Beyond trauma? Memories of Joi/y and memory play in <i>Blade Runner 2049</i>

Simine, Silke Arnold‐de

doi:10.1177/1750698018811989

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(20 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Meetings were closely surveilled and censored; many of its leaders were imprisoned, its press driven abroad. When the Sozialdemokrat argued in 1881, from its exile in Zurich, that the single most important feeling in the memory of the Commune was that of hatred, 23 this hatred clearly had a mobilizing function. It taught German workers that to prevail against the forces of reaction, they had to close ranks, build strong organizations, and never collaborate with the hateful enemy.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From hatred to hope: Emotions, memory and the German labour movement in the late-nineteenth century

Reick

2023

Memory Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over the past few years, scholars from a broad range of disciplines have started to explore the role that emotions play in the collective memory of social movements. Against this backdrop, they have proposed that activists do not necessarily commemorate failed struggles by drawing on negative emotions such as suffering and grief. As a case in point, the interdisciplinary literature has drawn attention to the fact that the historical labour movement commemorated even events that ended in bloodshed and defeat, such as the Paris Commune of 1871, through performances and writings that evoked feelings of hope and joy. Analysing commemorative practices by the German labour movement in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this article shows that Commune memory differed considerably in Germany. In a first step, the article shows that during the two decades following the Commune’s bloody demise, German socialists remembered the Paris Commune by drawing on hatred, anger, and grief – not hope or joy. In a second step, the article demonstrates that while the 1890s did see the rise of memory practices that emphasized hope, this was a peculiar kind of hope largely detached from the historical event that was commemorated. By the turn of the century, the German labour movement had established a memory tradition that saw the Commune as a painful but necessary step in the forward march of the movement. In a short conclusion, the article explores some of the reasons why memory traditions by the German labour movement differed from the pattern detected elsewhere. In so doing, it shows that the change in the affective repertoire corresponded to a change in the political needs of the movement. The conclusion thus points to how the historical examples discussed here contributes to a better understanding of role of emotions in social movements more generally.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From hatred to hope: Emotions, memory and the German labour movement in the late-nineteenth century

Reick

2023

Memory Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Her globally mediated trauma lets humans see themselves in their android others. The process can be likened to what Arnold-de Simine (2019) finds in Blade Runner 2049 , in which “traumatic memory has an essentially humanizing effect in this posthuman world” (p. 65). The lesson offered is that for the posthuman era we seem to be entering, humans should resist temptations that arise from humanism’s granting of primacy to human subjectivity.…”

Section: Migration and Terrorismmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…These murderous robots let their actions and identities be informed by trauma, a key concept within memory studies. Trauma has been argued to have the ability to humanize and help engender empathy (Arnold-de Simine, 2019). Yet in times of crisis, memory can resolidify in response to collective trauma (Creet, 2011).…”

Section: Memory and Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory as tyranny: A dataist argument for posthuman interconnectivity in Humans and Real Humans

Larsen

2020

Memory Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Android fiction has connected memory to personhood in a variety of ways. The Swedish TV series Real Humans (2012–2014) and its British remake Humans (2015–2018) argue that lived experience is insufficient for making memories authentic. If experiences are to be more than data, they must be imprinted with affect or another subjectivizing force. For the humanoid robots themselves, such memories do not anchor their identity in the past, but in the evolutionary potential of their future. The present-day narratives of these series thus function as pre-memories both for androids that must unite around a creative imaginary, and for viewers who are encouraged to prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s new master-narrative, something akin to Yuval Harari’s dataism, an intersubjective posthumanist creed. Freed from the tyranny of prosthetic and inauthentic memories, the androids join a super-intelligence that offers dataist universal interconnectivity, which is portrayed as a benevolent break with humanism.

show abstract

“…2Timely books and scholarly works have been dedicated to the underpinning philosophical, psycho-analytical, theological, patriarchal, ideological and socio-political bearings of Blade Runner 2049 (See, for example, Arnold-de Simine, 2019; Botz-Bornstein, 2021; Neill, 2021; Shanahan and Smart, 2019; Shaw, 2020; Vint, 2020). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Postcyberpunk dystopian cityscape and emotion artificial intelligence: A spatio-cognitive analysis of posthuman representation in Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Elyamany

2022

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Within visual culture, postcyberpunk films are best approached as places of Otherness whereby human identity and agency are downplayed and posthumans are magnified in highly technopolic societies marked with scientific determinism. Postcyberpunk treats the posthuman enclave as a heterotopic site, oscillating between utopian and dystopian spaces, potentially and optimistically, creating a space for humanity to be reassessed and renegotiated. Against this backdrop, the current research endeavor proposes a Spatio-Cognitive Model of Posthuman Representation focusing attention on heterotopic ‘spaces’ and ‘bodies’ in hyperconnected environments. While the model owes a substantial debt to Foucault’s writings on heterotopia and the utopian body, in tilting the focus of enquiry, this paper is informed by the tenets of polyrhythmia, hypermimesis, spatial repertoires, semiotic assemblages and cognitive embodiment as insightful interventions. Blade Runner 2049 is taken as a fertile case study grounded in paradoxes and ambiguities around the contradiction between humans and replicants, artificial intelligence and super-large enterprises. The hybridity pertinent to the postcyberpunk film genre and the inner and outer topographies of posthuman representation proved to be insightful investigative vantage points of multimodal inquiry for the socio-political and technocratic implications they underlie. With technology seamlessly integrated into social spaces and posthuman bodies, Blade Runner 2049 is arguably structured as an emotional journey composed of multiple heterotopias (spatial layers, ruptures and bifurcations expressed through socio-political capitalist projections). The article adamantly argues for new philosophical perspectives and praxis in redefinition of the social relationship between human and posthuman.

show abstract

Beyond trauma? Memories of Joi/y and memory play in Blade Runner 2049

Cited by 9 publications

References 22 publications

From hatred to hope: Emotions, memory and the German labour movement in the late-nineteenth century

From hatred to hope: Emotions, memory and the German labour movement in the late-nineteenth century

Memory as tyranny: A dataist argument for posthuman interconnectivity in Humans and Real Humans

Postcyberpunk dystopian cityscape and emotion artificial intelligence: A spatio-cognitive analysis of posthuman representation in Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About