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Norfolk and the Sense of Loss: The Bildungsroman and Colonial Subjectivity in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go
- Texas Studies in Literature and Language
- University of Texas Press
- Volume 61, Number 3, Fall 2019
- pp. 270-290
- Article
- Additional Information
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ABSTRACT:
This essay argues that Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go reshapes colonial subjectivity through a sense of loss. By borrowing Homi Bhabha's notion of mimicry, which characterizes colonial subjectivity as a state of ambivalence between assimilation and dissimilation, I explore how the clones' collective retrospection posits Norfolk as the site of subject-forming loss and how Kathy's narrative voice gradually signals the emptying of self.