CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Kasdovasili, Stella Andrada |
|---|---|
| Title | Drag-ing the Human out of the Human-oid: Reflections on Artificial intelligence, Race and Sexuality in Late Capitalism |
| Summary | This thesis seeks to explore they ways in which the category of human formulates the research in the field of Artificial Intelligence by examining the boundaries introduced by the distinction between human and non-human. My research is focused on the case study of Sophia, a humanoid manufactured by Hanson Robotics that obtained citizenship from Saudi Arabia, in October 2016. Considering the ways through which the humanoid becomes sexualized and racialized, I will argue that Sophia enfolds the potentiality of subversion, that is of interest for feminist epistemology. In the theoretical framework of the first chapter, I will provide the reader with a genealogy of the category of human by focusing on the canonical patriarchal understanding of the rational man in Western philosophy, while also addressing the category of human species, so as to illustrate how these approaches formulated research in Artificial Intelligence. In the second chapter, I will provide a close reading analysis of Michel Foucault and Brian Massumi’s scholarship that bridges biopower and capitalism to the affect and the body’s materiality. Based on this, I will read the trope of emotionality used in Sophia’s case in relation to the modulation of affect in late capitalism. This way, I intend to illustrate how Sophia is imbedded in a much more nuanced web of relations of power, one that redefines the boundaries between who is included in the category of the human species and who is not. In the third chapter, by employing Michel Foucault’s analysis on biopower while also engaging with Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis I will draw attention to the discursive traces that construct Sophia’s identity in accordance to the biopolitical technologies of race and sexuality. Finally, in last chapter, drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s analysis on the abstract machine of faciality and Judith Butler’s approach on drag I will reflect on the constructiveness of the boundaries between the human and the non-human, to argue that Sophia is not just a product of her time but also a point of disruption that might unravel what Deleuze and Guattari call, the inhuman in the human. Keywords: Biopower, artificial intelligence, humanoid, affective capitalism, biopolitical anthropomorphism, drag, human exceptionalism, gender performance |
| Supervisor | Timár, Eszter |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/kasdovasili_stella.pdf |
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