Publication details
THE ROBOT
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The chapter focuses on a robot with a capital R, the Robot (a dramatic character who first appeared in Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., Rossum's Universal Robots published in 1920 and first performed on a theatre stage in 1921. The Robot was introduced not as an update of ancient and old myths, legends, and stories about the artificial man, but to point out that Karel Čapek in his play about Robots invented not only the Robot character but a new myth of an industrial age, also called the machine age. I argue that Čapek understood the dramatic conflict between robot and human not as a clash of two irreconcilable opposites, or as a problematic relationship of an original and its model, but rather as an internal conflict of a modern individual, a member of industrial society, trying to adapt and to fit to the new working conditions and a new lifestyle of modern society. The two opposites, Robot vs Human, are actually two modalities of humanity that individuals fulfill performatively, within processes of ´becoming a man´ or ´becoming a robot´ through their actions and gestures. After a brief discussion of the Robot etymology, the semiotic analysis of the robot as a theatrical sign was performed. Doing so, the representation of ´roboticity´ across all the characters of the drama were shown. For this, the actantial model of Algirdas Julien Greimas was used, which makes it possible to reveal the dramatic space of the play, that reminds of chess. The game of Humans vs Robots can end up saving or destroying humanity, depending on the players' game strategies and moves. |