Feminist posthumanism in contemporary science fiction film and media : from Annihilation to High life and beyond

Feminist Posthumanism in Contemporary Science Fiction Film and Media: From Annihilation to High Life and Beyond places posthumanism and feminist theory into dialogue with contemporary science fiction film and media. This essay collection is intimately invested in the debates around the posthuman and the critical posthumanities within a feminist critical-theoretical framework. In this posthumanist light, science fiction as a genre allows for new imaginings of human-technological relations, while it can also be the site of a critique of human exceptionalism and essentialism. In this way, science fiction affords unique opportunities for the scholarly investigation of the relevance and relative applicability of specific posthumanist themes and questions in a particularly rich and wide-ranging popular cultural field of production. One of the reasons for this suitability is the genre’s historically longstanding relationship with the critical investigation of gender, specifically the position and relative empowerment of women. The original analyses presented here pay close attention to audiovisual style (including game mechanics), facilitating the critical interrogation of the issues and questions around posthumanism. Where typically the mention of SF in the posthumanist context calls to mind a whole set of (often clichéd) tropes—the cyborg, technologically augmented bodies, AI subjectivities, etc.—this volume’s thirteen chapters analyze specific examples of contemporary SF cinema that engage in meaningful ways with the burgeoning field of critical posthumanism, and that utilize such films to interrogate posthumanist and feminist as well as humanistic ideas. Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Figures Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: Feminist Refractions of the Posthuman Part I: Posthuman Bodies and Identities Chapter 1: Indigenous Futurist and Women-Centered Dystopian Film Chapter 2: Gender, Sex, and Feminist AI: Thirteen Theses on Her Chapter 3: Her: A Posthuman Love Story Chapter 4: Posthuman Mothers and Reproductive Biovalue in Blade Runner: 2049 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Chapter 5: Desirable and Undesirable Cyborg Bodies in the Mass Effect Video Game Trilogy Part II: Posthuman Environments and Entanglements Chapter 6: Material Entanglements and Posthuman Female Subjectivity in Annihilation Chapter 7: Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin: Female Embodiment and Ecology Chapter 8: Living in Color: Feminist and Posthumanist Ontology in Upstream Color Chapter 9: Ascendance to Trans-Corporeality or Assimilation to Whiteness: The Posthuman Imaginaries of Annihilation and Midsommar Part III: Posthumanist Endings and Futures Chapter 10: Digital Game Ecologies: Posthuman Convergences in Abzû and Horizon: Zero Dawn Chapter 11: From Rogue Planets to Black Holes: Revaluing Death in Melancholia and High Life Chapter 12: “Originary Twoness”: Flashbacks and the Materiality of Memory in Annihilation, High Life, and Arrival Chapter 13: Coming to Terms with Our Own Ends: Failed Reproduction and the End of the Hu/man in Claire Denis’ High Life and Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lija’s Aniara Bibliography Contributors Index "Places posthumanism and feminist theory into direct conversation with contemporary science fiction film and media from the 1980s to present"-- Provided by publisher