Paper short abstract:

Gabriel Tarde's work opens an excellent opportunity for feminist approaches to revisit the conceptualization of the difference. This paper explores the possibility to move towards an ecological differently speculative ethics, questioning, as a mantra, 'what would be an encounter?'

Paper long abstract:

This paper links two empirical explorations focus on the production of new beings: a participatory experience with the elderly talking about technology to inform political recommendations and a participative design with children and engineers prototyping social robots. Two different ways of conjoin science, technology and society. Two different devices placed in order to reach consensus between different actors and to produce things. Two different ways of undermine the expected investigation goals. Nevertheless, the reflection about 'what do we wrong?' allows us to explore not only those other collateral realities produced unexpectedly, but also an ethical approach moved by a mantra: the question about 'what could be an encounter?'

Departing from Gabriel Tarde's work, we will suggest the possibility of moving towards an 'ecological differently speculative ethics'. We consider that is vital to ask ourselves about the ways in which we 'come together to differ together'. We consider that is vital to speculate with a notion of care that enables an approach to encounters as ecologies of relevance, to allow the participating monads to differentiate collectively in a way that puts the life of the whole foreground. From this perspective, facing the future becomes a recursive speculation about how to take care of the encounters, how to make them ecological, how to enable every participant to differentiate itself consistently with its potential, but above all, by attending to the worlds that she will contribute to produce with her participation in the encounter.