Robot

Definition

The robot is Baudrillard's term (The System of Objects, 1968, Part C) for the metafunctional object — "the ultimate expression of such imaginary projection… the object as dreamt up by science fiction." Science fiction "has only ever invented one superobject: the ROBOT," which "synthesizes absolute functionality and absolute anthropomorphism." The robot is the mythic completion of the object-system: "a symbolic microcosm of both man and the world, which is to say that it simultaneously replaces both man and the world." It gathers "all the phantasies attendant upon our deepest relationships with our environment." Its defining limit is sexlessness: "robots are always slaves. They may be endowed with any of the qualities that define human sovereignty except one, and that is sex." The concept completes automatism and gadget, and supplies the book's most explicit psychoanalytic reading of technology.

Key Claims

• Science fiction is not prophecy but extrapolation. It "has practically nothing to do with the real future of technological development"; it is "an inexhaustible mine of imaginary solutions to stereotyped needs" and "the apotheosis of tinkering."
• The robot is the mythological end of the object. "The myth of the robot may be said to cover all paths taken by the unconscious in the realm of objects."
• Its ancestry is the domestic appliance. "Its antecedents were electrical household appliances (cf. the 'automatic maid')."
• It must remain visibly a machine. "A robot that mimicked man to the point where its gestures had a truly human fluidity would create anxiety"; the robot's fascination requires "play to difference" (the automaton fable).
• It is an enslaved phallus. "Inasmuch as they are controlled, dominated, directed and rendered asexual, they also attest to a phallus that is enslaved, to a sexuality that is domesticated and unaccompanied by anxiety."
• Revolt and self-destruction. "Robots in revolt are by no means rare in science fiction… It is in fact his own sexuality, liable now to turn against him, that he is afraid of." "There is a secret apocalypse of objects – or of the Object – which fuels the passionate interest of the reader."
• The "happening" and the fantasy of the object's death. The fad for contraptions that "fall apart of their own accord" stages "the symbolic spectacle of the atomization of his own sexuality."

Key Thinkers

• Jean Baudrillard — the concept's author: metafunctionality; the robot as asexual slave; the apocalypse of objects.
• Sigmund Freud — the analytic register (castration, the death instinct) Baudrillard brings to the robot.
• Mark Goulthorpe, Lars Spuybroek — contemporary computational-technology registers (see objectile, computational-design).
• Karel Čapek (not yet paged) — the origin of the word "robot" (R.U.R.), which the chapter's argument presupposes.
• automation — the contemporary register the robot's mastery now inhabits.

Related Concepts

• Automatism — the technical connotation the robot culminates.
• Gadget — the pseudo-functional object below the robot.
• Functionalist Myth — the belief the robot realizes.
• Psychoanalysis — the register of castration and the death instinct.
• Objecthood — the object-theory the robot tests.
• Myth — the mythological structure of the automaton.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The System of Objects (Baudrillard 1968) — the concept's defining source (Part C): "Metafunctionality: Robots"; science fiction as imaginary solution; the robot as enslaved phallus; revolt and self-destruction; the "happening."
• Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (Butler 1999) — the book-length secondary study that reads Baudrillard "in his own terms": the paradox of the sign (paradox-of-the-sign), simulation as the realization rather than the loss of the real (simulation-hyperreality), seduction as the limit to simulation, and the doubling power of theory (doubling, the-real, double-strategy).

Open Questions

• The robot's sexlessness is the concept's pivot. Does contemporary robotics and AI (sex robots, gendered assistants) confirm, complicate, or invert Baudrillard's claim?
• If science fiction is "the apotheosis of tinkering," where does that leave its serious literary and critical uses (Dick, Lem, Butler)?
• Baudrillard's robot is the object as slave; the wiki's automation and labour sources would test the master-slave dialectic he invokes.
• Is "the apocalypse of objects" (the pleasure in breakdown) a theory of planned obsolescence's libidinal payoff, or a distinct phenomenon (see consumerism)?