Posthuman Emotion Artificial Intelligence in Postcyberpunk Cityscape: A Multimodal Reading of Blade Runner 2049

Abstract

Within visual culture, postcyberpunk films are best approached as ‘places of Otherness’ whereby human identity and agency are downplayed and posthumans are magnified in highly technopolic societies marked with scientific determinism. Postcyberpunk treats the posthuman as an enclave oscillating between utopian and dystopian spaces, potentially, and optimistically, creating a space for humanity to be reassessed and renegotiated. The hybridity pertinent to the film genre and the inner and outer topographies of posthuman representation are insightful investigative vantage points of multimodal inquiry for the socio-political and technocratic implications they underlie. Against this backdrop, Blade Runner 2049 is one fertile example grounded in paradoxes and ambiguities around the contradiction between humans and replicants, artificial intelligence and super-large enterprises. With technology seamlessly integrated into social spaces and posthuman bodies, Blade Runner 2049 is arguably structured as an emotional journey composed of multiple spatial layers, ruptures and bifurcations expressed through socio-political capitalist projections. The article adamantly argues for new philosophical perspectives and praxis in redefinition of the social relationship between humans and posthumans.