Touching through distance: Cyborg affective touch during Covid-19 pandemic

The enforcement of social distancing measures and lockdowns across the globe to control the spread of Covid-19 has led to various forms of tactile deprivation. While social interactions became less accessible for some groups of people, this deprivation brought a re-emphasis of the importance of social touch. The label affective haptic devices (AHDs) has been used to address a plethora of digital media promptly assembled to help people to compensate for their lack of affective touch. By simulating the experience of touch through digital devices, we witness a potential re-negotiation of the human/non-human divide and a productive means to challenge the boundaries of human skin. Our contribution – organized in the sections (i) Tactile deprivation; (ii) Replacing social touch; (iii) Towards a feminist understanding of extended touch – then aims to investigate the cyborg dimension of extended touch for raising further questions on the role of touch in defining the human being.