“They are here. They are everywhere. They are us.” – Posthuman Encounters in Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes (2018)

Abstract

In Samanta Schweblin’s novel Little Eyes (2018), the latest technological hype that stretches across the globe comes in the shape of cute, pet-like little robots with cameras for eyes. These so-called kentukis are remotely inhabited and controlled by their human users via an online connection which is established at random. As the novel’s blurb - “They are here. They are everywhere. They are us.” - suggests, a kentuki is at once a familiar and unfamiliar creature and users’ experiences range from comforting to unsettling. The novel revolves around the theme of stranger danger and reports several uncanny encounters between humans and not-quite-humans in places around the world, both from the perspective of the kentukis’ owners (so-called keepers) and the voyeurs (so-called dwellers). The representation of these posthuman interactions in the novel remains ambiguous: Even though the potential to challenge or even transgress the human/non-human binary is addressed, the novel follows a classic dystopian narrative, which posits that it is not the technology itself which is inherently good or bad, it is us humans.