Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go: the Performative Function of Literature and the Discourse on Human-ess and Identity

The chapter explores the performative function of literature in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, a novel that significantly exemplifies the performative effects of literature and art. It does its work by getting readers to see science differently by way of fiction, not by its direct representation but (as Aristotle knew) by its action, its plot, the stories it tells. The story told in Never Let Me Go invites its readers to see their own histories differently, and as a result to behave differently.