Posthumanist Solidarity: The Political and Ethical Imaginations of Artificial Intelligence from Battlestar Galactica to Raised by Wolves

A number of twenty-first century television series explore the irruption of AI devices into our daily lives, highlighting not only human interaction with AI, but posing disturbing and new ontological considerations: humans wondering how they are different from machines, or those of machines being unaware that they are machines and only discovering so belatedly. Within these series, the emergence of these thoughts is accompanied by the staging of interspecies friendship and romance: the metaphysical question of freedom gives way to the question of attachment, and then the problem of autonomy gives way to that of interdependence. It is this passage from metaphysical speculation to political reflection that I would like to demonstrate.

GENEALOGIA DO ROBÔ: ANATOMIA DE UM MITO CIRCULANTE NA FICÇÃO CIENTÍFICA

O presente artigo traça o percurso de formação, transformação e deformação do mito do Golem, cujo empobrecimento simbólico, característico do processo mitogênico, faz circular nas produções culturais midiáticas sob a forma do estereótipo robô. Para tanto, recorre-se a Teoria do Imaginário, de Gilbert Durand e aos procedimentos metodológicos sistematizados por ele na Mitanálise. Adota-se como objeto empírico os seres artificiais das quatro séries que compõem a saga estadunidense Battlestar Galactica (1978 – 2010). Como principais resultados, observa-se o desgaste da representação robótica como humanoides inorgânicos, bem como, sua coexistência com androides e ginoides orgânicos, formas de vida híbridas e tendências ao que se denomina aqui como (i)materialidade. A análise da ficção e de seus personagens robóticos como superfícies de inscrição de sentidos revela dinâmicas de tensão, convergências/divergências e negociações, a fim de, problematizar nas telas novos modos de existência e subjetividade, que convocam outras formas de imaginar. Os deslocamentos nas figurações são correlatos a transformações nos significados colocados em circulação, que mobilizam o desejo de transcendência humano, simbolizado na ficção científica e em seus robôs, dentre outros valores.

Being and technics : humans, hybrids and the ontology of machines

This paper discusses the possibilities of mechanical life. A non-dual methodology borrowed from Martin Heidegger combines the materialist media theory of Friedrich Kittler with Bernard Steigler's teleological philosophy of technics. This perspective is employed to analyze the literature and film of science fiction, and in particular, the recent television series, Battlestar Galactica. This analysis permits the elaboration of a communications ontology that at once highlights the individual (human) and systemic (material) aspects of the life world, and ultimately delivers an articulation of Being that is systemic and individual. It attempts to transcend traditional subject object distinctions and to naturalize the theoretical progression from biological to technical life by suggesting that human being is always already hybrid technical being, and that technological being is not only a logical, but also perhaps necessary product of Western cultural progression.

Being and technics : humans, hybrids and the ontology of machines

This paper discusses the possibilities of mechanical life. A non-dual methodology borrowed from Martin Heidegger combines the materialist media theory of Friedrich Kittler with Bernard Steigler's teleological philosophy of technics. This perspective is employed to analyze the literature and film of science fiction, and in particular, the recent television series, Battlestar Galactica. This analysis permits the elaboration of a communications ontology that at once highlights the individual (human) and systemic (material) aspects of the life world, and ultimately delivers an articulation of Being that is systemic and individual. It attempts to transcend traditional subject object distinctions and to naturalize the theoretical progression from biological to technical life by suggesting that human being is always already hybrid technical being, and that technological being is not only a logical, but also perhaps necessary product of Western cultural progression.

Battlestar Galactica and Space Opera: Transforming a Subgenre

Ron Moore, creator and producer of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series, outlined his proposed show's aesthetic in a manifesto aptly titled “Naturalistic Science Fiction or Taking the Opera out of Space Opera.” The title of this essay took a stand against the science fiction subgenre of space opera, asserting that it was outdated, overdone, and unrealistic. Moore's vision for his series revolutionized iconic elements of classic television space operas. Though Moore resisted the stigma of space opera, his reimagined series holds an inherent “operaticness”—a term first coined by opera scholar Marcia Citron. Battlestar Galactica has many operatic qualities, particularly in its narrative structure, cinematography, characters, and music. After analyzing Galactica's explicit evocations of opera, this article will explore the operatic features of the soundtrack and evaluate the characters intimately tied to the opera by tracing the tropes of gendered opera as outlined by Susan McClary and Catherine Clément. Through a detailed analysis of three episodes, I will demonstrate how Moore successfully constructed a series that relied deeply upon operatic qualities and resonances.