The politics of care

Abstract

Editors Rachel Brown and Deva Woodly bring together Mara Marin, Shatema Threadcraft, Christopher Paul Harris, Jasmine Syedullah, and Miriam Ticktin to examine the question: what would be required for care to be an ethic and political practice that orients people to a new way of living, relating, and governing? The answer they propose is that a 21st-century approach to the politics of care must aim at unmaking racial capitalism, cisheteropatriarchy, the carceral state, and the colonial present. The politics of care is an approach to political thought and action that moves beyond the liberal approach which situates care as a finite resource to be distributed among autonomous individuals, or as a necessarily feminine virtue. Instead, those elucidating the politics of care for the contemporary era draw on rich interdisciplinary traditions and social movements to theorize and practice care as an inherently interdependent survival strategy, a foundation for political organizing, and a prefigurative politics for building a world in which all people can live and thrive.

Cancer and the Politics of Care

“…Critical scholars have cautioned that care, and appeals to its essential goodness, often maintains existing relations of power, reproducing harmful effects and paternalistic justifications (for example, Duclos and Sánchez Criado 2020;Murphy 2015). Yet there has been renewed energy to recuperate the critical potential of care both as a theoretical orientation towards 'non-dominative' modes of being together (Woodly et al 2021) and as an empirical attentiveness to often neglected non-productivist practices (Puig de la Bellacasa 2015). For example, Vincent Duclos and Tomas Sánchez Criado invite us to move away from care as 'repair', as an 'abstract project' or 'epic narrative', and instead to attend, following Mol and others, to care as 'an art of the singular' and a 'speculative ethics' (Duclos and Sánchez Criado 2020: 8-10).…”

Affective Bodies: Intimate Design Practices to Reinvent the Everyday

“…Through the notion of affective bodies, we claim that design can explore new paths to reinvent the everyday, focusing on crisis-ridden contexts. The politics of care, a seminal attempt to rethink politics outside the dominant neoliberal ideology by placing interdependence at the centre (Woodly et al 2021), devel-ops multiple and diverse articulations of the problem of the irreducible "otherness of other" (Ganis 2011, 5) and the idea of interdependency not as a social contract but as a "condition, even a pre-condition" for sociality (Bellacasa 2012, 198). In this sense, we are particularly interested in the implications of the concept of care that suspend politically correct do-gooder dialectics based on the salvage paradigm (Dominguez 1987) and embrace the awareness that "we must be careful not to become nostalgic for an idealised caring world […] but [situated] in vital ethico-affective everyday practical doings that engage with the inescapable troubles of interdependent existences" (Bellacasa 2012, 199).…”

“…Les polítiques de la cura, una temptativa transcendental de reconceptualitzar la política fora de la ideologia neoliberal dominant posant la interdependència al centre (Woodly et al 2021), desenvolupen múltiples i diverses articulacions del problema de la irreductible "alteritat de l'altre" (Ganis 2011, 5) i de la idea de la interdependència no com un contracte social, sinó com una "condició, o fins i tot una precondició" per a la socialitat (Bellacasa 2012, 198). En aquest sentit en interessen especialment les implicacions del concepte de la cura que abandonen la dialèctica de les bones obres políticament correctes basades en el paradigma de salvament (Dominguez 1987) i abracen la idea que "hem de mirar de no sentir nostàlgia d'un món curós idealitzat […] i [situar-lo] en les accions pràctiques quotidianes ètico-afectives vitals en què es plasmen els problemes ineludibles de les existències interdependents" (Bellacasa 2012, 199).…”

“…A partir de la idea de los cuerpos afectivos, afirmamos que el diseño puede explorar nuevos caminos que reinventen la vida cotidiana centrándose en contextos afectados por crisis. Las políticas del cuidado, un intento trascendental de reconceptualizar la política fuera de la ideología neoliberal dominante poniendo la interdependencia en el centro (Woodly et al 2021), desarrollan múltiples y diversas articulaciones del problema de la irreducible "otredad del otro" (Ganis 2011, 5) y de la idea de la interdependencia no como un contrato social, sino como una "condición, o incluso una precondición" para la socialidad (Bellacasa 2012, 198). En este sentido, nos interesan en especial las implicaciones del concepto del cuidado que abandonan la dialéctica de las buenas obras políticamente correctas basadas en el paradigma de salvamento (Dominguez 1987) y abrazan la idea de que "debemos tratar de no sentir nostalgia de un mundo cuidadoso idealizado […] y [situarlo] en las acciones prácticas cotidianas ético-afectivas vitales en las que se plasman los problemas ineludibles de las existencias interdependientes" (Bellacasa 2012, 199).…”

Ethnography at its edges

“…We Do This 'Til We Free Us advocates coanalysis, coteaching, and collaboration. The book, survivor-centered rather than perpetrator-centered like White Fragility, focuses on how collectives can respond to survivors' needs (Woodly et al 2021). This type of how-to activism addresses not only the why behind what causes harm but also the how of abolition.…”