The Robotic Imaginary: The Human and the Price of Dehumanized Labor

(Hardback)

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Tracing the connections between human-like robots and AI at the site of dehumanization and exploited labor The word robot-introduced in Karel Capek's 1920 play R.U.R.-derives from rabota, the Czech word for servitude or forced labor. A century later, the play's dystopian themes of dehumanization and exploited labor are being played out in fac

Reviews

"The Robotic Imaginary persuasively shows how contemporary depictions of robots and AI offer unique insight into both the governing conceptions of the human (of who does and doesnt count as fully human) and the gendered and racialized ways in which we are currently imagining and constructing labor."Priscilla Wald, author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative

"The Robotic Imaginary is a profound contribution to our comprehension of the human, read through technocultures of artificial intelligence and robotics. Jennifer Rhee makes an incisive and compelling argument for the connections between histories of devalued labor and of the dehumanized Other, and the limits of identification and knowability as the basis for an ethics of caring, thinking, feeling, and dying."Lucy Suchman, author of Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions

Author Bio

Jennifer Rhee is assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University.