Technology and (the promise of) pleasure: a study on gender, sexuality and subjectivity from a posthuman perspective

"Technology and (the Promise of) Pleasure" explores the gender and sexual implications of a series of products that have been recently realized with the use of robotics and artificial intelligence technology and with the aim to provide sexual gratification, such as AI Sex Robots and VR Pornography. More specifically, the purpose of this work is to investigate from a posthuman and feminist perspective how the notions of gender, sexuality and subjectivity are being re-shaped and re-imagined within a technologically mediated and fully immersive framework, that of the online sex market. Broken down into smaller inquires, the present work examines the following topics: how is gender politics affected by technology? How, in this framework, the body is simultaneously ignored, bypassed and aimed to be enhanced? How is sexuality constructed as a liberating force against gendered sexual oppression while, on other occasions, it becomes a commodity that depoliticizes gender? In a few words, this research examines the emerging forms of subjectivities in the context of late capitalism and techno-scientific culture by focusing mainly on the gender and sexual configurations of this convergence.