Bien que la science n’ait pas encore percé les secrets de la conscience humaine, les avancées dans le domaine de l’intelligence artificielle ont provoqué une résurgence du mythe de la créature artificielle dans le domaine de l’imaginaire. Ce mémoire vise à comprendre l’actualisation de ce mythe antique par la promesse scientifique contemporaine et son incarnation dans l’imaginaire cinématographique de science-fiction. Après un retour historique sur l’évolution du domaine de l’IA, j’insisterai sur le rôle joué par le cinéma de science-fiction dans sa capacité à construire un imaginaire scientifique crédible. Je me concentre sur le mythe antique de la créature artificielle pour ensuite mettre en évidence le point où il rencontre la science par l’usage du medium cinématographique, capable de transmettre cet « ailleurs » contenu dans la promesse scientifique et matérialisé par la science-fiction. Afin de rendre compte de cette actualisation, je forme un corpus de films en prenant soin de retracer la généalogie conjointe de l’évolution scientifique de l’IA et de sa projection dans l’imaginaire par la mise en parallèle dans l’analyse de l’actualité de la recherche technoscientifique au moment de la parution de chaque film du corpus. Par cette méthode j’arrive à liste suivante : Frankenstein (1931) ; 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968) ; Blade Runner (1982) ; Terminator 2 (1991) ; A.I : Artificial Intelligence (2001) ; Her (2013) ; Ex Machina (2015) ; Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Cette disposition me permet de constater l’évolution de la promesse de l’IA forte en prise avec la discussion que le réel entretient avec l’imaginaire du mythe de la créature artificielle. Par l’analyse des technologies qui sous-tendent la création de chacune de ces créatures, j’analyse la manière par laquelle la science-fiction matérialise la promesse scientifique d’une IA forte, et cela avant même l’érection de son domaine consacré (i.e. Frankenstein). Deux films ont cependant résisté à mon cadre d’analyse, Blade Runner et Blade Runner 2049, en offrant une histoire alternative de l’IA à partir d’une créature artificielle non pas entièrement technique mais cyborg, à l’interstice de notre monde biologique et celui de la machine. / Although science has yet to unlock the secrets of human consciousness, recent advances in Artificial Intelligence research have caused the myth of the artificial creature to resurface in the realm of the imaginary. This dissertation aims to understand the actualization of this ancient myth through the contemporary scientific promise of AI and its incarnation in the cinematic science fiction imagination. After a historical review of the evolution of the field of research in AI, I insist on the role played by science fiction cinema in its ability to build a credible scientific imagination. I then come back to the imaginary of the myth of the artificial creature to highlight the point where it meets science through the use of the medium of cinema, capable of transmitting this "elsewhere" contained in the scientific promise and materialize it through science fiction. I form a corpus of seven films retracing the joint genealogy of the scientific evolution of AI and its projection into the imagination by comparing it in the analysis of current events of technoscientific research at the time of the release of each film in the corpus. By this method I arrive at the following list: Frankenstein (1931); 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968); Blade Runner (1982); Terminator 2 (1991); A.I: Artificial Intelligence (2001); Her (2013); Ex Machina (2015); Blade Runner 2049 (2017). This allows me to describe the evolution of the promise of strong AI in the discussion that the real entertains with the imaginary of the myth of the artificial creature. By focusing on the technologies which underlie the creation of each of these creatures, I am able to analyze how science fiction materializes the scientific promise of a strong AI, and this even before the erection of its consecrated domain (i.e. Frankenstein). However, two films withstood our analytical framework, Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, by offering an alternate story of AI from an artificial creature not entirely technical but cyborg, at the interstice of our biological world and that of the machine.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse several of the extreme dystopian elements found in the Warhammer: 40000 megatext and reveal how these elements display critique towards authoritarian policies and philosophy. I opted for a close reading of several texts and analysed several characters’ relationship to the galactic empire known as the Imperium of Man and found themes of suppression of thought, self-existential crises and wishes for freedom. Through my analysis of the megatext of Warhammer: 40000, I argue that it is the governance of the Imperium of Man that creates these humanitarian issues, and, while not an explicit reference, has been influenced by our own human history. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att analysera ett flertal dystopiska element som existerar i det fiktiva universumet Warhammer: 40000 och påvisa hur dessa element avslöjar kritik riktad mot auktoritär politik och filosofi. Jag valde en fördjupad läsning av ett antal texter och analyserade karaktärernas relation till det galaktiska imperiet Imperium of Man och fann områden vars fokus var förtryck mot yttrandefrihet, existensiella kriser och drömmar om frihet. I min analys av Warhammer: 40000 argumenterar jag att styrelseskicket som etablerats i Imperium of Man skapar dessa humanitära kriser, vilket till viss del blivit inspirerat av mänsklighetens egen historia.

La science-fiction chinoise contemporaine gagne une attention considérable de la part du milieu académique et du public ces dernières années. Ce mémoire se concentre sur deux écrivains de science-fiction chinoise représentatifs, Han Song 韩松 (1965–) et Xia Jia 夏笳 (1984–), et examine comment leurs œuvres reflètent de manière critique la société moderne (chinoise) à travers trois sujets : l’identité, le genre et la nation. Les textes analysés sont : « The Passengers and The Creator 乘客与创造者 » et « Beauty Hunting Guide 美女狩猎指南 » de Han Song, « Goodnight, Melancholy 晚安忧郁 » et « A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight 百鬼夜行街 » de Xia Jia. En s’appuyant sur les théories en matière de la subjectivité et du langage ainsi que sur les critiques posthumanistes, le premier chapitre montre que les écrits de Han Song et Xia Jia réfutent le point de vue métaphysique de la possession de soi et produisent une vision critique de la subjectivité humaniste (anthropocentrique). Basé sur la discussion de la politique d’identité dans le premier chapitre, la deuxième partie du mémoire porte sur les représentations de genre dans « Goodnight, Melancholy » et « Beauty Hunting Guide ». Ces deux textes révèlent la construction sociale du genre à travers une narration hautement spéculative. « Goodnight, Melancholy » intègre subtilement la critique de l’hétéronormativité dans l’histoire, et « Beauty Hunting Guide » critique la violence et la consommation interhumaine dans la société moderne (chinoise) d’une manière similaire au « A Madman’s Diary 狂人日記 » de Lu Xun. En discutant les discours sur l’État- nation et le sinofuturisme, nous démontrons au troisième chapitre que les nouvelles de Han Song et Xia Jia illustrent pleinement l’ambivalence du concept de « Chineseness ». En un mot, ce mémoire aborde le pouvoir épistémologique des œuvres de Han Song et Xia Jia qui nous permet de reconceptualiser ce que nous comprenons comme « réalité ». / Contemporary Chinese science fiction has gained considerable attention from academics and the public in recent years. This thesis focuses on two representative Chinese science fiction writers, Han Song 韩松 (1965–) and Xia Jia 夏笳 (1984–), and examines how their works critically reflect on modern (Chinese) society through three topics: identity, gender, and nation. The texts analyzed are: Han Song’s “The Passengers and The Creator 乘客与创造者” and “Beauty Hunting Guide 美 女狩猎指南,” Xia Jia’s “Goodnight, Melancholy 晚安忧郁” and “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight 百鬼夜行街.” Relying on theories about subjectivity and language as well as posthumanist critics, I argue in the first chapter that Han Song and Xia Jia’s writings refute the metaphysical view of self-possession and produce a critical vision of humanistic (anthropocentric) subjectivity. Based on the discussion of identity politics in Chapter One, the second chapter focuses on gender representations in “Goodnight, Melancholy” and “Beauty Hunting Guide.” I contend that these two texts reveal the social construction of gender through highly speculative storytelling. “Goodnight, Melancholy” subtly integrates the criticism of heteronormativity into the story, while “Beauty Hunting Guide” critiques the violence and inter-human consumption in modern (Chinese) society in a way similar to Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary 狂人日記.” By discussing discourses about nation-state and Sinofuturism, I demonstrate in Chapter Three that Han Song and Xia Jia’s novels fully reveal the ambivalence of the concept of “Chineseness.” In a word, this thesis addresses the epistemological power of Han Song and Xia Jia’s works that allows us to reconceptualize what we understand as “reality.”

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In 1971, Isaac Asimov observed in humanity, a science-important society. For this he credited the man who had been his editor in the 1940s during the period known as the golden age of American science fiction, John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell was editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, the magazine that launched both Asimov's career and the golden age, from 1938 until his death in 1971. Campbell and his authors set the foundation for the modern sci-fi, cementing genre distinction by the application of plausible technological speculation. Campbell assumed the science-important society that Asimov found thirty years later, attributing sci-fi ascendance during the golden age a particular compatibility with that cultural context. On another level, sci-fi's compatibility with "science-important" tendencies during the first half of the twentieth-century betrayed a deeper agreement with the social structures that fueled those tendencies and reflected an explication of modernity on capitalist terms. Tethered to an imperative of plausibly extrapolated technology within an American context, sci-fi authors retained the social underpinnings of that context. In this thesis, I perform a textual analysis of stories published in Astounding during the 1940s, following the sci-fi as it grew into a mainstream cultural product. In this, I prioritize not the intentions of authors to advance explicit themes or speculations. Rather, I allow the authors' direction of reader sympathy to suggest the way that favored characterizations advanced ideological bias. Sci-fi authors supported a route to success via individualistic, competitive, and private enterprise. They supported an American capitalistic conveyance of modernity. / Master of Arts

Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006), the first major African-American woman science fiction writer and the only science-fiction author to win the MacArthur "genius" grant, died from an accidental fall in February 2006. She is remembered for her work, which clearly fits into the science-fiction tradition, with imagined near- and far-future technologies, telepathy, aliens, space travel, and time travel. Yet Butler's stories are not clichéd space operas featuring white men in spaceship battles. Whatever the near- or far-future setting, the challenging themes that form the substance of Butler's writing are always power, dominance, slavery, and the complexity of human relationships. Butler's best-known works include the Parable novels (Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents), in which the main character Lauren Olamina writes a series of verses that become a new religion in an imagined near-future dystopian version of the United States. This dissertation is a composition for SATB chorus, orchestra, and speaker based on these verses and on quotations from Butler herself describing how she became a writer and the genesis of the Parable series. The musical setting of these quotations highlights parallels between Butler's novels and her own life. In the accompanying paper I analyze my process of extrapolating selected themes from Butler's life and work. My intent is to demonstrate how these themes are interwoven into the musical setting at many levels, and to show how the particular quotations and themes I chose to set musically reveal Butler's insights about present-day human experience on a larger scale. / text

This dissertation explores the embodied and sensory dimensions of fantastic film, those elements that are generally held up in contrast to and, often, in excess of, narrative structure. I suggest a departure from the traditional approach to genre study which has been preoccupied with narrative formulas, themes, and iconographies. My goal is not to dispense with those kinds of analyses but to complement them and, importantly, to point to some neglected dimensions of genre pleasure. I propose to transform the presumably excessive pleasures of the fantastic genre into something essential to it. First, I explore the disavowal or avoidance of embodied sensation within popular genre criticism. I then turn to critique existing models of film reception, focusing particularly upon a critique of the ocularcentric or visualist framework. From this critique, I am able to suggest some criteria for an alternative theoretical model based upon embodiment. I propose a theoretical framework based, first, on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who demonstrates that human subjects are constituted materially and culturally through their perceptual relations within the world. Second, I rely upon a further interpretation of this phenomenology by the American philosopher Don Ihde. Ihde’s work, configured as “postphenomenology,” draws variously from technoscience studies, the philosophy of science, feminist, and posthumanist theory, and sketches a system for the application of an experimental phenomenology. With this method, I explore various embodied, sensational aspects of fantastic genre films, i.e., spectacle, gore, musical genre conventions. I describe and relate these aspects of fantastic film to other cultural venues, exploring common themes and structures among them. From this, I draw some conclusions as to the nature of these sensational genre pleasures for embodied human individuals. Simultaneously, I consider the possibilities for embodied difference among individuals. / text

<p>In this paper Mona Hatoums installation Corps étranger is discussed via a post structuralized method based on associative and semiotic comparisons with vanitas, a post-modern self-portrait, and as a representative for modern visual art. The analyze touches upon pornography, science fiction and the quest for scientific conquest in outer and inner space. Theoretical references are Foucault, Freud, Lacan, Barthes, Dolar, Said and Virilio. Hatoum makes the observer a voyageur with the aid of the latest medical technology, endoscope, which gives her the opportunity to make an introvert self-portrait when she films her own throat and rectum. But at the same time she makes the portrait of us all. I interpret this as a fictious science with postcolonial ideas, and the reference to science fiction is close at range. Hatoum takes the role as the other, the woman or the stranger and might flirt with Jülich interpretation of Corps étranger as a sign of the visual cultures colonisation of the human body’s inside, that is a conscious reference to sexuality, ethics and the search for knowledge and power.</p>

This investigation undertakes to re-centre the figure of the film star and their film appearances in the field of star study. To this end it uses Charlton Heston as its focus in a re-appraisal of existing methods of accounting for the star phenomenon in cinema. It also concomitantly re-assesses existing accounts of the significance of Charlton Heston as a film star. This thesis posits a robust method for identifying the specificities of the star’s contribution to a film’s meanings and effects across the body of their work by drawing on Andrew Britton’s understanding of the ‘star enactment’. Present approaches through which to engage with the details of a star’s performance are considered in detail and the weaknesses of those that seek to impose external schemas onto such discussions are highlighted. The difficulties with approaches that attempt to account for the star as a signifying phenomenon through the concepts of acting and performance are also considered. Existing methods which may allow for a fruitful investigation into the significance of the star enactment, such as the commutation test, are re- formulated in this study and their benefits are demonstrated through their application to key Heston star enactments. These new understandings are also made possible through the application of an ‘ekphrastic’ method of rendering film moments. Previous readings of Heston’s star figure are also re- appraised, and their conclusions questioned, through closer reference to the evidence of details from films. The fruitfulness of this method for analysing and commenting on film is thus demonstrated and Heston’s relationship to genre and its effect on performance style is also considered in order to be able to confidently assert the specific features of the Heston aesthetic.

This dissertation explores the role and significance of the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus in Western philosophy from Antiquity to today. Paying particular attention to its moral and existential meanings, an analysis of this in-depth investigation produces an overview of the exceptional array of the myth’s functions and themes. It demonstrates that the most significant functions of the Prometheus myth are its social, epistemic, ontological and moral functions and that the myth’s most significant themes are fire, rebellion, creation, human nature and ambiguity. The dissertation argues that this analysis brings to light meaningful information on two sides of a reference to the Prometheus myth: it reveals the nature, functions, themes and connotations of the myth, while information about these functions and themes provides access to fundamental meanings, moral statements and ontological concepts of the studied author. Based on its findings this work claims that, as in history, first, the Prometheus myth will still be meaningful in philosophy today; and second, that the analysis of the myth’s functions and themes will provide access to essential ideas underlying contemporary references to the myth. To prove the validity of these claims this thesis examines the contemporary debate on ‘human enhancement’. Advocates as well as opponents of enhancement make use of the Prometheus myth in order to support their arguments. Employing the acquired knowledge about the myth’s functions and themes, the dissertation analyses the references encountered. The results of this analysis confirm that the Prometheus myth still has a significant role in a contemporary philosophical context. They improve our understanding of the philosophical argument, ontological framework and ethics of the debate’s participants; and thus demonstrate that the information about the Prometheus myth acquired in this thesis is a useful means to reveal fundamental ideas and conceptualisations underlying contemporary (and possibly future) references to the myth.