Immanent obligations of response: articulating everyday response-abilities through care

Abstract

The geological epoch of the Anthropocene provokes the reconceptualization of responsibility as response-ability. Going beyond bounded individualism and human exceptionalism, this notion emphasizes the constitutive relationality of heterogeneous more than human beings that allows for response. Feminist STS scholar and biologist Donna Haraway has developed response-ability primarily as an epistemological notion with ontological and ethico-political aspects, crucial in the context of professional technoscientific research practices. This article articulates nonprofessional, everyday response-abilities. Thinking with María Puig de la Bellacasa's, Isabelle Stengers', and Annemarie Mol's conceptions of care, I relay response-ability as a combination of forms of care that are worldmaking, an etho-ecological practice, and experimental in nature. Everyday response-abilities are something we are all engaged in yet need cultivation in times of crises through careful tinkering.