Staying with the Crisis: A Feminist Politics of Care for Living with an Infected Planet

Elke Krasny

doi:10.5209/esim.73040

Abstract

This essay is written in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Proposing to stay with the crisis, this essay starts from the centrality of care under the pandemic conditions. Radical despair and radical hope are the entry points for analyzing the terms orienting the response to the crisis. War and care have emerged as key terms mobilizing powerful imaginaries. The efficacy of martial propaganda based on war-talk with its ideology of death poses a threat. Care, in particular care feminism, rooted in the ontological vulnerability of life and the recognition of the interconnectedness of the ties that bind us, inspires possibilities to imagining care taking and healing as a way of continued living with an infected planet. The infected planet refers to the current pandemic and to the much older disease of colonial racist patriarchy. Care feminism counteracts capitalist destruction and toxic human exceptionalism. Rooted in mutual interdependence and pandemic solidarity, care feminism presents a hopeful perspective for collaborative survival.

Highlights

This essay is written in response to the COVID-19 outbreak
Rooted in mutual interdependence and pandemic solidarity, care feminism presents a hopeful perspective for collaborative survival
Care Feminism: Continued Living with an Infected Planet; 4

Summary

Staying with the Crisis

The ancient Greek word krísis means quarrel, dispute, and trial. Interestingly enough, the ancient Greek word krísis means decision, judgement, and determination. If the same holds true for theoretical and scholarly work on COVID conditions, we could end up with an extremely gendered perspective on COVID times, pandemic effects, and the perspectives offered on living and surviving with an infected planet This could result in an extremely distorted view on recovery and on the creation of so-called normality in post-pandemic times.[13] As a cultural theorist interested in developing further feminist-materialist tools useful to the critical diagnosis of the ethical dimensions of the global present, the focus here is on the central terms of war and of care as they orient the crisis response. The starting points of despair and hope are premised on the notion of a long and dedicated process of taking care of the infected planet.

Respond we Must

Care Feminism

Findings

Instead of a Conclusion: No Going Back to Normal