Imagining Slaves and Robots in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture

Reinventing Yesterday's Slave with Tomorrow's Robot

Gregory Jerome Hampton

Imagining 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.

Lexington Books

Pages: 114 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-0-7391-9145-3 • Hardback • October 2015 • $101.00 • (£78.00)

978-1-4985-2758-3 • Paperback • July 2017 • $50.99 • (£39.00)

978-0-7391-9146-0 • eBook • October 2015 • $48.00 • (£37.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / African American, Literary Criticism / General, Social Science / Popular Culture, Social Science / Slavery

Imagining Slaves and Robots in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture

Reinventing Yesterday's Slave with Tomorrow's Robot

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Imagining 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.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 114 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-0-7391-9145-3 • Hardback • October 2015 • $101.00 • (£78.00)

978-1-4985-2758-3 • Paperback • July 2017 • $50.99 • (£39.00)

978-0-7391-9146-0 • eBook • October 2015 • $48.00 • (£37.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / African American, Literary Criticism / General, Social Science / Popular Culture, Social Science / Slavery

Author

Gregory Hampton is associate professor of African-American literature and is the director of graduate studies in the Department of English at Howard University.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTIONReading 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
CONCLUSIONWhen the Revolution Comes
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX