denden 23. september 2016 4 10 Fredag Torsdag 3. maj 2018
Fredag den 23. september 2016
How many clones do you know? By Marlene R. Edelstein Many of us went to Krudttønden this winter to see That Theatre’s production of Caryl Churchill’s A Number, a play set in the near future and dealing with problems related to human cloning. As developments in the fields of genetics and human reproduction intensify, this topic is provoking ethical controversy. The central character of Churchill’s play is a man much given to drink. After the suicide of his wife their only son became unmanageable and was eventually committed to an institution. Tormented by guilt and regret, and wanting to make amends for his failure as a parent, the father illegally and secretly arranges for his son to be cloned. Now he has a child who is genetically identical with the first boy, and tries to atone for his past mistakes in the way he raises him. The experiment succeeds – the new son grows up be mild and friendly. However, without the
father’s knowledge, the doctors have produced not one but several clones, boys with identical genetic heredity who were subsequently adopted by different families. The central issue of the play is how some of the clones react to the knowledge that they are not unique individuals but belong to a batch of copies – and how, despite their identical genetic make-up, these cloned babies grow up to be very different to each other. Genetics and identity In 2017 the Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro, an author whom I admire very much, so I decided to reread a few of his novels. Having recently seen Churchill’s play, I couldn’t help noticing that genetics and identity, the relation between the characteristics we’re born with and those we acquire from the environment we’re born into, is a topic which is also central to some of Ishiguro’s novels. Perhaps the most obvious example is Ne-
ver Let Me Go, which was first published in 2005, three years after Churchill’s A Number. Never Let Me Go is a far more disturbing work than A Number. It is set in an alternative 20th century England, in which the development of organ transplantation in the period following the Second World War is accompanied by a more gruesome innovation – the production of clones from human individuals for the sole purpose of harvesting their internal organs when they are young adults. Whilst awaiting the summons to start organ donation they are trained to become carers for those who are already donors, to provide company, solace and support until the donor can no longer maintain life, and ‘finishes’, as their death is euphemistically called. Never Let Me Go is narrated by Kathy H, who has been a carer for eleven years. She reminisces about her childhood in idyllic Hailsham, a cross between a children’s home and an exclusive boarding school,
Skulpturer langs havnefronten:
where the cloned children live secluded from the world and are prepared bit by bit for the future which inevitably awaits them. As they become teenagers and leave Hailsham, some of them become obsessed with looking out for their “possible”, the ordinary person from whom they may have been genetically copied, and who they believe could show them their essential selves. But Kathy’s memories demonstrate how much of the clones’ personalities isn’t innate but acquired from their experience. Their ideas about love are learnt from romantic pop songs and TV sitcoms. The phrases they use, their body language, their ideas about human relations in general, mirror popular culture. Their bodies may be copies of other bodies, but given their lack of family life and the limited cultural influences available to them, their conceptions and emotions are formed by their secluded upbringing and their exposure to mass culture.
Remake identity The question of identity is intrinsic to other novels by Ishiguro. Christopher, the central character and narrator of When We Were Orphans, is the son of English parents working in Shanghai. When both his parents mysteriously disappear he is sent ‘home’ to England, where he has never been before, to live with an aunt. Now the identity he brought with him from Shanghai is no longer relevant, and he must remake himself. At school, he observes the other boys and does all he can to imitate their way of speaking, of standing and moving, of wearing his clothes. Metaphorically, he attempts to turn himself into their clone! He grows up with a fragmented identity, unable to form a strong adult selfhood until his illusions about his life are finally shattered. In Ishiguro’s best-known work The Remains of the Day, it isn’t Stevens’s genetic relationship to his father upon whom he models him-
self which makes him the conscientious butler he prides himself on being. It is the inflexibility with which he clings to the ideals of dignity and service which his father symbolises for him, and which prevents him from developing his own authentic identity. His undiscriminating loyalty to this ideal is a flight from individual responsibility into a kind of cloned condition, and is the cause of much suffering to himself and others. Manipulate genetics In our present age, when biotechnology has the ability to manipulate our genetic inheritance in ways that invoke both awe and terror, it is well to be reminded by creative writers that there are important aspects of our identity that are not controlled by biology, and that the true threat to the integrity of our selfhood is timid conformity and inauthenticity. We have our own lives to make with the material available to us, and need not be clones in our minds and feelings.
go boat
Michelangelos David statue Af Jette Ingerslev Havnefronten har mange skulpturer, der kan give stof til eftertanke og diskussion. Det gælder blandt andet bronceafstøbningen af marmorstatuen David på Amaliekaj. Originalen blev udført i 1503 af Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) i Firenze i en periode, hvor byen var truet af de omkringliggende stater og af paven. Skulpturens symbolske betydning skal ses i lyset af den bibelske historie om David og Goliat, hvor den kloge vinder over den stærke. Og det er en symbolik, som stadigt har re-
levans for en beskeden hovedstad som København og et lille land som Danmark. Med kløgt i stedet for strid kan vi komme langt. David er en gave I anledning af sit og Ny Carlsbergs 25 års jubilæum i 1896 skænkede brygger Carl Jacobsen (1842-1914) byen København en kopi af David, udført i bronze af Bargallo-museet i Firenze. Statuen blev prøveopstillet mange steder - blandt andet ved Rådhuspladsen foran Vartov, hvor de ældre, jomfrunalske frøkener ikke tålte synet af Davids nøgne krop. Et sandt
ramaskrig udløstes i den hellige stiftelse. Så en overgang blev den unge mand sågar udstyret med et figenblad. Skulpturen blev derpå placeret ved Helligåndskirken, hvor den blev dækket af gitter forneden og trækroner foroven. I 1901 fandt skulpturen endelig en mere permanent placering i Østre Anlæg. Her var der ingen nærliggende bebyggelse, hvor bornerte borgere kunne forarges. Flyttedag igen igen I 1993 måtte David igen holde flyttedag. Denne gang til Amaliekajen foran Vestindisk Pakhus, der på samme tidspunkt blev
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David på Amaliekajen er en bronzekopi af Michelangelos originale værk. Foto: Foto: Erik B. Andersen / Havnefronten. fyldt med 2.500 gipsskulpturer fra Den kongelige Afstøbningssamling ved Statens Museum for Kunst. Nu kan alle passerende - til lands, til vands og i luften nyde godt af den 7,5 meter høje, grøntpatinerede skulptur af en nøgen ung mand, der står og
skuer ud over havneindløbet fra sin høje granitsokkel. Han står i god balance med vægten lagt på det ene ben. Hoved og hænder er overdimensionerede, men det er som symbol på klogskab og styrke. Ansigtet er roligt og fattet, men de udspilede næsebor, den rynkede pande og det
trodsige blik viser en aggressivitet. David har en sten i den højre hånd og en slynge i den venstre. Han er klar til den tilsyneladende umulige kamp mod Goliat. Med sin snilde og sin slynge overvinder han kæmpen. Se, der var en rigtig bibelfortælling.