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THE EXQUISITE CORPSE:
DISARTICULATIONS OF THE ARTIFICIAL FEMALE
by
Allison de Fren
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CRITICAL STUDIES)
December 2008
Copyright 2008 Allison de Fren
Object Description
| Title | The exquisite corpse: disarticulations of the artificial female |
| Author | de Fren, Allison |
| Author email | adefren@conncoll.edu; defren@usc.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Cinema-Television (Critical Studies) |
| School | School of Cinematic Arts |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-14 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-15 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Renov, Michael |
| Advisor (committee member) |
McPherson, Tara Lippit, Akira Mizuta Anderson, Steven F. |
| Abstract | This dissertation examines artificial women in literature, art, and cinema from the myth of Pygmalion to the present, as well as the dialogue between such fictional beings and their real-life counterparts, from historical automata to the current development of life-sized silicone lovedolls and gendered robots. Whether real or imaginary, the artificial female tends to get theorized in relation to the Pygmalionesque desire for either perfection or perfect versimilitude; in contrast, this dissertation focuses on artificial female bodies that resist both realism and humanity and whose "mechanicity" is foregrounded. It argues that the "failed Galatea" expresses a different set of desires than the successful one, for she remains a borderline site suspended between contradictory states -- the human and technological, aesthetic and scientific, animate and inanimate, perfection and imperfection, exteriority and interiority, fantasy and reality -- and it interrogates the ambivalences engendered by such vacillation, as well as the particular meanings that accumulate around artificiality in relation to gender.; For example, the "artificial" artificial female body is often pitted against classical and normative conventions around love and beauty; it is used as a cipher for that which cannot be seen or represented, but only intuited; and it opens a space for the imagination and play, both in the sense of what children do with dolls and in the sense of linguistics or semiotics as that which decenters structure. Such roles are explored within a range of core texts -- including Villiers d'Isle-Adam's novel L'Eve Future (Future Eve, 1886), E.T.A. Hoffmann's short stories "Automata" (1814) and "Der Sandmann" (The Sandman 1816), and Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis -- andparallels are drawn to contemporary works from The Stepford Wives (1975) and Lars and the Real Girl (2007) to the Realdoll (a life-sized silicone lovedoll currently available for purchase on the internet) and ASFR (alt.sex.fetish.robots), an internet fetish community devoted to fantasies around robotic women. |
| Keyword | gender and technology; fembot; robot; android; automata; anatomy theater; dissection; metropolis; the sandman; asfr; bellmer; surrealism; l'eve future; female robot; artificial female; realdoll |
| Coverage date | circa 1814; circa 1816; circa 1884; circa 1975; circa 2007 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1672 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | de Fren, Allison |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Fren-2417 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume29/etd-Fren-2417.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | THE EXQUISITE CORPSE: DISARTICULATIONS OF THE ARTIFICIAL FEMALE by Allison de Fren A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (CRITICAL STUDIES) December 2008 Copyright 2008 Allison de Fren |
