Care

“Theorized as an affective connective tissue between an inner self and an outer world, care constitutes a feeling with, rather than a feeling for, others. When mobilized, it offers visceral, material, and emotional heft to acts of preservation that span a breadth of localities: selves, communities, and social worlds. Questions of who or what one might care for, and how, can be numerous….Reciprocity and attentiveness to the inequitable dynamics that characterize our cur-rent social landscape represent the kind of care that can radically remake worlds that exceed those offered by the neoliberal or postneoliberal state, which has proved inadequate in its dispensation of care.9 This may sound like a naive proposition, particularly given the precarious circumstances that are culminating in our current moment: anthropogenic climate change, infrastructural ruin, mass extinction, growing wealth inequality, geopo-litical failure, and others cataloged by this journal’s recent special issue titled “Collateral Afterworlds.” When crisis and disaster are the relent-lessly pervasive frameworks through which, for some, “redemption is not recognized as immanent or expected as forthcoming,” despondence and disorientation are rational outcomes. Despite such unavoidable circum-stances, we find hope in locating spaces and enactments of care. Specifically, mobilizations of care allow us to envision what Elizabeth Povinelli describes as an otherwise. It is precisely from this audacity to produce, apply, and effect care despite dark histories and futures that its radical nature emerges. Radical care can present an otherwise, even if it cannot completely disengage from structural inequalities and normative assump-tions regarding social reproduction, gender, race, class, sexuality, and citizenship.”

Hobart, Hi ‘ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani, and Tamara Kneese.

"Radical care: Survival strategies for uncertain times." Social Text 38, no. 1 (2020): 1-16.