FREN 378 - Inventing the Future: Technology, Utopia and Dystopia in French Literary and Visual Culture

Today, we are obsessed with the promise and the perils of technology. We love and rely on our computers and gadgets, yet we also fear technology addiction, electronic surveillance, and the uncertain social and economic effects of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, some thinkers foresee that we will soon arrive at a moment of “singularity” in our relationship to technology with the creation of biologically-enhanced posthumans. In this course, we will consider how our fears and desires have been shaped by a long and often suspicious history of reflection on technology, including a particularly rich French literary and cinematic tradition. We will seek perspective on our contemporary situation through the analysis of French fiction, art, film, and graphic novels associated with the genre of science fiction, and which take as their principal themes speculation on technology and science; travel in time and space; human nature and its limits and our differences from other terrestrial and extra-terrestrial beings; and utopian or dystopian representations of the future. We will consider what these French science fiction works tell us about how we should understand technology as a distinct form of human endeavor, and what they also tell us about what it means to be human or even posthuman? Are French science fiction works a projection or “journey into fear” reflecting only the anxieties of the historical moments that produce them, or can they suggest real possibilities for radical social transformation? How have French science fiction works contributed to the development of the science fiction genre, and to what extent do they reflect a specifically French attitude to technology and science? And how are French feminist authors and writers of color challenging the genre’s presuppositions and renewing it for contemporary audiences? Texts and films studied may include works by Cyrano de Bergerac, Mercier; Verne; J.J. Grandville; Jodorowsky and Moebius; Marker; Godard; Laloux; Steward; Denis; and Darrieussecq, as well as short readings of theorists of technology including Haraway, Jameson, Heidegger, Latour, and Mbembe. Prerequisite(s): FREN 204 Offered occasionally. (4 Credits)