Race, Robots, and the Law

Raiford, Wanda. "Race, Robots, and the Law." New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction. Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox, editors. Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina Press, 2008: [93]-112.[1]

From the opening paragraph:

Since the literary robot first appeared in the early twentieth century [Raiford quotes Čapek's R. U. R. as her first of three headnotes], critics and fans have been reading the robot story as a cautionary tale or predictor for human relationships with technology — with the result that we now have a broad, nuanced, and evolving body of scholarship around such questions as cyborg culture, the sentience of artificial intelligence [AI], and the technicity [sic: see below*] and other aspects of the posthuman world. But to look at the robot as representing itself, a machine [...] without pausing over the obvious metaphorical racial implications of the man-versus-machine trope reveals a stubborn literal-mindedness that has its roots in our deep discomfort and reluctance [...] to face the fear and shame that permeates our real-world American multicultural experience. [...A]re we talking about the literary, fictionalized robot or the literary, fictionalized racial other?

The essay examines "the theme of robot as African American in Isaac Asimov'e robot stories, particularly "Robbie" and the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica, primarily Battlestar Galactica (2004-09). Raiford ends her introductory paragraph with, "Reading racially, I will also look at the critical race studies applications fro these works where questions of race and law became inextricably intertwined" (p. [93]).

Works discussed include

R. U. R. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Measure of a Man" and Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Redemption II"

"The Bicentennial Man"

Battlestar Galactica: The 2004 reboot but with implications for the original series: "The Battlestar Galactica plot device of an endless army of identical Cylons creates a fictional reality that mirrors the black American experience under the white gaze, where" quoting Ralph Ellison, stereotypes "'denied blacks individuality and allowed any Negro to be exchanged with any other'" (Raiford, p. 106). Deals with human/Cylon sex and "What does it mean to be a frakking toaster-lover" (pp. 105-08).

Of interest also: extended note 4 on how "The decision to use the word robot here to mean android, cyborg, and robot is deliberate [...]" (p. 110).

______________________

• Isiah Lavender, III, "Technicity: AI and Cyborg Ethnicity in The Matrix" (Extrapolation 45.4 [Winter 2004]: here, 439), cited by Raiford, p. 100: "AI and the cyborg," at least in Hollywood drama, "symbolize new ethnicities — technicities."

RDE, finishing, 24Dec21