Figuring the Boundary between Human and Robot : A Feminist New Materialist Perspective on Dermally Layered Relationality

Social robots are expected to become ubiquitous across different areas of both the private and public spheres of human life, assisting in care, education, and daily tasks. Hopes for meaningful, efficient, and enjoyable interactions with these kinds of robots drive social robotics research, but there are also ethical concerns and critiques concerning negative social consequences. Both sides involve assumptions about the boundaries around what it means to be human in relation to the non-human. In order to disentangle optimistic and pessimistic notions about this relationality, there needs to be a reconsideration of how the boundaries constituting the human/non-human divide are understood and figured in encounters with robot bodies. Following Dominika Lisy’s personal experiences that have been documented as reflections, diary entries, and by photographing moments of meeting different social robots, this thesis starts at the first point of contact: the skin. But how might the skin be used to rethink boundaries between humans and social robots? The research in this thesis illustrates an interdisciplinary endeavour to weave together insights from feminist theory and methodology, research on affective and tactile robots, and the biology and neurophysiology of the skin. Grounded in feminist new materialism, which embraces the entanglement of matter and discourse, the thesis develops a figuration of the skin through which both the form and content of the thesis’ text illustrate what it means to pay attention to boundaries during encounters with affective and tactile robots. Figuring boundaries in this way, they can be described as multilayered, flexible yet sturdy, hardening over time, and de-pendent on un/noticeable sensations, just like the skin. This thesis aims to contribute to feminist theories of human/non-human relationality. The thesis presents a situated feminist account of making sense amidst diverse knowledges through the skin and personal embodied experiences in order to develop a sensitivity and ethical responsibility for human–robot relations.