ECOCRITICISM AND CRITICAL AI STUDIES: ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGINARIES IN KAZUO ISHIGURO’S KLARA AND THE SUN

Abstract

In Klara and the Sun (2021), Kazuo Ishiguro tells a story in the near future in which every aspect of existence is technologically enhanced, and in which there are some subtle signs of ecological damage, thanks to a solar-powered Artificial Friend storytelling partner. The novel has been studied through two lenses: ecocriticism, which examines how it reflects on the relationship between AI and the material and ecological world, and Critical AI Studies, which analyzes how it critiques techno-solutionism and anthropocentrism. Using a dual theoretical framework, the study synergises an interpretivist philosophy and constructivist-qualitative paradigm, using the work of Kate Crawford's Atlas of AI and the work of Timothy Morton's dark ecology as a theoretical grounding. Documentary and library-based data collection methods were used to gather data from the entire novel (5 parts, 303 pages) and 20 secondary academic sources. Thematic coding was the main analysis method used, with fifteen to eighteen excerpts being identified in the analysis process of purposive sampling from an estimated forty instances that were thematically relevant. Results indicate that the novel is a discourse of the materialization of the AI itself, through the process of commodification, dependence on energy and obsolescence, and its ecological imagery, which combines pollution and solar generation in an "inescapable mesh" that defies the binary of the redemption of nature/technology. The results validate Ishiguro's text as a work that undermines techno-solutionism and anthropocentrism, and validate the ability of literature to envision AI futures that are ecologically mindful