Subjectivity and (De)Humanization in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann, Ernst Lubitsch’s Die Puppe and HBO’s Westworld
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Date
2020-09-24
Authors
Vigeant, Christine
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This thesis examines representations of female android subjectivities across three successive texts and media corresponding with three time periods: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story Der Sandmann (1816), Ernst Lubitsch’s silent comedy Die Puppe (1919), and the HBO science fiction series Westworld (2016-2018). All three stories engage the intersections of epistemology, subjectivity and gender, and feature portrayals of female automata and androids which significantly complicate and disrupt the contested terrain of human subjectivity in knowledge production and the conceptualization of human identity. Each work is analyzed as a representative of its distinct literary and cultural context – German Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism, respectively– to trace the evolution of subjectivity and the perceptivity of the human being from the Enlightenment to the 21st century. This work poses fundamental questions about the essence of humanness and the distortive effects of media on the ability to recognize the human in times of rapidly developing technological progress.
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Keywords
artificial intelligence, epistemology, film, gender, literature, subjectivity