Article ID: CBB878724770

Do Cyborgs Desire Their Own Subjection? Thinking Anthropology With Cinematic Science Fiction (2016)

unapi

Dickson, Jessica (Author)


Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society
Volume: 36
Issue: 1
Pages: 78-84


Publication Date: 2016
Edition Details: Special Issue: Science and Science Fiction - Volume II: Subjectivities
Language: English

Primarily a thought experiment, this essay explores how cinematic cyborgs and anthropological approaches to personhood and subjectivity might be theorized together. The 1980s and 1990s showed considerable investment by media producers, and strong reception by audiences and culture critics, to science fiction (SF) film and television franchises that brought new attention to the imagined cyborg subject in the popular imagination of the time. Outside of Hollywood, this same period was marked by biomedical and technological advancements that raised profound implications for Western conceptions of personhood. While SF has enjoyed a long-standing position in the social sciences, primarily with sociologists and feminist theorists, SF’s preoccupation with what it means to be human calls for anthropological engagement as well. Yet if Donna Haraway envisioned cyborgs as celebrated sites of gender de/reconstruction and open possibility, why is it that cinematic cyborgs desire so strongly to become subjects of mothers, lovers, government, and God? While primary attention is given here to film texts and academic articles that drove discussions of science and technology in popular culture during the decades preceding the millennium, with remakes, reboots, and sequels to popular franchises underway, a renewed interest in the anthropological questions these films and series provoke is evident.

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Article Alexander I. Stingl (2016) Introduction: “Give Me Sight Beyond Sight”: Thinking With Science Fiction as Thinking (Together) With (Others). Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society (pp. 3-27). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB878724770/

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Authors & Contributors
Emanuela Piga Bruni
Link, Adrianna
Wright, David C
Wiesenfeldt, Gerhard
Vieth, Errol
Turnock, Julie A.
Concepts
Motion pictures; cinema; movies
Science fiction
Popular culture
Science and literature
Science and film
Science and art
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
21st century
19th century
Places
United States
Japan
East Germany
Institutions
National Anthropological Film Center (U.S.)
Smithsonian Institution
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