Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction.

Flannery, Eóin

doi:10.5325/utopianstudies.21.1.0180

Cited by 2 publications

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“…However, the cultural resonances of robots quickly included the institution and history of slavery, which became especially pronounced when the project of robotics was embraced in the United States. The popularity of stories about robot uprisings in science fiction all too clearly represents the working through of social and political anxieties about slavery and colonialism [26,27]. As Louis Chude-Sokei [28] has argued, the debate in literature and popular culture about whether robots are -or could become -sentient parallels, with eerie precision, the historical debate about whether Africans might have souls.…”

Section: The Race History Of Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Robots Have Race?: Race, Social Construction, and HRI

Sparrow

2020

IEEE Robot. Automat. Mag.

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In a paper presented at HRI 2018, Bartneck and colleagues argued that people attribute race to humanoid robots. Our paper joined a (small) number of other papers in providing evidence that people attribute racial and/or ethnic identities to robots. In this essay, I want to offer some observations about what is at stake when we ask "do robots have race?" Drawing on resources from the philosophy of race, cultural studies, and media ethics, which may not be familiar to many readers of Robotics & Automation Magazine, I will argue that the discovery that robots have race that would pose unique ethical and political challenges to the project of building humanoid social robots given the historical associations between robots and slaves. Performing experiments to determine whether robots have race, informed by a proper understanding of the nature of race according to the latest scholarship, should therefore be a priority for the Human-Robot Interaction community.

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Section: The Race History Of Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Robots Have Race?: Race, Social Construction, and HRI

Sparrow

2020

IEEE Robot. Automat. Mag.

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“…The first strand presents a critical reading of Western SF of the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a genre that is deeply embedded in the discourses and ideologies of colonialism and empire (e.g. Csicsery-Ronay, 2003;Rieder, 2008). The second strand presents a critical reading of both colonial and postcolonial SF through the lens of postcolonial theory, stressing the subversive elements of both science and fiction and their power to undermine dominant narratives of cultural imperialism and (neo)colonialism (Chambers, 2003;Kerslake, 2007;Hoagland and Sarwal, 2010;Langer, 2011;Smith, 2012;Varughese, 2013 and2017).…”

Section: Postcolonial Studies and Science Fictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Jagadish Chandra Bose and the anticolonial politics of science fiction

Hoene

2020

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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In postcolonial studies there are two main strands of argument concerning the legacies and effects of cultural imperialism on science fiction as a literary genre. The first strand presents a critical reading of Western science fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a genre that is deeply embedded in the discourses and ideologies of colonialism and imperialism (Rieder, 2008; Kerslake, 2007). The second strand presents a critical reading of the writing back of postcolonial authors, stressing the subversive elements of both science and fiction and their power to undermine dominant narratives of cultural imperialism and (neo)colonialism (Chambers, 2003; Hoagland and Sarwal, 2010; Langer, 2011; Smith, 2012; Varughese, 2013 and 2017). In this article I focus on a piece of colonial-era science fiction from a non-Western writer: Jagadish Chandra Bose’s short story “Runaway Cyclone”. First published in 1896 and republished in an extended version by the author in 1921, I analyse how Bose’s story combines elements of science fiction and magical realism. I then argue that Bose turns the narrative tropes of Western science fiction on their head and thus undermines Western science as an epistemological tool of imperial control. Reading “Runaway Cyclone” alongside Bose’s non-fictional accounts on science in colonised India will then reveal a philosophy of science that embraces Western science and Indian philosophy, which in turn can be read as a politics of science that is in effect anticolonial.

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Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction.

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Do Robots Have Race?: Race, Social Construction, and HRI

Do Robots Have Race?: Race, Social Construction, and HRI

Jagadish Chandra Bose and the anticolonial politics of science fiction

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