I want to be accepted by society…live in a world I don’t have to hide in…make choices without being in constant fear of them destroying me or the ones I care about.” (Ada, liberated TanakX5 robot, on her hopes and dreams. Alex + Ada, Book 11)

Many contemporary and recent speculative fiction texts interrogate the questions of “making kin” with companion species, including the companions humans might engineer and build to keep us company. In her Staying with the Trouble, Donna Haraway proposes reknitting the current order to address Capitalocene-generated problems of overpopulation and overconsumption. To survive, humans must extend their care and loyalty to other inhabitants of our shared planet, and co-construct knowledge –sympoeisis—with them. Haraway includes part-biological cyborgs in the potential so-called symbionts with whom humans should co-exist, but does not expressly include fully non-biologic, mechanical partners in her analysis. Yet, as part of the thought experiment enacted by speculative fictions of manufactured fellow beings, Haraway’s prescription might be expanded to encompass sentient partners whom humans engineer and manufacture to keep themselves company.

This roundtable invites papers interrogating speculative fiction solutions for expanding kinship relations to sentient non-biologic companions, whether embodied robots, virtual companions, or other. In other words, how does a particular creator of an imagined world envision expanding Haraway’s Chthulucene era of “oddkin” to included fully artificial as well as natural companion species? And how do these artificial companions fare, that is, are the humans in their worlds able to embrace their right to equal standing and accord them rights?

https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22328