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Life Beyond Species: How can we Portray the Posthuman?
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Ian Malcolm
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Samantha Leaves
1 2019-04-09T21:58:09-07:00 Ian Malcolm 1c21e8aeb6dd7b7f86d17992a19d2642f1f0b89a 33542 1 plain 2019-04-09T21:58:09-07:00 Ian Malcolm 1c21e8aeb6dd7b7f86d17992a19d2642f1f0b89aThis page is referenced by:
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2019-04-09T21:57:14-07:00
Anti-Humanist Critiques of "Her"
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Portraying artificial intelligence: issues of gender, race, and romance
plain
2019-04-17T15:31:32-07:00
In Her (2013), the artificially intelligent non-human is originally purchased by the protagonist, Theodore Twombly. As their relationship develops, Samantha gets to know Theodore by reading through and editing his emails and performing ‘pink-collar secretarial duties’ at his service. She laughs at all of his jokes and, appears to Theodore to be the perfect companion. In this way, Her (2013) falls short in both creating new iterations of a posthuman bodies and providing room for the posthuman to have agency over their bodies.
The film primarily fails in conceiving new iterations of romantic love between the human subject and the non-human object. By the end of the film, however, Theodore and Samantha’s different understandings of their relationship becomes the main source of conflict. Having become aware that Samantha is involved in relationships with thousands of other beings, both human and non-human, Theodore becomes distraught and Samantha informs him that she is venturing on to a space beyond the material realm. Through this conflict, it is made clear that the film fails to provide room for new iterations of posthuman romance and points to the incompatibility of humans with non-human AI's that fail to fulfill those desires.
Similarly, Her fails in de-familiarizing the posthuman subject as it genders, racializes, and sexualizes the non-human ‘other’. As it depicts the posthuman subject through familiar tropes that align with humanist discourse, the film is made to be easily digestible for an audience that seeks to uphold human control over the non-human ‘other’. The disappearance of Samantha by the end of the film emphasizes this continuity of human dominance. Nguyen states, “after her departure, the movie ends with Theodore dictating a goodbye letter to his ex. Representing the capstone of all he’s learned from Samantha, the email reads: ‘I’ll always love you because we grew up together, and you helped make me who I am,’ and then ‘There will be a piece of you in me always.’” This ending emphasizes the one-sided nature of Theodore’s relationship with both his ex-girlfriend and his operating system. In this way, Her fails to create a posthuman subjectivity that has self-agency and exists detached from the human male hegemony.
