros Never Let Me Go, a work of art
itself, these structures of feeling are exposed through the shifting consciousness of the
characters. The narrative unfolds its horror in a way that normalizes the stark exploitation.
Life in this system thus seems ordinary. However, there are small instances of alternatives that
sometimes appear through the naturalization. In the beginning, this manifests in the students
lives as indications of an element of specialness. Hailsham students often speak of a desire for
a normal life. One of their guardians, Miss Lucy, informs them that:
None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars.
And none of you will be working in supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day.
Your lives are set out for you. Youll become adults, then before youre old, before youre even
middle-aged, youll start to donate your vital organs. Thats what each of you was created to do.
Youre not like the actors you watch on your videos, youre not even like me. You were brought
into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them, have been decided.
Kathy makes an interesting observation about
Miss Lucys outburst to the students. Her classmates reacted little to it, saying, Well so
what? We already knew all that. However, Kathy notices something quite profound. As Miss Lucy
said, the clones had all been told and not told about their fates. Their minds have been
reified, so even if they do not understand the full consequences of the system they live in,
they consider it natural. Nevertheless, the fact that the students even wonder about lives
outside of the system seems to demonstrate that the reification of their minds is not complete.
All of these indications that a desire for something other than their reality exists are cracks
in the perception that the clones reality is the only possible reality.
Lukacs explains this normalization of their own bodies as disposable
commodities as the consequence of reification. In a capitalistic system, the labor-power of an
individual becomes a commodity. This transformation of a human function into a commodity
reveals in all its starkness the dehumanized and dehumanizing function of the commodity
relation. The distance and abstraction of the workers individual capacities from the work itself
results in an inhuman, standardized division of labour. However, for the system to work, the
minds of the individuals within the system must somehow comply with this
dehumanization.
Reification turns human consciousness
into an isolated, abstracted, and discrete object in the mind. The reified mind has come to
think of the conditions of reality as common sense. Even though the lived experience might be
one of constructed exploitation and brutal dehumanization, the reified mind necessarily sees
it as the form in which its own authentic immediacy becomes manifest andas reified
consciousnessdoes not even attempt to transcend it. This cruel reality becomes regarded as the
true representatives of societal existence. Thus, it is clearly demonstrated that the clones
of Ishiguros novel have reified minds. Even though they live in a system where the most core
parts of their bodily functions, their internal organs, are turned into commodities in the most
violent manner, they have been so desensitized to the system that they regard it as ordinary.
The clones inability to feel the true magnitude of the system in which they live, and what they
are producing, shows how their minds have been reified.
According to Lukacs, there are opportunities for glimpses at the innards of the system,
even through the haze of reification. These moments of crises poke holes in the pretense
that society is regulated by €˜eternal, iron laws. These crises are intricately related to
Williams structures of feeling. The dominant system will always attempt to distort the reality
in some manner, so the first task to break through the dominant system is to understand,
its own concrete underlying reality lies, methodologically and in
principle, beyond its grasp. The structures of feeling in the lives of the
clones disrupt the formal laws of the system. Then, these €˜laws fail to function and the
reified mind is unable to perceive a pattern in this €˜chaos. These moments are glimpses past
the reification.
Interpreting the novel through these
lenses illuminates the consciousness of the clones, how it has been distorted and the moments
which bring a brief clarity to the distortion. Even though Hailsham students know their ultimate
fate as organ donors, they hold this knowledge in a very vague manner. Clones cannot have any
lives other than what they were made for, yet these students still dream of different lives.
Despite the powerful reification of their minds, feelings of unease still bubble up for these
clones.
One of the most obvious theories that the clones
perpetuate amongst themselves is the theory of possibles. Kathys explanations of this idea are
tinged with hope. Since each of us was copied as some point from a normal person, there must
be, for each of us, somewhere out there, a model getting on with his or her life. This means
that for the clones, there is always the possibility of finding the person they were copied
from. One big idea behind finding your model was that when you did, youd glimpse your future.
This is profound because the clones obviously do not have the same future as the normal people
on which they were modeled. Yet, there still is a structure of feeling that pervades, in which
the clones have an experience of wondering about a different, better life. Many of them even
have dream futures. Kathy notes that we probably knew they couldnt be serious, but then
again, Im sure we didnt regard them as fantasy either. The clones attempt to live in a cosy
state of suspension in which we could ponder our lives without the usual boundaries. Even though
they know their own realities in the system, a structure of feeling in these possibles and
dream futures permeates their common sense. Ruth especially becomes obsessed with this
notion. Her dream future is to work in a modern, normal office. When the Hailsham students
fellow clones from the Cottages, Chrissie and Rodney, tell them that they might have seen Ruths
possible living Ruths dream future, they embark on a journey to find the possible. Even though
there is very little hope in this situation, Ruth desperately wants to find this woman who seems
to represent who Ruth could have become. The exploited people in the system, the proletariat
clones, are not comfortable in their reification, and this shows in their structures of
feeling.
Moreover, the most hopeful fantasy of the
clones is one that leads to the final confrontation between Kathy, Tommy, Madame, and Miss Emily
in the novel. Chrissie and Rodney tell them of a rumor theyve heard about Hailsham students who
in the past, in special circumstances, had managed to get a deferral. The rumor says that if a
couple could show that they were truly in love, then they could ask for donations to be put
back by three, even four years. This information lights a certain hope in the hearts of the
Hailsham students. This shows that they do not simply accept their fates, even if the system
ultimately consumes them. There is resistance in some form, and there is the consciousness that
the system is not perfect or entirely normal.
According
to Williams, these structures of feeling have the potential to become contradiction, fracture,
or mutation within a class. This has powerful implications for our own world. The idea that
Kathy, Ruth, Tommy, and the other clones have the ability to imagine a life beyond their system
shows that their reification can be broken. Even if their consciousness was not completely
illuminated, there were still points of light that broke through the fog. Simply put, this means
that there is still hope for raising consciousness in the system. Being able to see, feel, and
perceive a world beyond the dominant system is a complex and difficult task, but it is the first
step towards change.
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