Męskie niepokoje, kobiece miraże. O post(?)ludzkich miłościach do maszyn w Creative Control i Konsultantce
Male Anxieties, Female Mirages. About Post(?)human Love for Machines in Creative Control and Operator

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes human-non-human love relationships shown in two American science fiction films representing the Third Culture cinema: Benjamin Dickinson’s Creative Control (2015) and Logan Kibens’s Operator (2016) in the context of critical theory of posthumanism by Rosi Braidotti, Katherine Hayles, Anne Balsamo and Kim Toffoletti with regard to the sexuality in a posthuman reality. Sexuality is understood here as a complex force with the power to transcend binary oppositions of human sex (Braidotti) and corporality as always marked by gender (Hayles, Balsamo). The power of posthuman images is also pointed out in the context of the celebration of the complexity of posthuman experience (Toffoletti). The analyses of intimate relationships between men and women depicted in the films are also placed in the context of the “ideal woman paradigm” (Julie Wosk), present in numerous cultural texts in which artificial creatures were built for the purposes set by men to meet their needs. The essay seeks to answer the question of whether love of man and machine, as shown in the new science fiction cinema, is an expression of the “posthuman moment” in the text of culture, as defined by Stefan Herbrechter and Ivan Callus, whose purpose is to violate the coherence and integrity of human experience and to undermine the existence of the “essence” of humanness.

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