Boundary-Crossing Empathy: The Figuration of the Skin, Bodies, and Boundaries

What does it mean to have empathic interactions with robots? What is the role of a body, its surface, and the sense of self for building relations? And how does it change what it means to be human? These could be seen as overarching questions of my PhD project which aims to provide a feminist ethical framework for designing and imagining interactions with robots. I am interested in thinking about the role of binary divides such as human/non-human, self/other or reason/emotion in affective human-robot interaction. I want to look closely at their conceptual and material relations and understand how and when boundaries between them are stabilised or dissolved. In my work on boundaries, I am particularly interested in thinking with the skin. The skin is a material boundary of a body as well as a conceptual boundary that is inscribed with individual and cultural meanings. Thinking through/with the skin invites a different relationality between bodies, between categories. Empathy then could be figured as a way to extend one’s skin or crossing the boundary of the skin, getting close and touching the other. Thinking with robotic skin and robotic touch offers the possibility to rethink the ethics of relationality. In my work I would like to challenge anthropocentric and universalist designs and ideas about bodies, skin, and their relation and their reproduction in robots. And potentially this might allow a creative reconfiguration of what it means to connect empathically and to build meaningful relations with robots.