Castration Desire

Less Is More in Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

Bibliographic Data

ID8862986
AuthorsRobinson Murphy (0000-0002-5263-6911, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume102
Issue6
Pages759-777
Publication date2021-07-27
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnglish Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-838X • E-ISSN: 1744-4217
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0013838x.2021.1952679
OpenAlexW3184956649
LanguageEN
References cited42

According to orthodox psychoanalysis, “castration” is always negative: to lose the “phallus” is to lose everything. Against this account, this article argues that “castration desire” offers a model for sustainable relationality on an imminently eco-apocalyptic earth. Using the novel Never Let Me Go (2005) to explicate castration desire, this article posits that Kazuo Ishiguro's organ-donating clones – in acquiescing to their own diminishment, and thereby signalling a more other-oriented relationality – teach a comparatively privileged reader how to desire castration. This article moreover demonstrates how the less-is-more ethic of castration desire can help theorise the intersection of the environmental humanities and queer studies in order to help unpick the acquisitive logic of a globalised world that otherwise has us on a track to ecological ruin

Castration · Intersection (aeronautics · Psychoanalysis · Queer · Sociology · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · Engineering · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Medicine · Psychology · Gender Studies · Internal Medicine

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