Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi (Jan 2011)
Surrogating Bodies, Embodiment of Theories (Vekalet Eden Bedenler, Cisimleşen Kuramlar)
Abstract
Hollywood has intrigued critical minds through controversial films, especially in science-fiction, which might be considered as crossroads of several sociological, philosophical and cultural concepts/issues. The Surrogates (Jonathan Mostow, 2009) is one of the latest representatives in this "genre". When people of the future (let us call them Techno Sapiens) use their remotely-controlled "bodies", which are just perfectly designed robots, in order to avoid having any damage in their real "bodies", meaning of body, social relations, pleasure, life, experience, risk, Etc. shift into a very complicated level that provides a wide range of opportunities to discuss contemporary sociological and theoretical lines including body and politics, power, bio-politics, gender, everyday life and so on. This paper has the intention of discussing all these theoretical issues through reading Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Zizek. Cinema is a symptomatic field to analyze tendencies of modern societies and science-fiction has offered richer symptoms than any other genre in the history of film industry. Usually exaggeration of "now" is the way to imagine "future" in science-fiction literature and cinema. So, this paper will give us the chance to discuss what are the current "body politics" drive modern people towards the dystopia of The Surrogates. Critical concepts of the above mentioned theorists/thinkers will be corner-stones of our experience for "practicing theory" around The Surrogates.
