Thesis Chapters by Sandra Moyano-Ariza
CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1541, 2016
This project is framed in the recent turn to speculation in philosophy which aims to develop new ... more This project is framed in the recent turn to speculation in philosophy which aims to develop new ontologies that deprivilege the human and human cognition, in turn claiming the capacity of all entities to hold agency in experiential processes. New philosophical scholarship is seeing the resurgence of an old problematic within this turn: the ontological debate of substances vs. relations. The study is structured around these two positions, represented by Graham Harman's object-oriented ontology which claims the essence of all entities and Steven Shaviro's understanding of relationality through Whitehead's structure of experience and becoming, respectively. These two positions will help us situate the alternative metaphysics posited by media theorist Mark Hansen in regards to twenty-first-century media’s expansion of sensibility and experiential capacities. His analysis of contemporary technologies proposes a new interpretation of Whiteheadian philosophy that inverts the common understanding of his structure of experience. Hansen uses Whitehead to lay out a new post-phenomenology where twenty-first-century media have access to expanded levels of sensibility beyond human cognition and indeed have a central role from outside in the constitution of human experience. This investigation situates Hansen’s radicalization of Whitehead within this problematic and pinpoints the metaphysical aspects that make his media analysis a valid contemporary alternative to rethink such ontological debate in the rise of the nonhuman. Most importantly, however, it is to think politically of Hansen’s paradigm in relation to new contemporary debates about technocultural mediations of subjectivity in the context of worldly sensibility
Papers by Sandra Moyano-Ariza
The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, and Technology
Athenea Digital. Revista de pensamiento e investigación social
Athenea Digital , 2020
Este artículo mapea la intersección de la teoría del afecto con la literatura y el arte mediante ... more Este artículo mapea la intersección de la teoría del afecto con la literatura y el arte mediante la revisión de la cuestión de la representación. En el artículo mantengo que la teoría del afecto revitaliza esta problemática, transformándola en un debate sobre mediación y produciendo dos nuevos gestos teóricos al entrar en contacto con obras literarias y artísticas. Por un lado, parte de esta literatura se ha quedado "en la representación," ya que se acerca al afecto como un exceso de procesos cog-nitivos emocionales para analizar y expandir su conocimiento e influencia en las representaciones de estos procesos afectivos, tanto en la teoría literaria y artística como en la elaboración de paradigmas epistemológicos. Por otro lado, la teoría también ha intentado ir "más allá de la representación," investigando el afecto como una tercera entidad autónoma en procesos de mediación con capacidades para afectar y traspasar la cognición humana. Al tratar el afecto como una nueva entidad capaz de subjetividad en sí misma, las preocupaciones críticas que infor-man este gesto giran en torno a cuestiones ontológicas, y priorizan lo que el afecto es y hace a los cuerpos más que lo que significa.
This paper maps the intersection of affect theory with literature and art through the revision of... more This paper maps the intersection of affect theory with literature and art through the revision of the question of representation. I argue that affect theory reinvigor-ates the problematic of representation by turning it into a debate about mediation, producing two main critical gestures when in contact with literary and artworks. On the one hand, scholarship has stayed "between representation" by taking affect as excessive of cognitive processes in order to analyze and expand how affect influences our representations of these processes, both when doing literary and art criticism, and when elaborating epistemological paradigms. On the other, theory has also stepped "beyond representation" by looking at affect as an autonomous entity in mediation whose capacities affect and surpass human cognition. In treating affect as a new capacious entity, critical concerns revolve around ontological questions, and they prioritize what affect is and does to bodies more than what it means.
Conference Presentations by Sandra Moyano-Ariza
Black Mirror's "Hang the DJ:" On Love in Algorithmic Embodiment. My paper discusses the episode t... more Black Mirror's "Hang the DJ:" On Love in Algorithmic Embodiment. My paper discusses the episode titled "Hang the DJ" (2017) of Netflix-produced show Black Mirror, which tackles the highly computed experiences of romantic love. Rather than analyzing it as representative of current dating experiences within the regimes of digitization and datafication, I focus on how the episode's approach to these themes engages in ontological reflection about digital technologies, thus aligning with recent speculative philosophy and critical media theory scholarship. This ontological reflection comes with the episode's attempt to represent the algorithmic calculation itself, which I'll refer to here as "algorithmic embodiment." This algorithmic embodiment, I argue, grapples with knowledge-production of computational systems in order to, on the one hand, rethink the agency of digital technologies that decenter the human (which I'll tackle in the first part of my paper), and on the other, lead us, hopefully, to an alternative approach to understanding love in our neoliberal context (which I'll address at the end).
Drafts by Sandra Moyano-Ariza
Julia Ducornau’s horror film Titane (2021) tells the story of Alexia, the gender fluid protagonis... more Julia Ducornau’s horror film Titane (2021) tells the story of Alexia, the gender fluid protagonist with a strange relationship to cars, developed as a child when she gets titanium plates in her head after a car accident provoked by her father. Transferring the love object from her father to cars, Alexia experiences a sort of motorphilia as an adult whereby her sexuality and social identity is defined by technology, which materializes when she gets pregnant from having sex with an automobile. Since, for her, this aspect of her identity is not subjected to the transactional, hypersexualized view of the motor world and its objectification of women, those who position her as such are faced with a gruesome and torturous death. In a twist that challenges the audience’s expectations as well as the horror genre, what is set out to be a serial killer movie becomes one about unconditional love and our generative intimacy with technology.
My paper analyzes human/non-human bonds in the film, from the body horror in the killing spree to her compassionate and loving connection to a community of firefighters led by a man who adopts her as his son. Alexia's gender fluidity occurs along the transformation of her pregnant body, reminiscing of David Cronenberg's body horror but without the paranoia and technophobia that pervades in such representations. Rather, it is through her relationship to titanium that she can connect back to the human; it is precisely through this acceptance that she can reconcile herself with her technological flesh and her hybrid offspring. As my paper demonstrates, Ducornau's account of Eros and technology positions the posthuman as strangely yet inherently entangled and intimate with the technological, embodying the move away from the anthropocentric human theories of Eros and machine, intimacy and the nonhuman, currently emerging in critical theory.
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Thesis Chapters by Sandra Moyano-Ariza
Papers by Sandra Moyano-Ariza
Conference Presentations by Sandra Moyano-Ariza
Drafts by Sandra Moyano-Ariza
My paper analyzes human/non-human bonds in the film, from the body horror in the killing spree to her compassionate and loving connection to a community of firefighters led by a man who adopts her as his son. Alexia's gender fluidity occurs along the transformation of her pregnant body, reminiscing of David Cronenberg's body horror but without the paranoia and technophobia that pervades in such representations. Rather, it is through her relationship to titanium that she can connect back to the human; it is precisely through this acceptance that she can reconcile herself with her technological flesh and her hybrid offspring. As my paper demonstrates, Ducornau's account of Eros and technology positions the posthuman as strangely yet inherently entangled and intimate with the technological, embodying the move away from the anthropocentric human theories of Eros and machine, intimacy and the nonhuman, currently emerging in critical theory.
My paper analyzes human/non-human bonds in the film, from the body horror in the killing spree to her compassionate and loving connection to a community of firefighters led by a man who adopts her as his son. Alexia's gender fluidity occurs along the transformation of her pregnant body, reminiscing of David Cronenberg's body horror but without the paranoia and technophobia that pervades in such representations. Rather, it is through her relationship to titanium that she can connect back to the human; it is precisely through this acceptance that she can reconcile herself with her technological flesh and her hybrid offspring. As my paper demonstrates, Ducornau's account of Eros and technology positions the posthuman as strangely yet inherently entangled and intimate with the technological, embodying the move away from the anthropocentric human theories of Eros and machine, intimacy and the nonhuman, currently emerging in critical theory.