Illusions of a Future: Ishiguro,Liberalism, Political Theology |
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Authors: | Arthur Bradley |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of English Literature &2. Creative Writing, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UKa.h.bradley@lancaster.ac.uk |
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Abstract: | ABSTRACTThis article explores the fate of political theology in Kazuo Ishiguro's speculative fiction Never Let Me Go (2005) and, by implication, in contemporary fiction more broadly. To pursue a reading of Christianity that extends from Hegel through Lacan to ?i?ek, the article argues that political theology’s future may perversely lie in a materialism emptied of all transcendental guarantees: political theology is the historically privileged master fantasy or illusion which reveals the fantastic or illusory status of our entire relation to the real in (neo-)liberal modernity. In conclusion, the article argues that Ishiguro’s fiction may thus be read less as a melancholic dystopian study in total ideological capture or surrender than as the representation of a state of immanent freedom beyond the power relations of (neo-)liberal subjectivity. |
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Keywords: | Ishiguro ?i?ek Benjamin Agamben |
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