Not in the Image of Humans: Robots as Humans’ Other in Contemporary Science Fiction Film, Literature and Art

Abstract

This article explores how human-posthuman intimate relationships are thematized in both robotics and in science fiction film, literature and robotic art. While many engineers and computer scientists are working hard, albeit in an altogether affirmative way, toward the technological development of anthropomorphic robots, i.e., robots in the image of humans and with qualities which match the human self, aesthetic representations of intimacy between man and machine, as primarily presented in science fiction film, literature and art, give us a more nuanced picture of the robot as humans’ other. This article seeks to analyze the way works of science fiction contextualize technology within a socio-cultural sphere we recognize as similar to our own but do not necessarily depict the artificial other as manlike but as a character in its own right.