A01=Despina Kakoudaki
accessible presentation
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
alchemy
Anatomy of a Robot
androids
aristotle
artificial birth
artificial life
artificial people
Author_Despina Kakoudaki
automata
automatic-update
blade runner
Category1=Fiction
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSK
Category=FL
Category=FM
cinematic tradition
COP=United States
creation
cultural deployment
cultural function
cyborgs
de anima
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
demarcate
Despina Kakoudaki
engaging presentation
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_fantasy
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science-fiction
existential negotiation
existential trope
fantasy
fascination
fictional tradition
films
frankenstein
historical provenance
human
humanity
I
investigation
iron man
kazuo ishiguro
Language_English
legal struggle
literary texts
mechanical body
metropolis
narrative deployment
never let me go
non-human version
PA=Available
perennial projections
personhood.
Philip K. Dick
philosophical struggle
physics
political implications
political struggle
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
representation
Robot
robots
slaves
softlaunch
sophisticated presentation
textual implications
textual versatility
the golem
the terminator
twilight zone
Product details
- ISBN 9780813562155
- Weight: 426g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 07 Jul 2014
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Why do we find artificial people fascinating? Drawing from a rich fictional and cinematic tradition, Anatomy of a Robot explores the political and textual implications of our perennial projections of humanity onto figures such as robots, androids, cyborgs, and automata. In an engaging, sophisticated, and accessible presentation, Despina Kakoudaki argues that, in their narrative and cultural deployment, artificial people demarcate what it means to be human. They perform this function by offering us a non-human version of ourselves as a site of investigation. Artificial people teach us that being human, being a person or a self, is a constant process and often a matter of legal, philosophical, and political struggle.
By analyzing a wide range of literary texts and films (including episodes from Twilight Zone, the fiction of Philip K. Dick, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, Metropolis, The Golem, Frankenstein, The Terminator, Iron Man, Blade Runner, and I, Robot), and going back to alchemy and to Aristotle’s Physics and De Anima, she tracks four foundational narrative elements in this centuries-old discourse- the fantasy of the artificial birth, the fantasy of the mechanical body, the tendency to represent artificial people as slaves, and the interpretation of artificiality as an existential trope. What unifies these investigations is the return of all four elements to the question of what constitutes the human.
This focused approach to the topic of the artificial, constructed, or mechanical person allows us to reconsider the creation of artificial life. By focusing on their historical provenance and textual versatility, Kakoudaki elucidates artificial people’s main cultural function, which is the political and existential negotiation of what it means to be a person.
By analyzing a wide range of literary texts and films (including episodes from Twilight Zone, the fiction of Philip K. Dick, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, Metropolis, The Golem, Frankenstein, The Terminator, Iron Man, Blade Runner, and I, Robot), and going back to alchemy and to Aristotle’s Physics and De Anima, she tracks four foundational narrative elements in this centuries-old discourse- the fantasy of the artificial birth, the fantasy of the mechanical body, the tendency to represent artificial people as slaves, and the interpretation of artificiality as an existential trope. What unifies these investigations is the return of all four elements to the question of what constitutes the human.
This focused approach to the topic of the artificial, constructed, or mechanical person allows us to reconsider the creation of artificial life. By focusing on their historical provenance and textual versatility, Kakoudaki elucidates artificial people’s main cultural function, which is the political and existential negotiation of what it means to be a person.
DESPINA KAKOUDAKI is an associate professor in the department of literature at American University in Washington, D.C.
