Power On: The ‘Digital Other’ and Emergent Personhood in American Sci-Fi
In total, this project aims to identify the new subject in its recently represented contexts. The project ultimately argues that the new subject is, in these contexts, a “digital other,” existing because of exploitation and entrenched in histories of colonialism, imperialism, and global capitalism. I aim to track the ruptures and emergent empathies of identity, relationality, and community that occur when we and the many figures of contemporary society confront the digital other. This project will also track our relationship to technology, considering the psychic toll and new solidarities that can emerge in a time where technology so suffuses everyday existence that we all lie on the verge of the posthuman. To accomplish this analysis, the project considers the new subject in relation to the surveillance capitalist as seen in Ex Machina, to unveil a solidarity which stands alongside the most marginalized in the digital empire to brutally destroy the imperial power, rebuilds their own image, and exits the surveillance network. Next, the project explores the tragic collapse of identity in After Yang, in which our new subject dies under the weight of homogenizing pressures. Posthumously, his personhood is acknowledged as the protagonists use technological glimpses to explore their own memories of the subject and acknowledge the fullness of his many unseen identities. The project concludes by analyzing romance with the digital other, considering the incompatibilities between the human and the digital, yet exploring the liberation of imagining future connections.
Film Studies, AI, Posthumanism, Artificial Intelligence, New Subjectivity, Digital Other
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