NEW LITERARIA- An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities Volume 2, No. 1, January-February, 2021, PP. 149-155 ISSN: 2582-7375 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.48189/nl.2021.v02i1.016 www.newliteraria.com “We’re modelled from trash”: Confronting Transhumanism and Critical Posthumanism in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go Santi Ranjan Sing Abstract In an era when “posthumanism” and “transhumanism” have turned out to be topics of philosophical and scientific enquiry, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) pushes forward the conflict between critical posthumanism and transhumanisms. Transhumanism, as it aims at human enhancement through science and technology, still centers on the idea of anthropocentrism. On the other hand, critical posthumanism, rejecting the idea of human uniqueness, proposes that the human co-evolved with other life forms depending upon each other. Cloning being the prominent aspect of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel in order to constitute a better future society, (unbeknown to them) the cloned ‘individuals’ are designed to be only the organ donors to the humans who need certain organs to survive. And that has become normal in that speculative world of Ishiguro, until one of the three main characters Ruth, after finding her “possible” (on whom Ruth is cloned), reveals that they are modelled from “trash”. This revelation somehow questions the notion of human uniqueness casting away the anthropocentric viewpoint. Thus, through the characters’ view, this paper seeks to examine how the text itself somehow rejects the notion of human uniqueness thus propagating critical posthumanism, while transhumanism is inextricably embedded in the text. The dichotomy between these two notions deserves to be designated through this paper. And finally, this paper also focuses on the very dystopian nature as portrayed in the text and its relations to various aspects of posthumanism(s). Keywords: Posthumanism , Transhumanism, Cloning, Critical posthumanism, Speculative fiction. 1. Introduction: Posthumanism goes beyond the universal question "who we are?" and Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go (2005) rightly and accurately portrays this notion of posthumanism in it's thematic presentation. The novel tells the story of three characters- Kathy, Tommy and Ruth who are designed as the clones mainly to serve one particular purpose i.e. to donate organs. And this purpose has been institutionalised through the Hailsham 1 School. All the students of Hailsham including the three protagonists are clones made to serve their respective "possibles" 2 . These clones portray certain aspects of identity crisis which is evident throughout the novel and that leads to the question who they are and beyond. They are actually the ones who are dehumanised, animalised, politicised and ultimately trashified. After coming back from a casual trip (chapter 14) led by Tommy and others, Rodney, a veteran from the “Cottages”, tells Ruth that he encountered a woman in Norfolk who might