More-than-human intimacy: Learning to enact robotcare

This article draws on an empirical, practice-based study of robotcare understood as a situated care practice, conducted in two elderly nursing homes with specialized dementia units, where the companion robot Hiro was introduced. The concept of more-than-human intimacy serves as a lens for reading how humans, more-than-humans, and discourses are entangled in the practice of robotcare and how this practice is collectively learnt. More-than-human intimacy comes to life in a material-discursive process, in which the subjectivity of neurodivergent people emerges ‘beyond words’, through their sensible knowledge in relation to the vibrant materiality of Hiro. At the same time, this subjectivity is ‘talked-into-being’ by the discursive practices of other people (caregivers and we, researchers) who act as spokespersons for those who do not have the same access to language. This perspective offers an alternative, nonanthropocentric understanding of care relationships and of vulnerability as an existential condition traversing the boundaries between neurotypicality and neurodivergence.