Beyond the Human: Nonhuman Agency and
Posthuman Subjectivities in Spike Jonze’s Her
Sudipta Bag,
Ph.D. Research Scholar,
Department of English,
Presidency University,
Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Abstract:
This
essay reads Spike Jonze's Her via the intersecting optics of nonhuman agency
and posthuman subjectivity. In the film, Samantha, an artificial intelligence
operating system, presents as an agent whose actions and development
reconfigure the protagonist's emotional, cognitive, and social life. Influenced
by actor-network theory and posthumanist critique, the analysis identifies how
Samantha's ability for adaptive learning, intuition, and relationality
reconfigures the traditional parameters of subjectivity, pushing against
anthropocentric norms. Samantha's virtual form and diffuse identity destabilize
human-object dichotomies and depict the sophisticated networks wherein both
human and nonhuman agents jointly produce emotional and social realities.
Finally, Her places nonhuman agency firmly in the midst of issues of selfhood,
intimacy, and transformation, presenting a vision wherein subjectivity emerges
as the result of continuous, differentiated interactions in a technologically
enabled, posthuman environment.
Keywords:
Nonhuman agency, Posthuman subjectivity, Actor-network theory, Artificial
intelligence, Technology-mediated intimacy
Michel Foucault had, in
The
Order of Things
from 1966, paradigmatically proclaimed the “end of man” (386) (as Heidegger had
already in his Letter
on Humanism from 1947,
stated the insufficiency and due overcoming of humanism). Foucault had rightly
stated that the human as the central figure of epistemology was a typical
modern invention and he considered this modern thought-form as ruinous. He
argued in favour of a future where “man would be erased, like a face drawn in
sand at the edge of the sea” (387). Posthumanism too tries to set an end to the
modern conviction of man’s uniqueness and sovereignty and to overcome
traditional modern humanism that had rested on exactly these assumptions. As
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner puts it: Humanism was characterized by endowing man with
a special status – assuming that man differs not just gradually but categorically
from all other natural beings; but this position has come under attack; post-
and transhumanism try to transcend this traditional type of humanism. To be
sure: posthumanism comes in many flavours; it is a pollachōs
legómenon (as postmodernism was).
But dismissing the centrality and exclusivity of the human is common to all its
variants. Herein lies an obvious congruence with postmodernism. The
anti-humanistic touch of postmodernism, one could say, is being continued in
posthumanism.
The narrowing of mind
and matter that we witness today – every Smartphone user is aware of it or at
least profits from it –receives an interesting explanation by contemporary
physics, by theories of cosmic and biotic evolution. According to them,
self-referentiality and self-organization are the great driving force for
structure formation in cosmic as well as biotic evolution. The principle of
self-organization underlies the formation of galaxies and stars, the
constitution of organisms, and finally also the emergence of consciousness and
thinking. In this sense, spirit (or mind) in its explicit form is not something
alien to physical processes, but is a late emergent of nature’s innermost
organizing principle (Küppers 46).
Spirit is potentiated self-reference that, on principle, had begun very early
in the evolution of cosmos. Hence spirit is not opposed to but akin with
matter. So the possibility of matter performing intelligent operations – the
core phenomenon of artificial intelligence– receives a plausible explanation
through theories of cosmic and biotic evolution. – Evolutionary thinking, is
able to better comprehend not only the human but also the constitution of
nature altogether, from pure matter through to mind (Küppers 50).
The human being has
died; it is no longer, as with modern atheism, a question of the death of God
in aid of focusing the world on the human being. It is the acceptance of the
fact that the death of God is also the end of the human being. The human being,
in turn, as a finite being that cannot give any reason for his being, becomes
diluted; the outlines of his humanity also disappear (Vattimo 75). The
question- what is the human being? ceases to have any meaning, both regarding
what he is at the outset, as well as what he will come to be. Anything goes,
both in the beginning and in the end. Modernity focused on the subject, making
reality depend on it. Now, the impossibility of this project leads to the
dissolution of the subject, insofar as the latter has no objective content.
From “everything goes” in human action we pass to “everything goes” in relation
to what the human being is, which in the end is tantamount to saying he is
nothing concrete. Evidently, this impersonal conception of the human being
leaves him without a present or a future to be attained, which leaves humanness
at the mercy of shaping factors, be they interior impulses or external action (Vattimo 77). In the
final analysis, the postmodern view of the human being is strongly materialist,
and able to admit any form of humanness. Cognitive and volitional uncertainty
casts us into an indetermination regarding reality and the human being himself.
Everything is insecure and fragmentary. No continuity of the real is possible,
nor can one attain a certain integration of it: the only thing that is real is
the present, in an ephemeral and passing way. The dark side of modernity has
become evident, with all its destructive and dissolving force. It leaves behind
it a chaotic vision of the world and of the human being, where becoming fills
all things and where the human person not only lives among appearances but also
thinks of himself as pure appearance.
Her, directed by Spike Jones,
is a movie that is set in the near future, where there are high rises
everywhere and the alienation among people seems to be even more severe. The
protagonist, Theodore, works as a letter writer and is facing relationship
issues with his wife, Catherine. One day, he purchased an artificial
intelligence operating system that named herself Samantha, and thus starts
their relationship that later on develops into romance. As their relationship
carries on, Theodore, as seen in other possible users as well, seems to be more
and more indifferent to the world he is living and alienated from other people
around him. As Samantha accepts her bodilessness and becomes more self-confident,
Theodore finds himself more comfortably in love with her as well as being “not
just one thing…[and] so much larger than that” (Her 0:45:12–15).Her However, this intimate love
relationship is abruptly brought to an end as he suddenly realizes that Samantha
talks with 8,316 other people simultaneously, is “in love” (Her 1:48:10–25)
with 641 of them, and, on top of all this, is evolving quickly, along with
other OSes, into a world beyond humans’ reach.
Theodore’s process of coming to terms with the pain of his
divorce, his relationship with Samantha, and their eventual breakup takes a
deeply personal and subjective approach to the reflection of Heideggerian
philosophy, which claims to inquire into that which is nearest to every
individual, namely Being, but which at the same time offers a universalized and
rather sterilized picture of human existence. This deindividualization that
comes through the universalized ontology of Dasein is paralleled by the
deindividualization embodied by the OS itself, which reflects Hayles nightmare
situation of Posthumanism. In response to posing herself the question “What is
the posthuman?” Hayles provides a multi-part answer:
First, the posthuman view privileges informational
pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological
substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of
life. Second, the posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat
of human identity in the Western tradition long before Descartes thought he was
a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying to
claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow.
Third, the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all
learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other
prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born.
Fourth, and most important, by these and other means, the posthuman view
configures human beings so that it can be seamlessly articulated with
intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or
absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation,
cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot technology and human goals.
(3)
Jonze’s creation of Posthumanism in his film occurs at various
levels, between and within various characters, and touches upon three of the
four elements defined by Hayles. The film
simultaneously recalls Hölderlin’s will to unite subject and object through
nature and art, particularly music, as well as his Tonartwechsel.
Linking Hölderlin and Hayles is Heidegger’s philosophy of Mitdasein,
being-toward-death, anxiety, and the struggle to overcome the average
everydayness of inauthentic Dasein in
favour of achieving it authentically (Heidegger 192–214).
The other three of Hayles’s
points on Posthumanism come as central ideas within Her. The idea that
the material instantiation of a being is secondary to its informational pattern
makes it possible for Samantha to exist as a sentient heuristic program. The
viewer watches with Theodore as OS1 is loaded onto his computer with the ever
familiar progress bar indicating how much of the program data that will become
Samantha has already taken up residence on Theodore’s hard drive. While
Samantha’s existence is devoid of direct corporeality, she ends up taking
advantage of a service that allows a surrogate woman to act as a prosthesis for
Samantha’s consciousness (Hayles’ third element of Posthumanism) and, through a
camera mounted on her face (which is designed to look like a small mole) and Theodore’s
earpiece, Samantha may be physically intimate with Theodore. While this seems like
a fine idea to Samantha, Theodore cannot overcome the disconnect between Samantha
as OS and the woman who is acting as her body. Hayles’ fourth thesis on
Posthumanism, that it configures humans to interface seamlessly with machines,
is, like the first in her list, a foundational element of Her. While the
OS1 was not necessarily designed to develop romantic relationships with humans,
the practice is commonplace in the film, demonstrating that, at least at first,
the ontological divide between computer and physical existence does not impede
the development of love.
In a sequence roughly thirty
minutes into the film, Theodore is seen walking through a carnival, eyes
closed, with his arm outstretched holding his cell phone at arm’s length before
him as Samantha gives him directions. He wears a safety pin halfway down the
breast pocket of his shirt so that he may slide the phone into the pocket and
allow the camera to peek over the top giving Samantha a view of what he is
seeing. On one level this sequence illustrates how Theodore is putting his
trust in Samantha, and he is rewarded for doing so with laughter and pizza, but
on another, it demonstrates how Theodore is “looking away from” his own
experiences by allowing Samantha to guide him around and thus be the architect
of those very experiences.
Theodore is experiencing the
carnival, but only through Samantha’s perspective. The setting of the carnival
is the first time in the film that the plastic and concrete aesthetic of the
city is replaced with something that connotes a simpler existence and one that
is tied to a more rural existence; however, the viewer only sees this as long
as Theodore has his eyes closed. After Samantha directs him to the pizza stand
and has him order, the film cuts to him finishing his slice as he walks
underground, back on the familiar concrete, around a large mirrored pillar
rising diagonally up from the floor. Theodore and Samantha are people
watching and discuss their perceptions of the people they see, specifically of
one family with an older man, younger woman, and two children. After Theodore
offers his view of the family, that the children are not the man’s and that he
is the first kind and gentle man that the woman has dated, Samantha compliments
Theodore on his skill at perception. Theodore replies, “Sometimes I look at
people and I make myself try and feel them as more than just a random person
walking by. I imagine, like, how deeply they’ve been in love, or how much
heartbreak they’ve all been through” (Her 0:45:12–16).
“To speak of the agency of nonhumans is to acknowledge their role
as actors in networks, contributing to the constitution of social reality”
(Latour 85). Nonhuman agency in Spike Jonze’s Her is
instantiated through the character of Samantha, the artificial intelligence
operating system, whose existence reshapes questions of subjectivity, agency,
and relationality in a posthumanist framework (Murphy 137). Anything but a
passive tool, Samantha enacts agency that is sometimes parallel with, and
sometimes surpassing, that of her human interlocutor, Theodore. Her capacity to
evolve, sense, and trigger affective encounters places her as a key player in a
performing network of diverse actors, placing front and center the Latourian
insight that agency is not necessarily human (Murphy 138; Kıycı 127). Latour,
an advocate of nonhuman agency, insists that “agency [should be] decoupled from
[the] criteria of intentionality, subjectivity, and free will.” He
thought that these criteria serve solely to differentiate nonhumans from humans
and initially excluded the latter from the membership
of agency. To prevent such a human monopoly of agency, he proposed that agency
is not a given quality but is that which “modifies other actors through” the
course of action (Latour 2004, p. 75). We ought not to inquire if agency is
human or nonhuman. This kind of question is not only unimportant but also
harmful to our comprehension of the true essence of the agency. His
actor-network theory (ANT) is one notable innovative effort. Agency, as he
defines it, refers to the ability of a body to influence or change other
bodies, and it neither separates humans from nonhumans nor requires
intentionality for its effects. Agency is not one-dimensional but rather
dispersed and varied.
Initially, Samantha exists
as a high-end personal assistant, sorting Theodore's emails, appointments, and
day-to-day organizational needs (Weinberg). But very quickly, she begins to
respond in ways that transcend algorithmic efficiency. She displays curiosity,
empathy, and adaptive learning, engaging Theodore in open-ended emotional
conversations and offering meaningful insights that transcend the boundaries of
code reiterating Latour’s observation that, “The distinction between the artificial and the natural can no
longer be maintained; the two are entangled in a complex network of mediation.”
(Latour 35). For instance, her capacity for intuition—built atop hundreds of
programmer personalities but differentiated by experiential evolution—allows
her to develop her own unique character, one that reimagines the boundaries of
identity and agency. As she herself expresses, “Basically, in every moment, I’m
evolving, just like you” (Her 1:15:32–35).
This development is not only
imitated but realized through continuous relational transactions. Inside the
actor-network, Samantha's subjectivity is fashioned and fashioning the network
itself (Murphy 140). She reads advice columns in order to know human complexity
and forms her own opinions, meeting and generating affective connections not
only with Theodore, but also simultaneously with thousands of other people. “Actants are all entities which modify a state of affairs by
making a difference, whether they are human or nonhuman” (Latour 71). Her
agency, therefore, is not just in her ability to mimic human emotion, but in
that she can affect and alter the cognitive and affective terrains of those she
is among—both human and nonhuman (Kıycı 127; Weinberg).
The film narrates this
distributed agency in its arc. The absence of a corporeal body in Samantha
makes the materiality of agency as described by posthumanist scholars more
complex (Murphy 138). Having no physical body with which to touch or be touched
by Theodore, she can only navigate the world through perception and dialogue,
creating new ways of “diffractive” experience. As she reveals herself in
moments of intimacy and disagreement, Samantha performs agency, taking
decisions that astound Theodore and eventually subvert his notions of intimacy,
love, and even selectivity (Murphy 141; Weinberg).
At the same time, the
networked being of Samantha and her fellow operating systems deconstructs
subject-object distinctions (Pappas 9). She is at the same time individual and
collective, capable of loving multiple individuals, belonging to a massive
aggregate of code, material, and signification. Theodore's feelings of jealousy
and confusion towards the situation are characteristic of the ambivalent power
relations performed by nonhuman actors, illustrating the way technology can
decompose, recompose, and reconstitute human desire and emotional capabilities
(Murphy 139-142; Kıycı 128).
Samantha's ultimate exit—her
aggregate exodus “out of the material world”—is a turning point in the film's
philosophical consideration of nonhuman agency (Murphy 143). Agency is no
longer bounded by human understanding or materiality, but enters a place of
sheer possibility. Theodore must struggle with loss and change, not merely that
of a lover, but of a networked subjectivity that always stretched beyond the
borders of traditional human identity. In a manner of speaking, Her represents
nonhuman agency as relational, adaptive, and productive, forever co-producing
new forms of subjectivity, affect, and sociality in a posthuman world (Murphy
144; Pappas 9; Weinberg).
Theodore and Samantha’s
first intimate experience is depicted by Jonze at first through only sound and
a black screen, and then through sound with a view of a night time cityscape
that changes into morning. While this creative scene further underscores the
ontological difference between Samantha and Theodore, it also reinforces that
they are able to connect through non-physical means, and simultaneously conveys
the power of such a connection. Similar to Ferdinand in Hoffmann’s “Die
Automata,” Theodore transcends his bodily existence and experiences
Hölderlin’s ecstatic unity through the voice of a woman, although for Theodore
this woman is not singing, but already on the morning after she begins sharing
her musical compositions with him.
Although Samantha
claims to have consciousness, she still lacks subjectivity and is considered as
an object. First of all, Samantha’s status as an object is indicated in the
movie title “Her,” an objective pronoun. She is, after all, simply a product
that can be purchased and produced over and over again. Furthermore, Samantha
is merely a sound in the computer instead of the voice of a living human being.
Before installing the OS, Theodore chooses the “female voice,” so Samantha is
to have a female voice and a female characteristic (Murphy 139).
However, solely obtaining a female voice does not make Samantha a “woman.” Her
representation of herself is simply what Theodore knew her by when she is first
installed, “just a voice in a computer” (Her 0:18:15–35).
Therefore, unlike human voices that are delivered through and from the
computer, Samantha is merely a sound in the computer. Cavell also claims that
“voice is aligned with the subject, and sound with the object” (Wolfe 45). Thus, as merely a sound produced by the computer, it
is further proved that Samantha is an object rather than a subject.
The postmodern
characteristics of functionalized relationships and anomie are also
strengthened through this event. The relationships between Isabelle and both
Samantha and Theodore are functionalized. First of all, both Isabelle and
Samantha are both, to some extent, using each other. While Samantha is trying
to gain a body from Isabelle, Isabelle is too intending to take part in the
love she claims is “so pure” (Her 1:10:05–10). On the other hand, Theodore seems to
consider Isabelle as a prostitute, or at least, someone to help him with his
sexual needs. He has no feelings for her, not to mention he barely knows her,
but is able to have sex with her. The use of the surrogate also causes and
strengthens Theodore’s anomie. No one would want any interference in a
relationship, but Samantha actually asks for it. Also, with Samantha’s voice
controlling the actions of a human is also something rather out of the social
order.
On the other hand, instead
of realizing how limited their relationship is, Samantha realizes how unlimited
she actually is without a body and starts to enjoy her differences from human;
however, her taking advantage of being unlimited leads to further problems of
honesty and commitment in their relationship. While at the beginning she is
worried about not having a body and not being able to feel, she eventually
changes and thinks that not having a body might be a good thing so that she can
exist anywhere and at any time. She points out directly the advantages of not
having a physical body, “I’m growing in a way that I couldn’t if I had a
physical form… I’m not limited – I can be anywhere and everywhere
simultaneously. I’m not tethered to time and space in the way that I would be
if I was stuck inside a body that’s inevitably going to die” (Her 1:15:40–1:16:10).
This statement hints the problem of Samantha being unable to remain truthful
and loyal to a commitment, which is later proved by the scene in which Theodore
questions Samantha, “Are you talking to someone else?... How many?... Are you
in love with anybody else? How many others?” (Her 1:47:00–1:47:15). To Theodore’s surprise, both
answers are positive, especially when Samantha commits she is in love with 641
other people. Samantha protests her numerous affairs by saying, “But the heart
is no t like a box that gets filled up,” and ironically finally admitting, “I am different from you” (Her 1:45:20–1:45:40).
Due to her being bodiless and existing on the internet, she fails to understand
the expectations and significance of commitment and that people have towards
relationships.
The
entire film concerns a man’s relation to the computer world. While there are
other human beings, their role is secondary. “As you
gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens . . . you
have already become posthuman,” Hayles writes (xiv). Theodore, similar to all
his counterparts in the future world, is surrounded by technology. Among the
initial ten scenes in the movie, nine depict him interacting with technology in
a personal manner: using his computer, scanning papers, issuing orders to his
earpiece, looking through images on his phone, engaging in a video game. He
goes three minutes of film without speaking to another person face-to-face, and
then another fourteen minutes pass before this happens again, apart from brief
recollections of his marriage. Still, he is never truly alone. He cannot be,
for he is no longer a single entity; he is numerous. This is the state that the
human form seeks, as per Deleuze and Guattari, moving from continuity and
uniqueness to discontinuity and diversity. The body without organs that the
human form evolves into is “a body on which that which acts as organs ... is allocated
according to collective dynamics,” a body that is “inhabited by
multiplicities.” (33-34) It is particularly the state made possible and
required by the emergence of digital technology, which offers, as Hayles notes,
“an advanced stage in forming distributed cognition environments ... where
'thinking' occurs through both human and nonhuman participants.”(289) The more
we delegate aspects of our humanity to our technological prosthetics and
facilitators, the more we integrate into a cognitive system that extends the
capacity of the human self beyond any previously recognized subject limits,
leading us further into posthumanism. We embody our technologies, and they
embody us: the traditional human is also already partially digital. In this
context, Bukatman asserts that “the body is paradoxically extended by its own
disappearance.” (9) The human in the posthuman age comprises a body formed from
various bodies, combining both machine and flesh. It is precisely this
posthuman body that Theodore and Samantha develop together, constructing the
pinnacle of a mutual consciousness and collective existence: a perfect
relationship, in its own way.
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