Posthuman Ontology of Female-figured Intelligent Machines in Contemporary Sci-fi Films: Issues of Subjectivity and Embodiment from a Posthumanist Perspective

Posthuman, a term that is arousing keen interest in various academic fields and fields of culture and arts today, refers to the theoretical/practical figuration of a new post-human being that emerges through the convergence of humans and science and technology. Embedded here are reflections on the human condition from a perspective outside of anthropocentrism, ecological changes following the relationship between humans and non-humans, and above all, a vision of the evolution, creation, and emergence of humans and machines. On the one hand, posthuman is a being related to the evolution of humans through technology, and on the other hand, it can also mean an entirely new mechanical being that emerges from technology itself. This refers to an artificial machine with a high-dimensional artificial intelligence emerging from programming code and a body made of artificial synthetic composites. This paper collectively refers to these as 'Intelligent Machine' and has the purpose of including them in the category of life and configuring a posthuman ontology. In particular, this paper focus on thinking about the ontological characteristics and conditions of intelligent machine that have a female figuration in terms of body, intelligence, or functionality. If we focus on machines that have a female figuration and are socialized to a level similar to that of women in human society, we will critically examine the tendency of double othering by overlapping the conditions of existence of women who are othered in modern humanism and the conditions of non-human beings who are othered in posthumanism. This paper explores the figural and ontological aspects of female intelligent machine characters appearing in contemporary sci-fi films, as well as the issues of feminine/machine subjectivity and embodiment, focusing on posthumanist philosophy. They demonstrate the possibility of embodying radical femininity within the scope of human thought or going beyond it and configuring mechanical subjectivity as an independent being rather than an other or object of the human subject. In this way, through a vision that imagines the future, a discourse with contemporary politics can be produced.