Overview

In Surrogate Humanity Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora trace the ways in which robots, artificial intelligence, and other technologies serve as surrogates for human workers within a labor system entrenched in racial capitalism and patriarchy. Analyzing myriad technologies, from sex robots and military drones to sharing-economy platforms, Atanasoski and Vora show how liberal structures of antiblackness, settler colonialism, and patriarchy are fundamental to human---machine interactions, as well as the very definition of the human. While these new technologies and engineering projects promise a revolutionary new future, they replicate and reinforce racialized and gendered ideas about devalued work, exploitation, dispossession, and capitalist accumulation. Yet, even as engineers design robots to be more perfect versions of the human-more rational killers, more efficient workers, and tireless companions-the potential exists to develop alternative modes of engineering and technological development in ways that refuse the racial and colonial logics that maintain social hierarchies and inequality.

Full Product Details

Author:   Neda Atanasoski ,  Kalindi Vora
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Weight:   0.363kg
ISBN:  

9781478003861

ISBN 10:   1478003863
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   29 March 2019
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Acknowledgments  vii Introduction: The Surrogate Human Effects of Technoliberalism  1 1. Technoliberalism and Automation: Racial Imaginaries of a Postlabor World  27 2. Sharing, Collaboration, and the Commons in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The Appropriative Techniques of Technoliberal Capitalism  54 3. Automation and the Invisible Service Function: Toward an ""Artificial Artificial Intelligence""  87 4. The Surrogate Human Affect: The Racial Programming of Robot Emotion  108 5. Machine Autonomy and the Unmanned Spacetime of Technoliberal Warfare  134 6. Killer Robots: Feeling Human in the Field of War  163 Epilogue: On Technoliberal Desire, Or Why There Is No Such Thing as a Feminist A1  188 Notes  197 Bibliography  225 Index  233"

Reviews

By bringing a much more nuanced reading of race, gender, and difference to science and technology studies, Atanasoski and Vora provoke us to think more deeply about how our imagined technological futures always already serve to reproduce our most problematic pasts-and what forms or processes can disrupt and transcend these. This is a vital project that should speak to us all. -- Barbara Herr Harthorn * American Ethnologist * Surrogate Humanity...confirm[s] that the human is a contingent concept.... The authors also spotlight how contemporary discourses concerning automation, in particular, alternately promise liberation and threaten debasement while eliding the roles of racialized and colonial subjects in producing the technologies and materials on which automation relies. -- Rebecah Pulsifer * Women's Studies Quarterly * ...Surrogate Humanity usefully provides examples from literary, artistic, engineering, and scientific projects that critique or outright refuse technoliberalism's frame for recognizing full humanity. These rebellious acts of imagination show us that the potential exists to develop alternative designs and trajectories for technological development ... in ways that prioritize equity and justice. -- Anita Lam * Surveillance & Society * Surrogate Humanity is a fascinating and important book that provides a much-needed counter narrative to prevailing approaches in science and technology studies.... Complemented by their mode of collaborative writing as a radical feminist act, the book is thus certain to inspire scholars and activists alike.... -- Sibille Merz * Ethnic and Racial Studies * Atanasoski and Vora's major intervention in the automation debate is their argument that automation imaginaries are shaped by liberal humanism and the racial hierarchies embedded in it.... One strength of Surrogate Humanity is the range of technological discourses, objects, and processes in which the authors elucidate the logics of technoliberalism. -- J. Jesse Ramirez * American Quarterly * Atanasoski andVora write with thoughtful scholarship and careful word selection.... [Surrogate Humanity] also provides a generative grounding in relevant science and technology studies and race theory literatures.... [I]t should be required reading in any sociology course on colonization and empire. -- Laurel Smith-Doerr * Contemporary Sociology *

“By bringing a much more nuanced reading of race, gender, and difference to science and technology studies, Atanasoski and Vora provoke us to think more deeply about how our imagined technological futures always already serve to reproduce our most problematic pasts—and what forms or processes can disrupt and transcend these. This is a vital project that should speak to us all.” -- Barbara Herr Harthorn * American Ethnologist * “Surrogate Humanity...confirm[s] that the human is a contingent concept.... The authors also spotlight how contemporary discourses concerning automation, in particular, alternately promise liberation and threaten debasement while eliding the roles of racialized and colonial subjects in producing the technologies and materials on which automation relies.” -- Rebecah Pulsifer * Women's Studies Quarterly * “...Surrogate Humanity usefully provides examples from literary, artistic, engineering, and scientific projects that critique or outright refuse technoliberalism’s frame for recognizing full humanity. These rebellious acts of imagination show us that the potential exists to develop alternative designs and trajectories for technological development ... in ways that prioritize equity and justice.” -- Anita Lam * Surveillance & Society * “Surrogate Humanity is a fascinating and important book that provides a much-needed counter narrative to prevailing approaches in science and technology studies.... Complemented by their mode of collaborative writing as a radical feminist act, the book is thus certain to inspire scholars and activists alike....” -- Sibille Merz * Ethnic and Racial Studies * “Atanasoski and Vora’s major intervention in the automation debate is their argument that automation imaginaries are shaped by liberal humanism and the racial hierarchies embedded in it.... One strength of Surrogate Humanity is the range of technological discourses, objects, and processes in which the authors elucidate the logics of technoliberalism.” -- J. Jesse Ramírez * American Quarterly * “Atanasoski andVora write with thoughtful scholarship and careful word selection.... [Surrogate Humanity] also provides a generative grounding in relevant science and technology studies and race theory literatures.... [I]t should be required reading in any sociology course on colonization and empire.” -- Laurel Smith-Doerr * Contemporary Sociology * “Surrogate Humanity questions what it means to be human at all, and is an incredibly useful analysis for anyone interested in shifting from thinking about robots within a tool-using paradigm, to an ethics paradigm.” -- Lindsay Balfour * Cultural Studies *

By bringing a much more nuanced reading of race, gender, and difference to science and technology studies, Atanasoski and Vora provoke us to think more deeply about how our imagined technological futures always already serve to reproduce our most problematic pasts-and what forms or processes can disrupt and transcend these. This is a vital project that should speak to us all. -- Barbara Herr Harthorn * American Ethnologist * Surrogate Humanity...confirm[s] that the human is a contingent concept.... The authors also spotlight how contemporary discourses concerning automation, in particular, alternately promise liberation and threaten debasement while eliding the roles of racialized and colonial subjects in producing the technologies and materials on which automation relies. -- Rebecah Pulsifer * Women's Studies Quarterly * ...Surrogate Humanity usefully provides examples from literary, artistic, engineering, and scientific projects that critique or outright refuse technoliberalism's frame for recognizing full humanity. These rebellious acts of imagination show us that the potential exists to develop alternative designs and trajectories for technological development ... in ways that prioritize equity and justice. -- Anita Lam * Surveillance & Society * Surrogate Humanity is a fascinating and important book that provides a much-needed counter narrative to prevailing approaches in science and technology studies.... Complemented by their mode of collaborative writing as a radical feminist act, the book is thus certain to inspire scholars and activists alike.... -- Sibille Merz * Ethnic and Racial Studies * Atanasoski and Vora's major intervention in the automation debate is their argument that automation imaginaries are shaped by liberal humanism and the racial hierarchies embedded in it.... One strength of Surrogate Humanity is the range of technological discourses, objects, and processes in which the authors elucidate the logics of technoliberalism. -- J. Jesse Ramirez * American Quarterly * Atanasoski andVora write with thoughtful scholarship and careful word selection.... [Surrogate Humanity] also provides a generative grounding in relevant science and technology studies and race theory literatures.... [I]t should be required reading in any sociology course on colonization and empire. -- Laurel Smith-Doerr * Contemporary Sociology * Surrogate Humanity questions what it means to be human at all, and is an incredibly useful analysis for anyone interested in shifting from thinking about robots within a tool-using paradigm, to an ethics paradigm. -- Lindsay Balfour * Cultural Studies *

Author Information

Neda Atanasoski is Professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Humanitarian Violence: The U.S. Deployment of Diversity. Kalindi Vora is Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at the University of California, Davis, and author of Life Support: Biocapital and the New History of Outsourced Labor.

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