BIO
Julia A. Empey is a doctoral candidate in English and Film at Wilfrid Laurier University and a research assistant for the Posthumanism Research Institute. Her doctoral research utilizes posthumanism along with feminist discourses, affect theory, and human rights theory to examine the cultural and social implications of sex robots. Her other interests include eco-criticism, cosmopolitan studies, and political theory.
Julia’s graduate studies are funded through a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.
TITLE
“Nothing More Human: affect, labour, and posthuman womanhood in Her and Ex Machina”
ABSTRACT
With Spike Jonze’s 2014 film Her and Alex Garland’s 2015 film Ex Machina as case studies, this paper examines the role of affect theory in shaping human-robot relationships and posthuman subjectivity. Both films focus on men whose lives are dramatically affected by robotic women. I contend that these depictions are tied not only to an uncritical posthumanist vision for the future, but also to the seemingly mundane politics of feminized labour.
These ‘women’s’ robotic nature is both paramount to how they are framed within the narratives but the desire to give them a sense of personhood and agency by the male characters is what causes us to read them not simply as robotic tools but as posthuman agents. Both ‘women’ embody a posthuman subjectivity, not just with their material conditions, or immaterial with the regards to Her’s Samantha, but also with how they are, to borrow from Puar, granted and then utilize an affective capacity.
Within these films, robots and AI are rendered female and their main use is to serve their male owners. These films do not just present a transhumanist fantasy turn nightmare but rather uncritically utilize women’s oppression and labour as means of fetishizing the technologies these men created. Posthumanism has not adequately taken up the material conditions of women's lives. We might be moving towards a posthuman age, but then what are the considerations that must be made for women?
EVENT
NYU Global Posthuman 2020
Julia A. Empey is a doctoral candidate in English and Film at Wilfrid Laurier University and a research assistant for the Posthumanism Research Institute. Her doctoral research utilizes posthumanism along with feminist discourses, affect theory, and human rights theory to examine the cultural and social implications of sex robots. Her other interests include eco-criticism, cosmopolitan studies, and political theory.
Julia’s graduate studies are funded through a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.
TITLE
“Nothing More Human: affect, labour, and posthuman womanhood in Her and Ex Machina”
ABSTRACT
With Spike Jonze’s 2014 film Her and Alex Garland’s 2015 film Ex Machina as case studies, this paper examines the role of affect theory in shaping human-robot relationships and posthuman subjectivity. Both films focus on men whose lives are dramatically affected by robotic women. I contend that these depictions are tied not only to an uncritical posthumanist vision for the future, but also to the seemingly mundane politics of feminized labour.
These ‘women’s’ robotic nature is both paramount to how they are framed within the narratives but the desire to give them a sense of personhood and agency by the male characters is what causes us to read them not simply as robotic tools but as posthuman agents. Both ‘women’ embody a posthuman subjectivity, not just with their material conditions, or immaterial with the regards to Her’s Samantha, but also with how they are, to borrow from Puar, granted and then utilize an affective capacity.
Within these films, robots and AI are rendered female and their main use is to serve their male owners. These films do not just present a transhumanist fantasy turn nightmare but rather uncritically utilize women’s oppression and labour as means of fetishizing the technologies these men created. Posthumanism has not adequately taken up the material conditions of women's lives. We might be moving towards a posthuman age, but then what are the considerations that must be made for women?
EVENT
NYU Global Posthuman 2020
