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The Political Philosophy of Care

2022; University of Pennsylvania Press; Volume: 69; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/dss.2022.0005

1946-0910

Sarah Leonard, Deva Woodly,

Political Economy and Marxism

The Political Philosophy of Care Sarah Leonard (bio) and Deva Woodly (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Home-care workers and SEIU at a rally on November 16, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for SEIU) [End Page 28] The rhetoric of care pervades contemporary politics, from social movements to congressional spending debates. Some see "care" as a new framework for redistributive politics; others denigrate it as a self-indulgent language in which bubble baths get reframed as revolutionary praxis. In her forthcoming book, Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements, New School professor Deva Woodly makes a case for radical Black feminist pragmatism as "a new approach to politics, one that takes lessons from many twentieth-century ideologies and forges them into a political ethic for our times," and describes care as one of its key elements. The politics of care "holds that the activity of governance in a society that hopes to be just must be oriented toward the responsibility to exercise and provide care for those most impacted by oppression and domination." The care paradigm has become popular, she notes, after decades of eroding social supports, stagnating wages, and demands to work longer hours. I spoke with her about care as both a practice within social movements and as a new governance model. The transcript below has been edited and condensed for clarity. —Sarah Leonard Sarah Leonard: Why do you think the framework of care is getting attention right now? Deva Woodly: One of the things I noticed in 2014, when the Movement for Black Lives really became catalyzed in the streets, was its notion from Black feminism, particularly Audre Lorde, that self-care is a revolutionary act. Self-care was of course quickly commodified. But people were at their wit's end, and the notion that caring could be revolutionary was something that people took up across political spectrums, across income levels, across other kinds of cleavages. It's partly because people have been yearning so strongly for a language to talk about something that had been missing from [End Page 29] mainstream politics. Until recently care wasn't something that you could make a case for legislating about. Instead, people talked almost exclusively in terms of rights or prosperity. Leonard: As this goes to press, we're looking at all this potential social spending in the Build Back Better bill. Is this legislation part of a vision that you share, or does it feel like plugging holes rather than any kind of reorientation? Woodly: I'm all for social spending that makes people's lives better. The child tax credit is not a revolutionary policy, but it is a policy that has lifted half of America's impoverished children out of poverty, and that matters. What's being considered in Congress would reduce harm and make it possible for more people to care for themselves and others. That does not absolve anyone of the need to continue to push to reorient politics away from the notion that having state funds be distributed directly to people creates an "entitlement society." Instead, some of the people that we have elected recently, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush, are saying that public money should be used for public goods. Period. We can think in terms of what [the abolitionist activist] Mariame Kaba calls non-reformist reforms. When it comes to child care, even if some people are talking about it just in terms of allowing everybody to go to work, people become used to having affordable child care, which would be frankly a revolutionary change. Once you have a universal, not a targeted, program—targeted programs are not non-reformist reforms, because they're always vulnerable—you can build upon them in the future. People become accustomed to not suffering. Leonard: It seems like people are resisting that suffering more and more. Woodly: This whole so-called labor shortage has a lot of origins. Part of it is a capital strike. But part of it is also about people having realized what [labor journalist] Sarah Jaffe says, that work won't love you back. People rearranged their lives...