Analytik des Interfacing. Zur Materialität technologischer Verschaltung in prototypischen Milieus robotisierter Pflege

Abstract

In Science & Technology Studies and Media Studies, materiality has been predominantly conceptualized as a stabilizing factor in processes of social ordering. Here, Karen Barad’s agential realism offers a different notion of materiality emphasizing the open, eventful, and potentially destabilizing effects of matter. With regard to this theoretical tension the present article argues that especially the case of social robotics in elderly care renders visible the fragility of technological interconnecting, thus requiring a new conceptualization of materiality within thoroughly technologized society. In order to achieve this, the article proposes an ‘analytics of interfacing’ accounting for the eventful material conditions of technological interconnecting. By synthesizing Barad’s account of ‘intraaction’ and Gilbert Simondon’s notion of ‘disposability’ such an analytics focuses on the procedural modalities by which techno-scientific regimes render hetergeneous entities disposable for one another, thus interfacing them. This is demonstrated by the case of prototypical user experiments of roboticized care within the context of European innovation politics.