Selfless Servers, Weapons in Waiting : Androids Parenting Human Children in Raised by Wolves and I am Mother

• In the tv-series Raised by Wolves (HBO, 2020-2022) and the feature film I am Mother (2019), androids take on parental roles towards human children. This activates gendered discourses, simultaneously drawing on and challenging cultural conceptualizations of male and female parenting. The analysis investigates two aspects of the characters’ construction and understanding of their parental roles. First, parenting as an embodied activity is analyzed in relation to physical processes intimately connected with discourses of motherhood such as gestation and lactation, and to caregiving, nurturing and disciplining activities, exploring the shift between care and control, and the notion of the AI parenting body as a potential threat. Second, the purpose of parenting as perceived by the characters is examined. Drawing on an understanding of reproduction and parenting as a form of futurity where children are posited as the future of both the individual parent and humanity, as explored and critiqued by Edelman, the analysis will show that the narratives simultaneously build on and undermine such an understanding. The latter is identified as the result of transspecies parenting where narcissistic projections of self onto offspring are necessarily challenged. In this context, the discussion also pays attention to how gender inflects constructions of the purpose of parenting, exploring the complex positionings of Father and Mother in Raised by Wolves and the effect of the lack of a character functioning as a father in I am Mother. Ultimately, we ask the question – what would successful android parenting of human entail and whose future is secured? 

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Kulturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Cultural Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

androids

critical kinship studies

motherhood

parenthood

AI

feminist materialism

Engelska

English

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)