Work

Technical Narrators and the Possibilities of Cognitive Assemblages in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This research aims to add to the critical discussions of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun by bridging the disciplines of narratology and cognitive science. First, the article traces the presumed voicing of Klara’s robotic cognitive processes, connecting her machine vision to the idea of a non-anthropocentric self and the fictional possibilities of nonhuman un/consciousness. Secondly, it looks at the cognitive-affective interdependencies in the assemblage that artificial intelligences create with the humans in the novel. Drawing on N. Katherine Hayles’s idea of cognitive assemblages and Marco Caracciolo’s theorisation of strange narrators, this research considers how Ishiguro’s novel invites readers to navigate interpretive tensions when engaging with nonhuman perspectives, while exploring whether the text participates in a paradigm shift from a human-centred cognitive subject towards a relational configuration that bridges the ontological divide between human and nonhuman “minds.”

Source: ES Review Spanish Journal of English Studies

DOI: 10.24197/3g6pec58

Author: María Torres-Romero

Institution: Universidad de Málaga

Language: English

Topic: Narrative Theory and Analysis

Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: European Regional Development Fund, Agencia Estatal de Investigación

OpenAlex ID: W4416170471

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