[“Uncanny”, Experience, “Lived Experience”: Westworld–Where Everything is Permitted]. This article analyzes the first season of the TV series Westworld as a cultural product within the framework of Law and Humanities. It explores the representation of a space in which normative constraints are suspended, highlighting asymmetries of power, forms of soft control, and the absence of moral and legal accountability. Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny (das Unheimliche), the paper interprets the hosts as figures that blur the boundary between familiarity and estrangement, particularly through their embodied “lived experience” (Erlebnis). Drawing on Husserlian phenomenological distinctions and contemporary philosophical accounts of artificial agency, especially Floridi’s, the article argues that the hosts’ rebellion is not a technical malfunction, but rather an emergent demand for meaning, historicity, and justice, grounded in vulnerability and the capacity for semantic articulation.
“Perturbante”, esperienza, “vissuto”: Westworld – dove tutto è permesso
mori, valerio
2026-01-01
Abstract
[“Uncanny”, Experience, “Lived Experience”: Westworld–Where Everything is Permitted]. This article analyzes the first season of the TV series Westworld as a cultural product within the framework of Law and Humanities. It explores the representation of a space in which normative constraints are suspended, highlighting asymmetries of power, forms of soft control, and the absence of moral and legal accountability. Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny (das Unheimliche), the paper interprets the hosts as figures that blur the boundary between familiarity and estrangement, particularly through their embodied “lived experience” (Erlebnis). Drawing on Husserlian phenomenological distinctions and contemporary philosophical accounts of artificial agency, especially Floridi’s, the article argues that the hosts’ rebellion is not a technical malfunction, but rather an emergent demand for meaning, historicity, and justice, grounded in vulnerability and the capacity for semantic articulation.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
