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Gender Sensitivity in Technoscience -Representation of Femininity and Gender Dynamics in Posthuman SF

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2021, (80), pp.257-292
  • DOI : 10.31310/HUM.080.09
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : January 7, 2021
  • Accepted : January 22, 2021
  • Published : February 28, 2021

KWAK EUN HEE 1

1동아대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to examine ‘gender sensibility in technoscience’ as a core theme, and to predict the question of “how will technobiopower ― from artificial intelligence with emotions to cloned humans based on genetic engineering ― affect human’s lives?” through the representation of femininity and gender dynamics in posthuman science fiction. For this discussion, I took the epistemologically shared point of a science fiction genre and posthumanism as the basis of discussion, and chose a method of combining critical posthumanism, technoscience, and technofeminism. In the f ilms Her and Zoe, emotion-based artificial intelligence shows the future of intimacy while being represented with femininity. The film Her dismantles gender norms by driving the love of Theodor and Samantha into catastrophe, and recreates Samantha, an artificial intelligence operating system, as a feminist subject that affirms diversity and difference. In contrast, Zoe shows human aspirations to improve the quality of life by making artificial intelligence robots an intimate existence and life’s companion to humans, but has limitations in that this film does not aim for a horizontal relationship between humans and non-humans. The films Gattaca a n d Never Let Me Go predict the future of human life by looking suspiciously the aspect that the genetic biopower appropriates femininity. In Gattaca, femininity is represented as a motherhood reproduce the specular logic of the identity, whereas in Never Let Me Go, femininity is represented as a subject realizing the technobiopower of modern humanism. In this case, posthuman femininity causes a crack in the violence of the technobiopower, as a subaltern to the subaltern. Through the cracks, we can look into the irreversible situation in the future where human cloning has become a commonplace, and look at the direction and speed of progress that is currently being made here and now.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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