A thing about machines: Eça de queirós’s technological twilight zone
By reconstructing the acts and voices of technological artifacts in A cidade e as serras (1901), this paper outlines what I call Eça de Queirós’s technological “twilight zone,” where machines are granted literary citizenship, and human interlocutors are forced to reevaluate who and what counts as...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Portuguese Studies Association
2019
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View Fulltext in Publisher |
| Summary: | By reconstructing the acts and voices of technological artifacts in A cidade e as serras (1901), this paper outlines what I call Eça de Queirós’s technological “twilight zone,” where machines are granted literary citizenship, and human interlocutors are forced to reevaluate who and what counts as humanity and conversation. I argue that the unresponsiveness of technological artifacts to the human voice in A cidade e as serras reveals a process of destabilization of power hierarchies and vocal anthropocentrism. Eça neither demonizes nor glorifies machines; rather he elaborates ways in which productive coexistence and communication can remain a prime objective. In A cidade e as serras, Eça parses out anxieties about technology and modernity in subtle and balanced ways that can shed new light on enduring questions about human-machine interactions in our era of technological dependence. © 2019, American Portuguese Studies Association. All rights reserved. |
|---|---|
| ISBN: | 24694800 (ISSN) |
| DOI: | 10.21471/jls.v4i2.245 |