Description
Book SynopsisImagining Slaves and Robots in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture: Reinventing Yesterday''s Slave with Tomorrow''s Robot is an interdisciplinary study that seeks to investigate and speculate about the relationship between technology and human nature. It is a timely and creative analysis of the ways in which we domesticate technology and the manner in which the history of slavery continues to be utilized in contemporary society. This text interrogates how the domestic slaves of the past are being re-imaged as domestic robots of the future. Hampton asserts that the rhetoric used to persuade an entire nation to become dependent on the institution of chattel slavery will be employed to promote the enslavement of technology in the form of humanoid robots with Artificial Intelligence. Imagining Slaves and Robots in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture makes the claim that science fiction, film, and popular culture have all been used to normalize the notion of robots in domestic spaces and relationships. In examining the similarities of human slaves and mechanical or biomechanical robots, this text seeks to gain a better understanding of how slaves are created and justified in the imaginations of a supposedly civilized nation. And in doing so, give pause to those who would disassociate America's past from its imminent future.
Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION Reading the Writing on the Wall CHAPTER 1. Racing Robots and Making Slaves: How the Past Informs the Future CHAPTER 2. Proslavery Thought and the Black Robot: Selling Household Appliances to Southern Belles CHAPTER 3. The True Cult of Humanhood: Displacing Repressed Sexuality onto Mechanical Bodies CHAPTER 4. The Tragic Mulatto and the Android: Imitations of Life in Literature and on the Silver Screen CHAPTER 5. AI (Artificial Identity): The New Negro CHAPTER 6. From Fritz Lang to Janelle Monae: Black Robots Singing and Dancing CONCLUSION When the Revolution Comes BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX
