Chanda, Sagnika
(2021)
PRECARIOUS BODIES: POSTHUMANISM, GLOBALIZED LABOR, AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
This dissertation examines creative works —fictional but rooted in contemporary conditions —about people from the Global South who have entered the information economy based in the Global North, in most cases as workers but in some cases as media material.Guy Standing’s concept ofthe “precariat” captures some important features of workers’ contingency in recent decades, but it was modeled on conditions specific to the Global North, such as the recent dismantling of social welfare programs that had offered stability to previous generations of workers.In the Global South, industrial labor has a different history, shaped by centuries of colonialism and the more recent geopolitical dominance of the Global North.Labor in tech industries is affected in specific ways by the global divide,which has resulted in the Global North’s outsourcing work to the Global South and importing laborers from it.Not surprisingly, cyberpunk, a genre that famously explores corporate control of invasive technology, has also been refashioned for the Global South. An important framework for understanding the works of speculative film, literature, and Virtual Reality assembled here isposthumanism.Whereas a traditional ethical and political response to the plight of exploited workers and suffering disaster victims in the Global South is to humanize them and in that way mobilize efforts to secure or bolster their human rights, a commitment to posthumanism entails recognizing that the “human” carries a legacy of exclusion and is deeply anthropocentric. Posthumanism, a framework that marks and invites transformation, seeks to register not only our entwining with technology but also our being embedded in the living and non-living world.In keeping with this emphasis on blurring and superceding the human, the chapters of the dissertation highlight “becoming machine,” in Alex Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer(2008) and a VR installation by Rivera and Nonny de la Peña, Reaching the Shore (2016); “becoming waste,” in
Hari Kunzru’s novel Transmission(2005) and For Here or to Go,(2015) a film directed by Rucha Humnabadkar; and “becoming animal or even monster,” in two novels: Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad (2018) and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People(2007).
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
18 December 2021 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
1 December 2021 |
| Approval Date: |
13 September 2024 |
| Submission Date: |
10 December 2021 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
185 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > English |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
cyberpunk,posthumanism,precariat,bodies |
| Date Deposited: |
13 Sep 2024 18:56 |
| Last Modified: |
13 Sep 2024 19:06 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/42071 |
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