Attempts to Avoid Traumatic Occurrences through the Posthuman in Don DeLillo’s Zero K (2016) and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021)

It has long been believed that emotions are a distinctive feature of humans. In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly ingrained, it’s intriguing to consider a time when AI may feel emotions similar to those of human beings. AI systems’ evolution and incorporation of emotional quotient will result in AI that, when a new skill is mastered or a task is completed effectively, it might also feel happy or satisfied. This AI may experience feelings of sadness or disappointment, which, in theory, might motivate it to look for more effective solutions or to convey the severity of the problem more clearly. AI will probably have a stream of consciousness, the same as humans. Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro is set in a future where artificial intelligence and human life meet. Human-like robots, known as “Artificial Friends” (AFs), are created to serve as companions for children. Klara, the central character, is an AF with a unique perspective on the world. The novel explores complex questions about what it means to be human and AI with emotional quotient. This research article attempts to analyze the novel’s underlying themes of hope and spirituality, particularly Klara’s belief in the sun, from the philosophical perspective of a humanoid.

Set in a future where genetic technology and artificial intelligence are highly advanced, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 work Klara and the Sun is a novel that draws on the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence to consider human nature. Not coincidentally, the modern French philosopher Levinas argues that human nature, or subjectivity, is about being responsible for the Other. This paper applies Levinas's ethics of responsibility to analyse the human nature in Klara and the Sun, and finds that as the artificial intelligence, Klara is born to be responsible for human beings. In the meantime, Josie's weak face makes it impossible for Klara to neglect it, so she can only dedicate herself continuously until she sacrifices herself to achieve “substitution”. In the process of taking Josie's place to bear suffering, Klara continues to devote herself, and ultimately truly realizes her own subjectivity. In the course of taking responsibility for Josie, Klara is also helped by Rickk and Josie’s father, thus becoming a beneficiary of the human nature of “taking responsibility for others”. Levinas's extreme vision of the nature of human beings is highly compatible with Kazuo Ishiguro's construction of a perfect society, which is a revelation for the human society in the midst of technological advancement.

Modern speculative fiction increasingly explores how artificial intelligence affects identity, social connectedness, and spirituality. Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro is an intriguing exploration of posthuman subjectivity and ethical concerns in a digitally mediated society. The novel's ethical considerations and technological alienation have been examined in the literature. However, few studies link posthuman identity theory to a hermeneutical analysis of the novel's spiritual symbolism. This leaves a gap in the study of identity, loneliness, and optimism in AI stories. This study aims to bridge that gap by exploring how the novel reimagines identity, loneliness, and spiritual hope, thus revealing an underexplored intersection between hermeneutics and posthuman ethics. This study examines how Ishiguro's work reimagines identity, social isolation, and spiritual salvation, highlighting the neglected intersection of hermeneutics and posthuman ethics. Thematic Textual Analysis (TTA) is combined with the Key Word Technique (KWT) in a qualitative interpretive study. The findings show that Ishiguro subverts human exceptionalism through Klara’s morally reflexive consciousness and relational identity. The novel paradoxically portrays artificial companionship as both a cause of alienation and a source of hope. Conclusively, the study contributes to interdisciplinary dialogue on posthuman ethics, identity, and spirituality. Future studies should compare cross-cultural AI fiction and apply corpus linguistic tools to validate keyword patterns, enriching discourse on AI, ethics, and faith.

This article examines how Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) reconfigures human subjectivity in an era increasingly shaped by social humanoids and artificial intelligence. Departing from essentialist notions of interiority, the novel relocates the question of the human condition from ontological essence toward reciprocal relationality. While Ishiguro’s first-person narration encourages readers to attribute sentient agency to Klara, the novel simultaneously insists on her status as a programmed social humanoid whose interactions with human characters are structurally non-reciprocal. Drawing on posthuman theory and human–robot interaction (HRI) studies, this article argues that Klara and the Sun foregrounds reciprocity as the decisive threshold distinguishing relational simulation from genuine relational participation. Although Klara consistently extends care and attentiveness toward others, she fails to participate in relationships characterized by mutual recognition and vulnerability. Her relationality is thus asymmetrical, paradoxically reinscribing her within a functionalist logic. By staging this structural asymmetry at the core of human-robot interaction, Klara and the Sun not only interrogates the shifting boundaries between humans and nonhumans but also offers a critical reflection on how emerging social humanoids may reshape the foundations of relational life itself.

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021), Klara is an AF (Artificial Friend), one among a range of humanoid automatons manufactured with the objective of keeping affluent, genetically augmented teenagers company. As this essay argues, a disturbing historical parallel to the position of the AFs in the social hierarchy is that of slaves. Like the deployment of black bodies as dehumanized raw materials in plantation economies, the exploitation of the androids in Ishiguro’s novel is premised, I contend, on their exclusion from the category of the “human.” The ethics of such a network of production, consumption, and disposal are hardly ever called into question in the dystopian world of the novel. This essay locates the novel in a flux of debates around the nexus between capitalism, race, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and environmental change. It deploys Achille Mbembe’s concept of “the becoming black of the world” to investigate the construction of “posthuman” races through technological advances in Ishiguro’s technologized world. Drawing on Mbembe and other theorists, I demonstrate how the historical objectification and exploitation of black bodies expand to encompass the entire planet, with androids, genetically modified humans, and the earth itself functioning as sites of mining and extraction.

Kazuo Ishiguro's “Klara and the Sun” (2021) examines the intricate relationship between artificial intelligence, memory, and humanity in a forthcoming society. Ishiguro uses the humanoid robot Klara to ask questions about what it means to be human, such as what consciousness, empathy, and moral responsibility are. This paper examines the novel utilising posthumanist and memory studies frameworks, referencing Hayles (1999), Braidotti (2013), Ricoeur (2004), and Assmann (2011). It contends that Klara's experiences of memory, perception, and moral agency transgress anthropocentric limitations, illustrating that emotional intelligence may not be confined to biological humans. This study analyses the symbolic and emotional aspects of Klara's memory, demonstrating how Ishiguro reconfigures traditional concepts of humanity, advocating for a posthuman ethics rooted in empathy, care, and relational awareness. The paper also looks at the effects of AI as a way to change how we think about morality and emotions, and it suggests that posthuman stories can show us both the potential of technology and our moral duties.

Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig observe that artificial intelligence (AI) currently encompasses a huge variety of subfields, ranging from the general to the specific, such as playing chess, proving mathematical theorems, writing poetry, driving a car on a crowded street, and diagnosing diseases. AI is relevant to any intellectual task; it is truly a universal field. In listing those subfields related to artificial intelligence, Russell and Norvig particularly mention “writing poetry,” which challenges the traditional conception of world literature as a human product. The Turing Test has been a hot topic in the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence. One of Alan Turing’s final projects was a computer-based, automated love-letter generator, which some have identified as the first known work of new media art. World literature has always been concerned with artificial intelligence and is filled with stories about creating intelligent machines. Like Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro seems deeply interested in the issue of artificial intelligence.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) presents a compelling exploration of artificial intelligence (AI), human identity, and digital subjectivity in a rapidly evolving posthuman world. This study critically examines the novel through the lens of Stefan Herbrechter’s Critical Posthumanism (2020) to interrogate the shifting boundaries between human and non-human consciousness. Herbrechter’s framework challenges traditional anthropocentric notions of subjectivity, arguing that posthuman identity emerges through interaction, adaptation, and rationality rather than fixed biological or cognitive markers. Klara, an artificial being, disrupts the conventional understanding of selfhood by demonstrating cognitive agency, affective intelligence, and a form of ethical subjectivity that transcends human exclusivity. This paper deconstructs the anthropocentric hierarchy within the novel, revealing how artificial intelligence (AI) challenges humanist epistemologies and problematizes the binaries of organic and artificial, subject and object, and human and non-human. By applying Critical Posthumanism, this study explores how Ishiguro’s narrative dismantles essentialist human identity in favor of a more fluid, networked, and interdependent conception of existence. The findings contribute to ongoing debates in artificial intelligence (AI) ethics, digital subjectivity, and posthumanist literary studies, offering a nuanced critique of the socio-technological anxieties that shape contemporary engagements with artificial intelligence (AI).

The overlapping speed of technology and literature has created a new stage of cultural investigation of the subject and metaphor of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is becoming known that modern English fiction is now going to AI as a narrative device that authors are implementing to push boundaries during the digital age of consciousness, morality, and identity. The theoretical approach assumed in this piece of work may be traced to quantitative to metaparadigm the concept of quantifying constructs behind the picture of AI in modern fiction. The variables, such as AI Representation Intensity (AIRI), Humanization Index (HI), Emotional Reciprocity Scale (ERS), and Ethical ambiguity Coefficient (EAC), are so developed that they represent the dynamics of the human machine relationships, which are in fact complex. Based on such theories of posthumanism, cognitive, and narratology, the given study interprets three meaningful texts, such as a book by Kazuo Ishiguro (2021) titled Klara and the Sun and the novels by Ian McEwan (2019) called Machines Like Me and by Jeanette Winterson (2019) called Frankissstein, in a bid to decipher how AI characters are expected to alquiet moral, emotional, and ontological tensions between the artificial and the human intelligent mind. The theoretical analysis shows that the AI representations of the current fiction are created as more agentic than mechanistic because they possess not only empathy but also ethical grayness. This fact suggests that literary imagination is cultural laboratory that objectifies and humanizes artificial consciousness in a measurable way. That it is a combined approach of conceptual modeling and literary interpretation, this work is applicable in the conditions of digital humanities since it theorizes the quantifiable values of AI representation and its impact on the analysis of posthuman identity and relational ethics in the twenty-first century.

The paper aims to assess Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Klara and the Sun, by examining the interplay between artificial intelligence and nature. The objective is to delve into how Ishiguro portrays the convergence of these seemingly disparate elements and the resulting implications for our understanding of ‘natural’ versus ‘artificial’. Klara, the protagonist, is an artificial friend powered by sunlight, making the narrative inherently centred on artificial intelligence. The Sun assumes a divine role, symbolizing inner strength derived from trust in something greater and highlighting society’s detachment from nature. Klara’s reliance on solar energy emphasizes the nurturing aspect of the Sun, affecting her vitality. Despite originating from an industrialized civilization, Klara exhibits a deeper appreciation for nature than many in her community. The novel blurs the lines between human and artificial intelligence, prompting a reconsideration of conventional notions about what is ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’.This exploration prompts a re-evaluation of our relationship with technology and the natural environment within the framework of postmodernism theory.

This study explores the intersection of postmodern identity and artificial intelligence in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me. The novels set against the backdrop of increasing technological advancements and their impact on human relationships, this research aims to examine how these novels represent the blurring of boundaries between human and artificial intelligence, and the implications for postmodern identity. Employing a comparative literary analysis within a post-humanist framework proposed by Hayles (1999) this study analyses the themes, motifs, and characterizations related to artificial intelligence and human-AI relationships in the two novels. The findings reveal that both novels challenge traditional notions of human identity and agency, highlighting the complexities and implications of human-AI relationships in the postmodern era. This research contributes to our understanding of the complex relationships between human identity, artificial intelligence, and postmodernism, offering insights into the possibilities and challenges of human-AI interactions in contemporary society.

This essay explores the role of emotionally intelligent machines in affecting human identity and social bonds through a psychosocial reading of Abe Kōbō’s Inter Ice Age 4 (1959) and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021). Despite decades of technological progress between the publication of the two works, both novels deal with alienation and loneliness in dystopian paradigms by portraying artificial intelligence (AI) as a solution. While the machines are expected to meet the emotional needs of humans, Inter Ice Age 4 employs AI to destabilize the Soviet Union’s political power during the Cold War and change the future of humanity; Klara and the Sun epitomizes the social isolation provoked by the dominance of virtual life, augmented reality, and AI surrogates. After an initial interdisciplinary framing of the psychosocial perspective on AI, this essay discusses how the two novels reframe the socio-cultural malaise of the “emotional technologies,” thus denouncing the individual alienation and the identity crisis raging in contemporary times, assessing anthropo-technological progress in human-machine interaction as a symptom of present insecurity.

Science fiction (SF) is pivotal in shaping the readers' attitudes towards the future. Still, the main objective of a science fiction novel or film is not to predict the future or to assess any technological advancement. SF, mainly, teaches us what it means to be humane in a changing world of citizenship cum globalization. To convey this message, novelists and movie makers portray artificial intelligence (AI) as an autonomous or human-like character to ponder the condition of humans in flux and the social, economic, and political issues regarding technological advancement. Through the perspective of Klara, the robot protagonist, we explore artificial intelligence and consciousness, the posthuman situation of humanity, the future of utopia, humanity's changing ideologies, and the human-machine relationship or human-nonhuman relationship. The way AI enacts humans is debatable as AI introspection reflects new capacities for human potential and mirrors the limits of humanity (i.e., the creature is defined and associated with its creator).

In the context of the unstoppable trend of artificial intelligence, science and technology have become the theme of the times. Will the rapid development of modern technology, such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence, dehumanize us? Can a machine have human consciousness? In his novel Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro criticizes the arrogance of technological rationality and the arrogance of anthropocentrism from the perspective of a “non-human” robot. The relationship between humans and machines has become a problem that humans need to re-examine. With the help of post-humanism, this paper aims to explore the physical changes and behavioral actions of robots and humans in the novel to reveal the “split” between man and machine and the “self-deception” of humans in the novel, so as to finally trigger thinking about how humans and machines can coexist harmoniously at the juncture between humans and posthumans, and provide reference for the future society between humans and non-humans.

In the context of the unstoppable trend of artificial intelligence, science and technology have become the theme of the times. Will the rapid development of modern technology, such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence, dehumanize us? Can a machine have human consciousness? In his novel Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro criticizes the arrogance of technological rationality and the arrogance of anthropocentrism from the perspective of a “non-human” robot. The relationship between humans and machines has become a problem that humans need to re-examine. With the help of post-humanism, this paper aims to explore the physical changes and behavioral actions of robots and humans in the novel to reveal the “split” between man and machine and the “self-deception” of humans in the novel, so as to finally trigger thinking about how humans and machines can coexist harmoniously at the juncture between humans and posthumans, and provide reference for the future society between humans and non-humans.