Love(rs) in the Making? Reflections on Technological Intimacy and (Inter)Subjectivity

• In Event: Postphenomenology - II: Technological Otherness

Abstract

As with other aspects of human life, lovemaking is increasingly technologically mediated. From Tinder to teledildonics, technologies are changing how and why we can engage sexually. And while such technologies open up new possibilities and can certainly be liberating, some worry about what we stand to lose in the resulting new normal. One graphic example would be the normalization of asymmetrical, objectifying sexual relations (and correspondent sexual subjectivities) in the wake of increased use of sex robots. (See, for example, Richardson, K. (2016). The asymmetrical “relationship”: parallels between prostitution and the development of sex robots. "ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society," 45(3), 290–293.)
This paper contributes to these discussions by clarifying one aspect of largely unmediated lovemaking that might be lost in intercourse with technological others: the importance of mutual vulnerability. First, it presents an analysis of embodied human intimacy and its relation to ethical subjectivity through the lens of Emmanuel Levinas’ embodied phenomenology. Situated between the imperious grasp of the hand and the moral gravity of the Other, eros has a specific intersubjective constitution that relies on moral sensibility as well as mutual vulnerability. Secondly, the paper explores whether and to what extent technological others (e.g., sex robots) can exhibit the type of quasi-otherness that would arouse similar experiences; experiences that could be conducive of the development of empathic sexual subjects. Based on current work in postphenomenology on alterity relations with technology and their potential for subjectivity constitution, I identify possibilities for further development.

Author

• Jan Peter Bergen, University of Twente