Care ethics and cloning: a speculative literary critique of human biotechnology

Abstract

<p>Debates about human cloning are typically argued within a framework of individual rights and justice that promote a particular view of human independence. As a result, the cloning debate is impoverished because it fails to adequately consider human interdependence. Rather than considering whether we have a right to clone, feminist care ethics offers the question, is it caring to clone? To explore questions of social and political care ethics within the cloning debate, this thesis examines two contemporary speculative novels, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003) and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005), which represent uses of human cloning that function as an ineffective cure for the social and political care that is missing in the U.S. and the U.K. These novels also suggest that the ethics of care as a social and political theory may be advanced by broadening civic discourse to involve the arts and humanities.</p>