Technofetishism and the Uncanny Desires of A.S.F.R.

'''de Fren, Allison. "Technofetishism and the Uncanny Desires of A.S.F.R. (alt.sex.fetish.robots)."' Science Fiction Studies'' 36.3 (Nov. 2009), "Science Fiction and Sexuality." Pp. 404-440. Rpt. Latham, Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings. Includes full notes, illustrations (including Gynoid by Hajimi Sorayama, a robot femme fatale in the tradition of Robot Maria in METROPOLIS), a graph on "the Uncanny Valley," and an extensive list of Works Cited.

A highly useful essay perhaps best seen as having two parts: first a debate within the discourse-community of Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis, the second working at critical analysis in film, literature, photography, the plastic arts (including the making of mannequins and large sex toys), the sociology of festish groups, and other areas — with both discussions starting from and circuitously circling back to "the uncanny desires of A.S.F.R."

"In this essay" de Fren says she follows "the lead of both [Thomas, apparently] Foster and [E. L.] McCallum in an attempt to think through the technofetishistic relationship with the machine woman, as well as about the visual representations of machine bodies that are an outgrowth of that relationship" (In Latham, p. 379). The essay repeats the "mantra" of ASFRians that "ASFR is not about the objectification of women, it's about the feminization of objects" (in Latham, p. 381). The emphasis is very much on the human female as robot, doll, or cyborg, perhaps most usefully in Japanese culture and among gaijin consumers of Japanese anime and other graphic-narrative work. The author states explicitly that she "will argue that A.S.F.R. is less about technology in general, or the artificial woman in particular, than it is a strategy of denaturalization that uses the trope of technological 'programming' to underscore subjecthood. Like the trope of 'hardwiring' […] 'programming' serves as a metaphor for the biological and cultural matrices within which desire is articulated and pursued." She states she will "argue that in its attempt to unmask the artificial body through physical breakdown" — moments of human-like robots breaking down and revealing their mechanical nature are important here — "the ASFRian gaze is less aligned to fetishistic scopophilia — the desire to see but not to know, which is generally read in relation to the cohesive male subject — than with the self-reflexive curiosity of Pandora, the desire to see beneath the seen" (in Latham 379-80).

Discusses briefly LOVE OBJECT (2003), "the first film to use a Realdoll [sic] as a character" (in Latham 383); the image "Who She Really Is" by the artist known just as Kishin (Figure 2, in Latham 385); THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975) and its remake in 2004; and, more extensively, E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman" — we said this was a Freudian study (in Latham 380, 390, and passim) — and the classic Twilight Zone episode "The Lonely" (in Latham 387-88) — and alludes to ASFRian interest in female robots on The Outer Limits and classic Star Trek (in Latham 384).

The concluding sections of de Fren's discussion deal at some length with "the German artist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), best known for his photographed poupées or dolls," especially in "a small book he published with his own money called Die Puppe (The Doll [sic, no italics], 1934); see also de Fren's Figure 4, for Bellmer's poupée in Minotaure 6 (Winter 1934-35), including obvious, lay-figure-like dolls with wooden ball joints (in Latham pp. 396-97) but also one or more gynoids, or what Bender Rodriguez would call somewhat more neutrally, a "fembot." The concluding section, "Eye Robot" centers on GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE, sequel to GHOST IN THE SHELL (animation, 1996) and usefully relates the GHOST movies to Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto", Bellmer's work, and, most importantly, how "Ghost in the Shell 2 recreates the legacy of Japanese ningyō, including dolls, puppets, and automated mechanisms (karakuri), and reminds us of their relevance to the cyberbodies of the current technosphere" (in Latham 407). In today's Japanese "humanoid companions" and in characters in Japanese art we may see "descendents of karakuri ningyō," the "autonomous mechanical or clockwork dolls that were popularized during the Edo period in Japan," reaching a pinnacle in the "'tea-serving' karakuri automaton, circa 1800" shown in de Fren's Figure 9 (in Latham 406-07).

The concluding sections of de Fren's discussion deal at some length with "the German artist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), best known for his photographed poupées or dolls, especially in "a small book he published with his own money called Die Puppe (The Doll [sic, no italics], 1934); see also de Fren's Figure 4, for Bellmer's poupée in Minotaure 6 (Winter 1934-35), including obvious, lay-figure-like dolls with wooden ball joints (in Latham pp. 396-97) but also one or more gynoids, or what Bender Rodriguez would call somewhat more neutrally, a "fembot." The concluding section, "Eye Robot" centers on GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE, sequel to GHOST IN THE SHELL (animation, 1996) and usefully relates the GHOST movies to Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto", Bellmer's work, and, most importantly, how "Ghost in the Shell 2 recreates the legacy of Japanese ningyō, including dolls, puppets, and automated mechanisms (karakuri), and reminds us of their relevance to the cyberbodies of the current technosphere" (in Latham 407). In today's Japanese "humanoid companions" and in characters in Japanese art, we may see "descendents of karakuri ningyō," the "autonomous mechanical or clockwork dolls that were popularized during the Edo period in Japan," reaching a pinnacle in the "'tea-serving' karakuri automaton, circa 1800" shown in de Fren's Figure 9 (in Latham 406-07).

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