Gene

This chapter uses readings of twenty-first-century speculative fiction about clones to challenge the idea of individuality. Showing Asian racialization to be sociopolitically constructed even at the molecular level of the gene, this chapter explicates how narrative technologies of racialized reproduction structure Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl (2002). The chapter first explores the paradox of individual humanity through Never Let Me Go’s ironic treatment of social reproduction in the genre of the boarding school novel, extending this reproductive labor to the clones’ bodily labor as organ donors. Then, the chapter explores how Salt Fish Girl’s braided narrative challenges an evolutionary teleology that privileges the human through its sustained use of fish/human hybridity. It concludes by arguing a de-individualized clonal consciousness is necessary to seize the means of reproduction underlying racial capitalism.