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huangtimAfter reading Spiller's essay and taking a step back to think about everything we've read this semester, an astounding realization occurs. Little aspects of the unimaginable dystopian futures we have been reading about have actually occurred, during New World slavery. Spillers described how enslaved communities were used for “medical research,” which is a plight not too far off from that of the donors in Never Let Me Go; both groups of humans, in the novel, and in real life, were bred purely for medical purposes. Spillers describes how this use of human life “demarcates a total objectification” of them, which can also be see in Ishiguro’s novel; the donors are called “creatures” by Madame, and are seen only as organ carriers.
Spillers description of how human offspring are not “related to the owner, though the owner possesses it” can be seen in the dystopia the Connie visits in Woman on the Edge of Time. In that alternate future, Gildina, the female that Connie meets, is a possession of her owner. She sees herself and other women only as sexual possessions of men in their society; their bodies are obligated by contract to their owners. Humans that are seen as objectified possessions by their “owners” is not only something that occurs in science fiction, but can also be seen in history.
Spillers questions “whether or not [sexual] pleasure is possible [in seductions and couplings] at all under conditions that I would aver as non-freedom.” This is a question that is also asked by the reader during Brave New World; the people of the World State seem to be happy and enjoy their sexual promiscuity, but are they REALLY happy? They only derive pleasure from the life they know because they are oppressed by their condition; they do not know any other kind of life.
Spillers description of how human offspring are not “related to the owner, though the owner possesses it” can be seen in the dystopia the Connie visits in Woman on the Edge of Time. In that alternate future, Gildina, the female that Connie meets, is a possession of her owner. She sees herself and other women only as sexual possessions of men in their society; their bodies are obligated by contract to their owners. Humans that are seen as objectified possessions by their “owners” is not only something that occurs in science fiction, but can also be seen in history.
Spillers questions “whether or not [sexual] pleasure is possible [in seductions and couplings] at all under conditions that I would aver as non-freedom.” This is a question that is also asked by the reader during Brave New World; the people of the World State seem to be happy and enjoy their sexual promiscuity, but are they REALLY happy? They only derive pleasure from the life they know because they are oppressed by their condition; they do not know any other kind of life.
