Feminist and intersectional approaches to care

This course interrogates the concept of care and asks if and how it provides a site of resistance. Traditionally, feminist critiques have focused on the repetitive character of activities such as child-rearing, household chores and caring for friends and family members, while also being mindful that the ‘emancipation’ from this labour often implies shifting it from white, well-off women onto other, more precarious groups. This critique gained force as we witnessed a deepening of the crisis of care  - that is, the destabilisation of the social reproduction processes by capitalist society, which relies on the social reproduction that it systematically devalues. Discussions of this crisis raise questions about the possibility and desirability of the state to address this crisis (Brown, Fraser), as well as about the intersections of race, class and gender (Davis), and about its global dimensions (Federici). A second set of questions that will be tackled in this course concerns proposals by Black feminists that care and self-care can be a political praxis that navigates oppressive structures (Hill Collins, Lorde). These proposals raises questions pertaining to the situated knowledges of these structures, as well as the status of the family and (extended) kinship relationships as a locus of care.