And science created… the virtual Woman

Abstract

In the film by Spike Jonze, Her (2013), Theodore, the main character, who becomes single after a painful separation, “meets” a woman's voice. It is a voice whose timbre and words sound just like a young woman’s. In reality, it is the voice of software programmed to answer the user's requests. But this voice arouses Theodore's desire and love. In this article, we will study within a psychoanalytical perspective what this film teaches us about the contemporary issue of new addictions to connected objects. What place, what function do these objects take in the character’s relationship to the body, to drive and to language? It will more particularly focus on the voice as an object, the “most original” object of desire according to Lacan.