Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age

by Claudia Springer

Book Overview

The love affair between humans and the machines that have made us faster and more powerful has expanded into cyberspace, where computer technology seems to offer both the promise of heightened erotic fulfillment and the threat of human obsolescence. In this pathfinding study, Claudia Springer explores the techno-erotic imagery in recent films, cyberpunk fiction, comic books, television, software, and writing on virtual reality and artificial intelligence to reveal how these futuristic images actually encode current debates concerning gender roles and sexuality. Drawing on psychoanalytical and film theory, as well as the history of technology, Springer offers the first sustained analysis of eroticism and gender in such films as RoboCop, The Terminator, Eve of Destruction, and Lawnmower Man; cyberpunk books such as Neuromancer, Count Zero, Virtual Light, A Fire in the Sun, and Lady El; the comic books Cyberpunk and Interface, among others; and the television series Mann and Machine. Her analysis demonstrates that while new electronic technologies have inspired changes in some pop culture texts, others stubbornly recycle conventions from the past, refusing to come to terms with the new postmodern social order. Written to be accessible and entertaining for students and general readers as well as scholars, Electronic Eros will be of interest to a wide interdisciplinary audience.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292776977
• ISBN13: 9780292776975
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Readable Theory!

Springer's book delves into the changing nature of desire and the body in the face of new media technologies. The examples she uses are usually well known and her language is clear and concise. Unlike most cyborg theory, this book is fun and enjoying to read.