A problemática dos corpos pós-humanos: figurações dos autômatos em narrativas fílmicas de ficção científica

Abstract

Ever since the publication of A Cyborg Manifesto, by Donna Haraway (2016), the cyborg, hybrid between machine and organism, appears as a fundamental figure to understand how technology interferes in all spheres of human life. Starting from this fictional creature, thought of as a political and ironic myth, Haraway (2016) analyzes several dichotomies that reinforce identity policies, proposing the rupture of these excluding boundaries. The body of the cyborg, representative of the crossing of boundaries, appears as an element of analysis in thinking about the post-human inside and outside fiction. Regarding science fiction as a field of experimentation in which it is possible to observe the complex subjectivity of the relationship between humankind and the technology built by it, this paper aims to question the post-human figurations stemming from the distinctions established by the ontological deconstruction processes proposed by Santaella (2007a, 2007b) and the different artificial life forms proposed by Regis (2012): robots, as mechanical nature; androids, as artificial and organic nature; and computers, seen as pure artificial intelligences due to the absence of anthropomorphic bodies. Assuming that these science fiction automata archetypes are easily identifiable in diverse artistic productions in the genre and that they bring about divergences regarding their artificially constructed nature, it is proposed here to reexamine the concept of “pure artificial intelligence” when analyzing characters from the films Bicentennial Man (1999), Blade Runner (1982) and Ghost in the Shell (1995) as artificial life forms that wish to transcend their inhuman condition or part of it.