The Artificial Gender: Androids in Literature and Film

Authors

  • Susanne Gramatzki Wuppertal/Bergische Universität/Fachbereich Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14766/468

Keywords:

Film, Literatur, Technik, Geschlecht, Gender

Abstract

The motif of the artificial human forms both a stable and varied constant of occidental literary history from Homer to Houellebecq. The constellation at the base of this motif, creator—creation and/or subject—object, is superposed by a powerful cultural-anthropologic thought-schema already laid out by Plato and Aristotle. This schema identifies the masculine as a spiritual, active, and form-giving principle and the feminine as a passive, receptive, and material-based principle. Readings of texts portraying automatons and androids, such as those collected by the volume Textmachinebody (Textmaschinenkörper), from a gender-specific perspective lend themselves to further illuminating the (literary) historical complexity of social, cultural, discursive, and, not the least, technological and scientific attribution of gender.

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Published

2006-11-07

Issue

No. 20 (2006): Politik

Section

Offener Teil

License

Copyright (c) 2006 Susanne Gramatzki

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