bio
Marina Fedosik is a literature and cultural studies scholar. Her research interests span theories of subjectivity and belonging, and her publications explore selfhood and kinship through the lens of adoption studies. She currently teaches “The Posthuman,” a writing seminar at Princeton University.
title
"The “Real” in Artificial Intelligence: Kinship and Selfhood in the Posthuman Context"
abstract
This presentation analyzes Steven Spielberg’s film Artificial Intelligence simultaneously as a representation of child adoption and a human/android relationship in order to uncover the role of biology and Oedipal structures of feelings in securing human kinship and selfhood. At the same time, it examines the meaning of difference we construct between humans and human-like artificial intelligence entities based on the distinction between “the real” and “the apparent.” Such line of analysis shows that reinvention of the origin narratives that define “the human” is possible if biology is imagined as a discourse that essentializes the interdependence of the “natural” bloodline and the “real” kinship and selfhood.
