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Selfless Servers, Weapons in Waiting: Androids Parenting Human Children in Raised by Wolves and I am Mother
Örebro University, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. (Sustainability Centered Humanities)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4514-7028
Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
2023 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation only (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

In the tv-series Raised by Wolves (HBO, 2020-2022) and the feature film I am Mother (2019), androids take on parental roles towards human children. This activates gendered discourses, simultaneously drawing on and challenging cultural conceptualizations of male and female parenting. The analysis investigates two aspects of the characters’ construction and understanding of their parental roles. First, parenting as an embodied activity is analyzed in relation to physical processes intimately connected with discourses of motherhood such as gestation and lactation, and to caregiving, nurturing and disciplining activities, exploring the shift between care and control, and the notion of the AI parenting body as a potential threat. Second, the purpose of parenting as perceived by the characters is examined. Drawing on an understanding of reproduction and parenting as a form of futurity where children are posited as the future of both the individual parent and humanity, as explored and critiqued by Edelman, the analysis will show that the narratives simultaneously build on and undermine such an understanding. The latter is identified as the result of transspecies parenting where narcissistic projections of self onto offspring are necessarily challenged. In this context, the discussion also pays attention to how gender inflects constructions of the purpose of parenting, exploring the complex positionings of Father and Mother in Raised by Wolves and the effect of the lack of a character functioning as a father in I am Mother. Ultimately, we ask the question – what would successful android parenting of human entail and whose future is secured? 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023.
Keywords [en]
androids, critical kinship studies, motherhood, parenthood, AI, feminist materialism
National Category
Cultural Studies
Research subject
English
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-110551OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-110551DiVA, id: diva2:1822889
Conference
Virtual International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts: "AAAA!:AI, Algorithms, Automata and Art." November 5-11, 2023
Available from: 2023-12-28 Created: 2023-12-28 Last updated: 2024-01-09Bibliographically approved

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Bonnevier, Jenny

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
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Language
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