Uncanny In Hamlet

The novel’s emphasis on the post-human figure of the clone also evokes the uncanny – the clones’ association with the uncanny providing another obstacle to empathetic engagement between humans and clones. The human, in contrast to the clones, is assumed to possess the characteristics of personhood, understood by Hekman as: “The ability to make moral distinctions (…) constitutes the criterion of full legal and political personhood in our society (1995, p. 127). Hekman’s definition is problematic as it appears to legitimise the moral distinctions that the human authorities make that sanction human being’s rights, but not those of the clones. The uncanny is induced by the idea of the clones’ “Possibles” – the biological beings that provide the

Ishiguro’s rendering of Hailsham subverts the traditional pastoral mode by reversing the concept of the Heimlich. Hailsham is itself the uncanny double of a traditional English Boarding School. Hailsham’s etymology ties together associations with Lord Hailsham, one of the most notorious law lords in the mid 20th century (Lewis, 2016) and Dickens’ Miss Havisham (a woman who pretends to care for the welfare of children, but uses them for her own self-serving agenda) to reveal the authoritarian and duplicitous nature of the institution. According to Derrida, the Heimlichkeit signifies the locus of domesticity, “the genealogy of the properly familial, of its… parentage” (1987, p. 361). Implicit within this definition is the connection between the Heimlichkeit and the womb-house, the uncanny architectural origin of life. Hailsham fully realises the unheimlich – it is a sphere of domesticity and origin for the clones and yet its uncanny nature is evoked in our awareness that the clones’ motherless existence is anything but natural. Similarly subverting the pastoral mode is Ishiguro’s description of the cottages, which consist of “a farm-house, and around it barns, outhouses, stables, all converted for us to live in” (Never, p. 114). The make-shift architectural design of the cottages is, as Kathy observes,

652). Even human organs themselves are potentially uncanny, as organs can be removed and function in another’s body, elucidating a connection between organs and the bio-technic. Thus, as Deridda contends, the heart can be viewed not as the crux of our humanity, but is instead inseparable from “a certain exteriority of the automaton” (1991, p. 231).If the automaton resides within the human, this provides a means of fusing the categories of human and clone – the ultimate embodiment of the uncanny – whilst also providing a reason for human beings seemingly legitimising their refusal of