Becoming Woman: Healing and Posthuman Subjectivity in Garland’s Ex Machina

Abstract

Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015) poses questions about the ethics of creating artificial life and the alleged superiority of the (male) human body over all forms of “life.” The movie focuses on Ava (Vikander), an artificial intelligence that assumes (to later consciously adopt) gendered traits in traditional humanoid ways to achieve her aims and, ultimately, to reassure herself. This chapter engages with contemporary debates on techno-culture and feminist posthumanism—Hayles, Braidotti, and Vint—and considers Ava as a cinematic variation of the posthuman. Ex Machina stands as a valid example of how the posthuman consciously appropriates existing structures of knowledge and power and uses them to manipulate the prevailing system and fight against patriarchy, this process ultimately working as a kind of healing therapy.