Gendering Robotic Bodies in Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me and Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous

Authors : Yağmur Sönmez Demir

Pages : 274-286

Doi:10.47777/cankujhss.1349670

View : 88 | Download : 95

Publication Date : 2023-12-29

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :With the ubiquity of robotic devices in contemporary age, human-like robots have become protagonists of literary works, especially of science fiction which extrapolates from the existing technology and represents how the societies will be arranged or what kind of rules the individuals will be imposed on in the future. In Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me (2019) and Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous (2017) humanoids are in the center of the narrative and though being mechanical human productions, they are expected to comply with heteronormative genders and required to perform their gender roles. Adams and Eves in Machines Like Me are produced in a limited number and created as factotum, while Paladin in Autonomous is a military bot who is produced as non-binary and without any gender marker; it is basically a machine with blades on its shoulders and hidden shields and weapons, yet because of its being in the military domain and its appearance, it is referred to as "he” by the humans until it was understood that he has a "woman’s brain.” From then onwards, Paladin was accepted as a woman, and she complied with the social expectations of femininity. When these novels are read through the prism of the classical theories of gender and posthuman feminism, it is observed that just like those of human beings, bodies of robots are also compelled to perform culturally constructed gender roles. Through a comparative examination of these novels, this paper investigates how humans are unable to leave their anthropocentrism behind and how human-centered perspective functions as an entrapment for the nonhumans and thus they are required to comply with the anthropocentric understanding of gender, which is still constructed in a binary logic in regulating the lives of nonhuman entities.
Keywords : cinsiyetli robotlar, cinsiyet edimi, zorunlu heteroseksüellik, bilim kurgu