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Relational Humanity: Mind-Modelling, Distributed Agency, and Cognitive Ecology in Klara and the Sun (108359)
Session: On Demand
Room: Virtual Video Presentation
Presentation Type:Virtual Presentation
Adopting a cognitive narratology approach, this study analyses Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) as a text that reflects on the concepts of the human and identity, and on contemporary forms of relation and empathy.
In the future imagined by Ishiguro, a society dominated by technological progress and genetic engineering entrusts the education and emotional support of young people to artificial companions, in a context marked by social isolation and relationships mediated by technology. Through the first-person focalization of Klara, an Artificial Friend purchased to assist Josie, a sick girl, the novel stages a process of constructing mental states, showing how identity is formed through practices of recognition, care, and mutual dependence. Klara’s narrative voice constitutes a cognitive device that prompts the reader to simulate an artificial mind engaged in interpreting human minds. The mind-modeling processes demonstrate that subjectivity is the result of relational interpretation between consciousnesses. From this perspective, Josie’s identity is not replicable – as Capaldi’s technological project presupposes – but rather a relational configuration distributed across the affects and bonds that surround her. The analysis also integrates cognitive ecology, showing how the Sun and pollution are processed by Klara as causal agents within her belief system; the environment thus enters into the narrative construction of agency and responsibility. The novel proposes a relational humanism that challenges the human/non-human dichotomy, redefining subjectivity as a phenomenon emerging from embodied cognition rooted in affective, environmental, and social relations, rather than as an internal property of an isolated subject.
Authors:
Antonella De Blasio, eCampus University, Italy
About the Presenter(s)
Antonella De Blasio is an adjunct professor at eCampus University
See this presentation on the full schedule – On Demand Schedule
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