Subject in/of cyberculture: the discourse of cinema in the age of virtual love

Author(s)

Jonathan Raphael Bertassi da Silva

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Ribeirão Preto.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC)
• Defense date: 2016-11-10

Examining board members

Lucília Maria Abrahão e Sousa; Marco Antonio de Almeida; Roberto Leiser Baronas; Mónica Graciela Zoppi Fontana; Soraya Maria Romano Pacifico

• Advisor: Lucília Maria Abrahão e Sousa

Abstract

This work proposes to investigate the imaginary about romantic relationships experienced by the subject in contemporary society, marked by the strong presence of cyberculture, such as ortrayed in art discourse evidenced in six movies. The selected feature films for inclusion in this research, representing heterogeneity of countries and film genres, are: Thomas est Amoureux (2000), by Pierre-Paul Renders; I\'m a Cyborg, But That\'s OK (Saibogujiman Kwenchana, 2006), by Chan-Wook Park; Lars and the Real Girl (2007), by Craig Gillespie; Catfish (2010), by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman; Medianeras (2011), by Gustavo Taretto and, finally, Her (2013), directed by Spike Jonze. To this goal, we mobilize the theoretical framework of Discourse Analysis (AD) of French line, especially the work of Michel Pêcheux and the authors who shares with him the concern in observing the discourse as an imbricated process in a network of multiple meanings, rather than limited to making sense as a ready and finished product to be extracted by readers. Setting the language as work, this discipline shifts the emphasis to the referential function of language, which occupies nuclear position in classical linguistics, which advocates this approach in the communication or information; thus the bias of AD understands the language as a social-historical-ideological act, without denying the conflict, contradiction, power relations that it brings with it. To analyze clippings of films from the cyberculture production conditions, we mobilize concepts of AD on language in nonverbal discursive process. Thus, when analyzing the cuts and segments of the aforementioned films wich installs directions from the cyberculture production conditions, qe mobilize concepts of AD on the nonverbal discursive process, as in publications by Neckel (2004, 2010), Souza (2001) and Orlandi (1993), among others. The cyberculture, we notice, can not be reduced to the Internet and must be understood in its influence in other fields, such as the body and the cinema itself, so we can effectively understand how cyberculture changed the imagery of love, what the artistic discourse can reveal as well. As a result, we take further work with authors of sociology and philosophy as Bauman (2001, 2004), Bell (2001, 2007) and Lemos (2010), among others, to understand how the subject discoursivizes in the age of virtual love from the concept of discursive event and production conditions, having the goal of the contemporary context marked by the liquid-modern society. As describes Bell, cyberculture has many stories above all, the political history and the symbolic story, especially in this by referring to the narratives of/on cyberculture in the art. The body, by the way, is one of the concepts in movement in the age of cyberculture, and our interest to investigate these actions both in AD scope and the support of other theorists. In this sense, the cyborg manifesto of Donna Haraway (2013) on the redefinition of the bodies and love from post-modernity also helps us interpret the discourse of the feature films. From these concerns, we seek to understand the ways of subjectivity that are part of/in cyberspace, from the conditions of production that (re)configure the set of discursive formations in memory and artistic discourse. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/14759-9 - Subject of/in cyberculture: discourses in the era of virtual love
• Grantee: Jonathan Raphael Bertassi da Silva
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate