Never Let Me Go Humanism

1121 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Representation Of Women In Literature

Never Let Me Go is about a group of genetically-engineered children living in a serene school called Hailsham. The students’ participate in the normal school activities such as playing team sports, assembly and lessons. However from the start we know there is something unique about these children, they have names like Kathy H and Reggie D, but no surnames. They have no parents, nor will they ever become parents. Several of the teachers act afraid of the children who never leave the school grounds. They are, it transpires, growing up to become donors. The precise meaning of this disturbing word is not made clear until later in the book (p. 73), when one of their guardians suddenly announces, ‘[ ]You'll become adults, then... you'll start to …show more content…

Humanism is not a reductive policy which alters the individual viewpoint to fit in with those who have the power in society. Foucault, The Order of Discourse and Identity, inferred power is a technique or action which individuals can engage in. Power is not possessed; it is exercised. By which he meant a uniformity of being and ‘identity’ is communicated to others in your interactions with them, but it is not a fixed entity.’ Generally we accept the norms set by our societies completely without deviation. We all want to be up to date, popular and valued – or do we all simply value popularity and the power that feeling gives us? Foucault’s writings imply- power always carries an opposition. Ishiguro, Shelly, Dellio, Amiss, Dickens - many authors don’t just want you to read a text they want you to think while you read and see if you can you see yourself in the text, feel how it affects you as a reader and can you see yourself blending into the pack or an individual in society. Emotions and interaction and acceptance is what makes us all human but so does how we achieve these things, either by rejection, subjugation or otherwise. The question is and will always remain, just how much of yourself can you find in the text, do the resulting answers move you to change or is world stratification fine as it

Show More
Related

  • Paradoxes of Power in Sociological Insight by Randall Collins

    857 Words  | 2 Pages

    humanity in spite of social classifications, by elucidating the fact that power is something that can

    Read More

  • Reading and Thought by Dwight MacDonald

    871 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the article “Reading and Thought” the author Dwight MacDonald provides criticism and disagreement with Henry Luce’s idea of “functional curiosity”. Luce developed the term “functional curiosity” defining it as an eagerness of people to know the latest news happening around the world. On the other hand, MacDonald concludes that functional curiosity only strengthens reader’s practice in reading rather than in providing invaluable information. He underlines that literature nowadays is deficient and insubstantial since there is no deep meaning in the texts. Modern printed literature is simply being skimmed through by the reader as the reader nowadays tends to avoid too much information resisting thinking in such a way. Because of the new nature of the printed materials, MacDonald considers today’s reading behavior and the way people think as flimsy and indifferent. I agree that our thought has definitively changed since we are paying less time to serious critical thinking losing connections with society and awareness of it.

    Read More

  • Categorizing of People in Shakespeare’s Tempest and Dante’s Inferno

    1201 Words  | 3 Pages

    Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Dante’s Inferno both exhibit Foucault’s idea of categorization and subjectification using “dividing practices.” (Rabinow 8) Foucault argued that people can rise to power using discourse, “Discourse has the ability to turn human beings into subjects by placing them into certain categories.” (Rabinow 8) These categories are then defined “according to their level of deviance from the acceptable norm.” (Rabinow 8) Some examples of such categories are the homosexual, the insane, the criminal and the uncivilized. (Rabinow 8). By the above method, called “dividing practices,” people can be manipulated by socially categorizing them and then comparing them to norms. In this way human beings are given both a social and a personal identity (Rabinow 8) and this is how superiority among human beings can be established.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Michel Foucault

    1042 Words  | 3 Pages

    (Flynn 1996, 28) One important aspect of his analysis that distinguishes him from the predecessors is about power. According to Foucault, power is not one-centered, and one-sided which refers to a top to bottom imposition caused by political hierarchy. On the contrary, power is diffusive, which is assumed to be operate in micro-physics, should not be taken as a pejorative sense; contrarily it is a positive one as ‘every exercise of power is accompanied by or gives rise to resistance opens a space for possibility and freedom in any content’. (Flynn 1996, 35) Moreover, Foucault does not describe the power relation as one between the oppressor or the oppressed, rather he says that these power relations are interchangeable in different discourses. These power relations are infinite; therefore we cannot claim that there is an absolute oppressor or an absolute oppressed in these power relations.

    Read More

  • Force, Morality and Rights in Thomas Hobbes and John Locke's Social Contract Theories

    1630 Words  | 4 Pages

    In his famous writing, “The Leviathan”, Thomas Hobbes explains that the natural condition of mankind is when a society lives together without the rule of a common authority or power; this creates a “dog-eat-dog” world in which the citizens live in a perpetual state of utter chaos and fear. The fears experienced by the citizens are not only of the unequal distribution of the power of others, but also fear of the loss of their own power. In Hobbes’ state of nature there is complete liberty for society in the idea that each member may do whatever he or she pleases without having to worry about infringing upon the rights of the rest of society; in other words, one is allowed to do whatever necessary to pursue their own happiness. Ho...

    Read More

  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

    946 Words  | 2 Pages

    Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a novel told from the perspective of a student, Kathy H, who attends this boarding school, Hailsham, in England during the 1990s. She tells her story of what it was like growing up and how she became where she is today. The students were raised at Halisham until they got old enough to donate their vital organs. This raised speculation in the community on rather or not they were humans since they were actually repilicate of someone else DNA. Madame and the other guardians of Halisham main goal was to prove that they were indeed humans and to protect the students. However, the community did not accept the fact that they could be human, which eventually led to the shutdown of the school years later.

    Read More

  • Pierre Bourdieu Power Essay

    1288 Words  | 3 Pages

    Within a society power serves a vital role of establishing and maintaining roles of dominance and submission (Bourdieu, 1977). This creates and maintains a social hierarchy of inequality that unconsciously determines the status, behavioural expectations and available resources for members of the community (Navarro, 2006). The meaning of power within a society is that it determines one’s social standing or relational position within the given community as well as the level of dominance or power they have available to exert onto others. Power, within a society is primarily created through the habitus, capital and culture of a

    Read More

  • A Genderless Life: Or How Autism Challenges Butler’s Theory of Gender

    2418 Words  | 5 Pages

    Golder, B. 2009. Foucault, anti-humanism and human rights. Published online by the Hawke Research Institute, University of South Australia, Underdale, SA, 2009.

    Read More

  • Michel Foucault: Power and Identity

    1988 Words  | 4 Pages

    Introduction Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman’s work was centralised around two different concepts of how your identity is formed through the process of power and expert knowledge. This Essay will discuss the ideas of Michel Foucault, a French Social Theorist. His theories addressed the relationship between power and knowledge and how both of these are used as a form of social control through society. The essay will look at Foucault’s work in The Body and Sexuality, Madness and Civilisation and Discipline and Punish, which displays how he conceptualised power and identity on a Marxist and macro basis of study. The Essay will also address the Ideas of Erving Goffman, a Canadian Born Sociologist who’s key study was what he termed as interactional order, that is how the functions of ritual and order of every individual member of society, in everyday life, interact to form social order.

    Read More

  • Comparing Foucault's 'Truth And Juridical Forms'

    2238 Words  | 5 Pages

    They are not only its inert or consenting target; they are always also the elements of its articulation” (Foucault, “Two Lectures” 34). Power may take various forms, all of which are employed and exercised by individualsand unto individuals in the institutions of society. In all institutions, there is political and judicial power, as certain individuals claim the right to give orders, establish rules, and so forth as well as the right to punish and award. For example, in school, the professor not only teaches, but also dictates, evaluates, as well as punishes and rewards.

    Read More

  • Philosophy of Classroom Discipline

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse compartments may be realized.” (Foucault)

    Read More

  • Memory Definition Essay Examples

    1406 Words  | 3 Pages

    Memory is how the brain stores and remembers information from something that has occurred before, or what we remember. It is the ability to remember knowledge, learned facts, or even skills we may have been taught. (Mastin, 2010) Our memory doesn’t begin until around age three, after that we begin to remember our childhood memories, then our teenage memories, and so on. Memory breaks into three different methods, memory encoding, memory storage, and memory retrieval. (McLeod, 2007)

    Read More

  • Compare and Contrast of the Three Faces of Power

    1832 Words  | 4 Pages

    Some theorists believe that ‘power is everywhere: not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere… power is not an institution, nor a structure, nor possession. It is the name we give to a complex strategic situation in a particular society. (Foucault, 1990: 93) This is because power is present in each individual and in every relationship. It is defined as the ability of a group to get another group to take some form of desired action, usually by consensual power and sometimes by force. (Holmes, Hughes &Julian, 2007) There have been a number of differing views on ‘power over’ the many years in which it has been studied. Theorist such as Anthony Gidden in his works on structuration theory attempts to integrate basic structural analyses and agency-centred traditions. According to this, people are free to act, but they must also use and replicate fundamental structures of power by and through their own actions. Power is wielded and maintained by how one ‘makes a difference’ and based on their decisions and actions, if one fails to exercise power, that is to ‘make a difference’ then power is lost. (Giddens: 1984: 14) However, more recent theorists have revisited older conceptions including the power one has over another and within the decision-making processes, and power, as the ability to set specific, wanted agendas. To put it simply, power is the ability to get others to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do. In the political arena, therefore, power is the ability to make or influence decisions that other people are bound by.

    Read More

  • Literature and Society

    1269 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ruly realize the false reality that literature made. The reader also has a huge role into expressing these false realities to the public, which can cause prejudice in the near future. People need to be open and understanding of different people and situations. Perspective plays a huge role into the thinking of a human mind, and readers should be more aware of the information’s brought upon different ways. Readers should not come up with a preconceived idea based upon the beliefs of other people perspective but should experience these different societies.

    Read More

  • Humanism

    455 Words  | 1 Pages

    Encarta Dictionary says that Humanism is a system of thought that centers on human beings and their values, capacities and worth. Encarta also goes on the say that, in philosophy, humanism is an attitude that emphasizes the dignity and worth of an individual. A basic premise of humanism is that people are rational beings who possess within themselves the capacity for truth and goodness. I see myself as a being a humanist through everyday life. I always try to see the good in a person when he/she makes me angry or sad, and say I to myself that maybe that person has had a bad day and living life is difficult at the moment. Socrates was even an early humanist of sorts. He can be quoted as saying, "to know the good is to do the good." He believed that nobody voluntarily commits an evil act because evil comes from ignorance, ignorance being not stupidity, but having a lack of knowledge. If all people thought as humanists, would peace be spread across the globe?

    Read More

More about Never Let Me Go Humanism

Open Document