XII. Catherine Malabou - Digital PTSD Part II. The Practice of Art and Its Impact on Digital Trauma

Catherine Malabou is a Professor of Philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, at Kingston University London, and in the departments of Comparative Literature and European Languages and Studies at University of California Irvine. Her last books include Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016, trans. Carolyn Shread); Morphing Intelligence, From IQ to IA (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018, trans. Carolyn Shread); and Le Plaisir effacé, Clitoris et pensée (Rivages, 2020).

The notion of ‘uncanny valley’ was developed by robotician Masahiro Mori to characterise the relationship between the degree of a robot’s resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to it. The concept of the uncanny valley suggests that humanoids which appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings cause uncanny feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers. “Valley” denotes a dip in the human observer’s affinity for the replica. The more resemblant the replica, the stronger the feeling of uncanniness (bottom of the valley). In this presentation, Malabou asks if digital PTSD is susceptible to be caused by artificial relationships with uncanny robotic lovers and friends, and the disappointment generated by the solitude, unfulfillment, caused by a type of alterity that remains alien to any registered definition of alterity. An otherness to other- ness. Why exactly is robotic uncanniness, what type of traumas does it generate, and are there ways to deal with it?