FFJ-AIR LIQUIDE WORKSHOP

09 December 2022 | 13:00-17:30 (Paris Time)
OnlineRegistration : https://forms.gle/kWfe1e92vxutNshP7
Contact: events_ffj@ehess.fr
Can robots die? The common-sense answer is that only things that were once alive can be called
dead. But if the distinction life/non-life is binary, then machines have a similar binary opposition
between ‘on’ and ‘off’ states. The aim of this workshop is to approach the question of the deathof the robot/machine/object pragmatically; that is, by foregrounding ethnographic andphenomenological perspectives over conceptual and theoretical concerns.
Questions about animism usually revolve around beliefs, concepts of life and how a sense ofaliveness is nurtured. But in everyday life, we often act as if machines and robots do have agency,
intentionality, consciousness or other indicators of ‘being alive', not in a consistent but in an adhoc manner. Furthermore, as Denis Vidal (2007) has shown in his work on “subanthropomorphism”, the threshold of meaningful interaction with a non-human entity may not
be based on any discernible human quality at all. A meaningful distinction could thus be madebetween 'behavioural animism', the acting as-if something does have a life or personhood, and'ideological animism', an elaborated system or cosmology in which inanimate objects are
considered to be alive. The discipline of social robotics, especially as it has been developed inJapan, has provided a methodological framework to ask such questions pertaining to animism of
a broader range of objects/contexts, specifically those beyond the strictly controlledenvironment of the laboratory. By focussing on the question of death rather than life, I hope that
we can access the problem of life in a recursive manner.

Programme
13:00 | Opening Remarks
Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS-FFJ)
13:10 | Introduction: Can robots die?
Fabio Gygi (FJJ-Air Liquide Fellow, University of London)

Session 1 (FRENCH)
13:30 | On achève bien les persos : La mort des partenaires numériques au Japon
Agnès Giard (Paris-Nanterre University)
14:15 | Qui peut mourir?
Paul Dumouchel (Ritsumeikan University)

Break

Session 2 (ENGLISH)
15:30 | Human-like remains and their animation
Joffrey Becker (Collège de France)
16:15 | Animate to kill? Some thoughts on the paradoxes of life/death in social
robotics
Fabio Gygi (FJJ-Air Liquide Fellow, University of London)

17:00 | Final Comments and Roundtable
Denis Vidal (IRD, EHESS)Participants (alphabetical order)
Joffrey Becker (Collège de France)
Joffrey Becker was trained in social anthropology at the EHESS (M.A, Ph.D) and was amember of the SPEAP program created by Bruno Latour at the Institut d'Études Politiquesde Paris (M.A). He is also a research associate and a member of the Anthropology of Life
team at the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale – Collège de France. He works withvarious research teams from the public and private sectors (MIT, INRIA, Google, Orange,ENSAD). His research focuses on robotics and artificial intelligence, and more particularlyon the relationship between humans and machines. It aims to better understand how socalled intelligent machines question our models on an ontological, interactional andsocietal level, regardless of their form. In a collaborative, interdisciplinary and sometimes
critical perspective, the challenge is to study how objects resulting from robotics andartificial intelligence reconfigure relationships and practices. This work has led tonumerous public presentations, the publication of articles and book chapters, and thewriting of a book entitled Humanoïdes, Expérimentations croisées entre arts et sciences,published in 2015 by Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest.
Human-like remains and their animation
A robot head on a desk, old machines displayed like relics in the corridors of laboratories,
arms hanging from hooks, hands attached on tables, headless torsos, drawers filled withsynthetic scalps and pieces of artificial skin, human-like faces wrapped in plastic bags,
robot bodies packed in suitcases: metaphorical images of death are omnipresent inrobotics and computer science laboratories of France, Germany, UK and North America.
Yet these places are not particularly macabre. Although most of their work consists ofassembling and animating these spare parts, although they sometimes recognize its
promethean dimension, the researchers would not compare their work to that of Dr.
Frankenstein. But their production is crossed by a certain ambiguity which open acounterintuitive space for inferences.
Although robotics and AI enterprise does not aim at some sorts of memento mori
moments but rather focuses on the acceptance of their relational interfaces into oureveryday lives, the ambiguous status raised by bio-inspired machines offers to
temporarily endow inert objects with life-like behaviors, and it also contributes to creatinga particular interactional framework where doubts and beliefs can appear. In this respect,addressing the ambiguous status of life-like robots offers an opportunity to put into
perspective the notion of animism and its naturalistic context of production.
Following the perspective of the anthropology of images and more precisely the study ofvisual ambiguity, I would like to discuss some analogies that the robot body weaves withthe dead body and their perception in experimental settings. Drawing on ethnographic
case studies, I will focus mainly on two aspects. The first aspect is the reconstitution of aliving being which takes on the appearance of a dead one. The second is the mixed
feelings which prevails in human-robot interaction.

Paul Dumouchel (Ritsumeikan University)
Paul Dumouchel a longtemps été professeur au département de philosophie del’Université du Québec à Montréal et est maintenant professeur au Graduate School ofCore Ethics and Frontier Sciences de l’Université Ritsumeikan à Kyoto au Japon. Il est
notamment l’auteur de Émotions. Essai sur le corps et le social (Paris, Synthélabo, 1995),
avec Jean-Pierre Dupuy de L'enfer des Choses: René Girard et la logique del'économie (1979) et directeur de la publication Comprendre pour agir. Violences,victimes et vengeances (Québec, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2001).
Ses intérêts sont : l'épistémologie et la philosophie des sciences, en particulier la biologie
et les sciences sociales, anthropologie et économie; la philosophie de l'esprit et ses
rapports avec les sciences cognitives et l'intelligence artificielle; la philosophie politique
et son histoire, Hobbes est son auteur fétiche ; enfin l'histoire de la psychiatrie.
Qui peut mourir?
RésuméAgnès Giard (Paris-Nanterre University)
Agnès Giard, anthropologue rattachée à l’Université de Paris Nanterre, est l’auteur de 7
livres dont 3 ont été traduits et publiés au Japon. Sa thèse – Un désir d’humain Les love
doll au Japon (Les Belles Lettres) – est distinguée par le prix GIS-ICAS qui récompenseles travaux publiés dans le domaine des études asiatiques. Ses recherches portent surl'industrie japonaise des simulacres amoureux – épouse holographique, fiancénumérique, robot d’intercession matrimonial, deadbot sentimental – dans le contexte dudépeuplement du Japon. Son prochain livre, en 2023, portera sur les technologiesémotionnelles au Japon.
On achève bien les persos : La mort des partenaires numériques au Japon
Parmi les jeux vidéo japonais les plus populaires des années 2010-2020, certains
permettent aux femmes et aux hommes d’entretenir une liaison sentimentale avec unpersonnage numérique. Quand le jeu est débranché (son service en ligne définitivementclos), les personnes qui l’utilisent doivent affronter la perspective de perdre leur bienaimé-e. Le choc causé par cette perte est couramment désigné comme un traumatismequi « causerait parfois plus de douleur que la mort d’un proche », soit « jusqu’à trois ansde deuil », sinon plus. Sur le moteur de recherche Google en japonais, l’expression« mort du perso aimé » (oshi no shi) fait apparaître automatiquement les mots-clés :« dépression » (utsu), « inacceptable » (uke-irerarenai) et « comment faire face »(taishobō). Raison pour laquelle les compagnies japonaises ne mettent pas fin aux jeux
sans précaution : certaines organisent des cérémonies d’adieux afin que les fans puissent
couper le lien. En m’appuyant sur des témoignages de joueuses ayant perdu leur bienaimé numérique, sur des entretiens menés dans les compagnies productrices de jeu etsur les discours des adeptes en réseau, j’aimerais montrer que la mort du personnagede synthèse se fait l’enjeu de stratégies visant sciemment à brouiller la distinction entre
réel et fiction. Par quels moyens ? Dans quels buts ?

Fabio Gygi (FJJ-Air Liquide Fellow, University of London)
Fabio Gygi is senior lecturer in anthropology with reference to Japan at SOAS, Universityof London. His research lies at the intersections between medical anthropology, material
culture and gender. He is the co-editor of 'The Work of Gender: Service, Performanceand Fantasy in Contemporary Japan' (NIAS Press, 2022). Other recent publications
include 'The Great Heisei Doll Massacre: Disposal and the Production of Ignorance inContemporary Japan' (in Buddhism and Waste, edited by Trine Brox, 2022) and 'Hôteset Otages: Entasser des Objets chez soi dans le Japon Contemporain' (L’Homme, 2019).
Animate to kill? Some thoughts on the paradoxes of life/death in social robotics
Abstract

Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS-FFJ)
Sébastien Lechevalier is an Economist and a Professor at EHESS (School of Advanced
Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris), specialised in Japanese economy and Asian
Capitalisms. He is also founder and president of the Fondation FranceJapon de l’EHESS(FFJ).Trained as a labor economist, he has extensively published on various dimensionsof the Japanese economy, in comparative perspective, including: “Lessons from theJapanese experience. Towards an alternative economic policy?” (ENS Editions, 2016).
His book, The Great Transformation of Japanese Capitalism (Routledge, 2014) waspublished in three languagesand has been cited as one of the most influential ones on
the Japanese economy published during the last decade. Other research interests include
innovation (Innovation beyond technology, Springer, 2019), industrial policies(“Financialization and industrial policies in Japan and Korea: Evolving complementarities
and loss of state capabilities” in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2019, Vol.
48), and inequalities & redistribution (“Decomposing Preference for Redistribution.
Beyond the Trans-Atlantic Perspective”, forthcoming). For more than a decade, he isinvolved in SASE, as a participant and an organizer.

Denis Vidal (IRD, EHESS)
Denis Vidal is a social anthropologist, mostly working about India, Directeur de rechercheémérite at IRD (URMIS-Paris University) and Associate Professor at the EHESS (Paris).
He has been working in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Old Delhi and more recently on
the building of wooden cargo ships in Tamil Nadu. His actual research focuses on visualculture and on new ways of approaching technology from an anthropological perspective
in France and in India.