The Home and the Robot: an Onto-topological Attempt

Abstract

The article “The Home and the Robot: An Onto-topological Attempt” views the idea of proliferation of hybrids within contemporary domestic spaces due to technological innovations such as Alexa, Siri, home robots etc. It focuses on Musk’s symptomatic project called “Optimus” which is a home robot developed for helping with boring and tiresome everyday chores around the house and thus a key example for exploring the paradoxes within the ideas of homeliness and atmosphere considered as kernels in creating a private and intimate space, i.e., a home. Drawing on Luce Irigaray’s critique of Heideggerian ontology, Sloterdijk’s onto-topological project and Latour’s hybrids, the article sees the proliferation of hybrids as a way for tackling these paradoxes and how they influence contemporary subjectivity and one of its key spaces of articulation – the home. The basic problem which the article tries to elucidate is the forgetting of atmosphere in the creation and care for contemporary dwellings. А forgetting expressed precisely by the “becoming smart” of contemporary homes through apps and robots. However, the article’s problem does not come from technological paranoia, but from a need to articulate certain limits of technology and to mark conceptual trajectories that must be accounted for when innovating the spaces of subjectivity.