The Role of the Lack of Nostalgia in Karel Capek’s R.U.R.

The idea of the universal human that primitivism expresses a nostalgia for represents a figure
of completeness and abstract unity: it represents the uncivilized, untouched human, and the
function of this particular nostalgia is to remain beyond the manipulative motives of
industrulization, to provide a safety exit from fragmentation of humanity so to say. However,
the universal robot as “the other” nostalgia inspiring figure in the context of Karel Capek’s
play R.U.R. seems different and more complicated.

In one superficial look, the purpose of this different representation of the other in the play
seems far away from the primitivism’s representation of “the other” on the basis of nostalgia
or yearning for something that is lost; the intentional message of the main imagery in this
particular text seems to be rather to be even further away from the past, to be even further
fragmanted and further industruliazed. Considering the fact that the main “other” figure of the
play, the robot, dreams of depositing the mechanical responsibilities and the “degredation”
that comes from being human into some “other” bodily entity, it could be easily argued that
the universal robot is representative of the exact opposite of what primitivism’s universal
human wishes to embody.

However, even though it uses the difference between the authentic, sensitive human nature
and the industrial development, science and machinery as its main theme, the play does not
necessarily render the powerful nostalgia of primitivism less of its argument. Moreover, it
could even be argued that by representing the very possiblity of destroying the non-scientific
sensitiveness of that primivite nostalgia figure, thus rendering the nostalgia impossible all
together, the degree of the nostalgia that is felt could be actually argued to be even higher than
any other representation of the universal human expresses.

Also, by focusing on the simplicity that comes from the universal robot having “no passion,
no soul”, the idealized simplicity of primitivism leads to the idea of destroying the feelings
and ends up idealizing the machine rather than the human on the basis on being immune to
human sensitivenesses, one of which could be the inclination for nostalgia (45). The fact that
being inable to process non-rational kinds of attachments and emotions is seen as an ideal
“simplicity” within the play implies that the very ability to be conscious of one’s nostalgic
feelings is “unnecessarily complicated”. The comparison between the complicated human
nature and the dream of a more simple machine thus implies one critical point: while the
human is something that is able to “feel happy, play the piano, likes going for a walk”, the
machine is safe from those complicated enjoyments, which might also mean that it is safe
from the very human notion of “nostalgia” which is what the primitivism of R.U.R.
desperately tries to escape from (16).

The idea of a non-scientific, non-rational feeling of attachment that the universal human
figure represents in primitivism is one of the most dramatic points in which the idea of the
universal robot differs from the stereotpyical representation of “the other”. The robot lacks the
ability to be non-scientific; on the contrary, it is merely a product of science itself. Thus, it
does not even have the non-rational ability to be conscious of its nostalgia itself: “Robots
don’t love. Not even themselves (45)”. The aim in this representation of the universal robot,
thus, could be said to be to destroy the tool for feeling nostalgia as a solution, rather than
giving in to nostalgia and desiring to reach “the universal human”, so that the main problem
of a new industrial world full of fear and panic is solved all for once. As the “primitive” and
non-rational sentiments, which naturally create nostalgia, are seen as a threat to the function
of the individual and the society, the only solution that a new representation of the other can
give is to destroy that very ability of being non-scientific and non-rational, to destroy “the
sensitive other” which is looked down as “fluttering with nervousness like a human heart”
(96).

Thus, it could be argued that the idea of the universal robot in the play is not actually
representing a progressive dream of the future; rather, it seeks a safe heaven from the
nostalgia that the primitivism feels, in the very fact that the idea of the robot lacks the receptor
of feeling.