Robotic technologies, touch and posthuman embodiment in queer dementia care

Abstract

Developing technologies raise concerns that go beyond the economies of human to human or human-animal relations to open up exploration of our place in a world of both organic and inorganic effects. I explore how practices that characterize the very specific locus of dementia care could be–and are already–queered by the intervention of technological prostheses, and especially zoomorphic robots, that are increasingly supplementing conventional human support. The paper addresses the issue of techno-touch in dementia care–where the use of companion and empathy robots is becoming widespread–to think through the significance of touch as a physical event and as a metaphor for emotional engagement. In either meaning, touching and being touched must be thought in conjunction with vulnerability, not as an exposure to risk but as the threshold to an imaginary of irreducible interconnections in which self and other play no part.