Synopsis
Digital Stimulation explores the subject of intimacy, including romantic and sexual intimacy, between human and nonhuman entities, particularly technological entities. As relationships between humans and machines become increasingly prevalent, it is important to address the potential for such relationships to reflect, to reinforce, or to reinvent existing hierarchies. The distinction between man and machine, like the distinction between man and beast, between man and brute, between man and nature, between man and woman, and so on, is an expression of the anthropocentrism and androcentrism permeating western ideas of self and other. Concerns about the representation (or misrepresentation) and treatment (or mistreatment) of machines are of consequence for other human and nonhuman others as well, and this book details many of the ways in which depictions of machines, especially robots, mirror ideas and attitudes about various human and nonhuman others. This book also addresses the ongoing development of machines designed explicitly for intimate engagement with humans, such as sex robots. As they become more and more lifelike, it becomes progressively more urgent to cultivate compassion toward such machines.
About the Author
Mimi Marinucci completed a Ph.D. in philosophy and a graduate certificate in women's studies from Temple University in 2000. Currently serving as associate professor of philosophy and women's & gender studies at Eastern Washington University, Marinucci teaches courses on feminism, philosophy, and feminist philosophy. Marinucci, who is especially interested in the subjective and social aspects of knowledge production, particularly knowledge produced around issues of gender and sexuality, is the author of of several articles that employ references from popular culture in the service of a more scholarly agenda. Examples include 'There's Something Queer About The Onion' (forthcoming in The Onion and Philosophy, edited by Sharon Kaye, Open Court), 'What's Wrong with Porn?' (forthcoming in Pornography and Philosophy, edited by Dave Monroe, Wiley-Blackwell), 'Television, Generation X, and Third Wave Feminism: A Contextual Analysis of the Brady Bunch' (Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 38, Number 3, February 2005), and 'Feminism and the Ethics of Violence: Why Buffy Kicks Ass' (in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, edited by James B. South, Open Court, 2003). Marinucci is also the founding editor of Wave 2.5: A Feminist Zine, a two-time Utne Independent Press Award nominee (2005, 2009).
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