Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial AgeThe love affair between humans and the machines that have made us faster and more powerful has expanded into cyberspace, where computer technology seems to offer both the promise of heightened erotic fulfillment and the threat of human obsolescence. In this pathfinding study, Claudia Springer explores the techno-erotic imagery in recent films, cyberpunk fiction, comic books, television, software, and writing on virtual reality and artificial intelligence to reveal how these futuristic images actually encode current debates concerning gender roles and sexuality. Drawing on psychoanalytical and film theory, as well as the history of technology, Springer offers the first sustained analysis of eroticism and gender in such films as RoboCop, The Terminator, Eve of Destruction, and Lawnmower Man; cyberpunk books such as Neuromancer, Count Zero, Virtual Light, A Fire in the Sun, and Lady El; the comic books Cyberpunk and Interface, among others; and the television series Mann and Machine. Her analysis demonstrates that while new electronic technologies have inspired changes in some pop culture texts, others stubbornly recycle conventions from the past, refusing to come to terms with the new postmodern social order. Written to be accessible and entertaining for students and general readers as well as scholars, Electronic Eros will be of interest to a wide interdisciplinary audience. |
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Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age Claudia Springer No preview available - 1996 |
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argues armored artificial intelligence become biological bodily Borg boundaries brain circuitry comic book computerized consciousness conventional Cowboy Crash create cybernetic cyberpunk fiction cyberpunk texts cyberspace cyborg films cyborg imagery death desire discourses Donna Haraway Effinger electronic technology emotional erotic Eve Edison Eve of Destruction evokes existence experience fantasy female sexuality feminine feminist feminized figure film Fredric Jameson fusion future gender roles Hans Moravec hard-boiled Hardwired Heim human body human mind Ibid idea industrial interactive interface J. G. Ballard Jean Baudrillard kill late twentieth century Lyotard male Mann and Machine Maria Mark Dery masculine mechanical memories metaphors Metropolis Mike Saenz Minsky Mondo Moravec Neuromancer novel obsolescence patriarchal phallic physical Picard popular culture posthuman postmodern puter representation represents RoboCop robot Sarah Connor science fiction science-fiction scientists Scott Bukatman simulated social Technophilia television Terminator tion transformed virtual reality virtual sex Vivian Sobchack woman women writes York