panel 24
Revolutionary Care and Creative Dissent
The Fundamental Question: What Does It Mean to Care? Attention and Conflict in BLM and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit: Psycho-Analytic and Phenomenological Considerations
Michael Stone-Richards
On a certain reading of Shakespeare’s Othello, Othello murders Desdemona precisely because he asks for something that cannot be given: proof of Desdemona’s love. What could be the meaning of care if not the practice (proof?) of care, and yet care is everywhere, and everywhere marked by its absence. Etymologically care is anxiety, sorrow, heedfulness, attention, even to lament, or to sorrow. Care is both affect and capacity, and one consonant with a political global condition marked by retreat, collapse, withdrawal – treaties, systems, values, social compacts. And just as the globalizing condition, the condition of expansion ironically at one with symbolic contraction, leaves retreat and social collapse in its wake, strangely there is an emerging response of a kind of weak “power” (in the way that gravity is said to be a weak force): the refusal of dominion in favor of care. In the most fundamental sense, the radical anxiety produced by the retreat and collapse of social compacts and values has produced an equally radical awareness of entanglement (with environments, nature, and people). If care comes in the wake of retreat, it can also be said that care manifests entanglement, that is, mutual dependencies (not mere interconnectedness). We propose that care is the name for this exposure and accompanying vulnerability. Our argument (to be explored): that to comprehend what care is we must also grasp what it means when to care is not a choice and so not a voluntarist phenomenon, otherwise we cannot comprehend the refusal of care and the failures of attentiveness present in a politics of disavowal and the conflicts entailed in the competition for attention (also, care).
Michael Stone-Richards is Dean of Programs and Partnerships, and Head of the Program in Critical Studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the USA. For many years he was Professor in Critical Practice and Visual Studies at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. He has been a Fellow at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal, and a Fellow at the Alice Berlin Kaplan Center for the Humanities, Northwestern University. For some years Michael has been reflecting on and teaching classes about care / aesthetics / ethics / politics with two classes becoming cornerstones: “Care of the City: Detroit” (an introduction to and theory of social practice in terms of care) and “Waste and Violence in the Modern World” (a biopolitical account of the predations which mark a world where humans become “resources” no longer worthy of care or hospitality). Michael’s thinking is anchored in both the feminist ethic of care tradition (Anglophone: Joan Tronto and Carol Gilligan; Francophone: Sandra Laugier, Pascale Molinier, as also the German tradition of Sorgekrise) and a post-Heideggerian tradition. He published a programmatic essay on his work in progress “Care comes in the Wake of Retreat” on e-flux Architecture (2017). For his book in progress, Care of the City: Ruination, Abandonment, and Hospitality in Contemporary Practice (forthcoming Sternberg Press), Michael received a Warhol Foundation Grant. Michael is also author of Logics of Separation (2011) and the founding editor of the journal Detroit Research.
Decolonial Care Aesthetics and Archives: South Asian Feminist Posterwork and Resistance
Shrinjita Biswas, Samiha Chandwani, Christine Garlough & Manisha Pathak-Shelat
Aesthetically rich poster work from diverse feminist groups throughout South Asia preserves a vibrant history of grassroots activism. These posters address a range of concerns from sexual violence to health disparities, as well as legal, educational, and economic inequities. Taken together, this political art provides a complex narrative about care’s relationship to protest practices and feminist activism in South Asia. These posters are aesthetic markers of local and national struggles for justice, provoking reflection, deepening commitment, stirring outrage, evoking humor, and encouraging new modes of care labor. In this paper, we first discuss our method, grounded in care theory, for creating a digital archive of 700+ feminist posters at UW-Madison (see link) done in collaboration with two feminist groups: Olakh and Sahiyar (Caswell & Cifor, 2016; Hall & Tweed, 2019; Liew & Lipscombe, 2024). We then provide a rhetorical analysis and extend Elena Pulchini’s (2016; 2021) scholarship to consider how this poster art and digital archive care for others sometimes distant in both space and time. This analysis focuses on a select portion of this unique collection – centering on violence – and considers key audiences, exigencies, and political contexts. We explore how these political posters employ appeals to care for intersectional audiences and make claims for social justice and human rights (Garlough, 2013; 2022). Finally, we highlight the embodied aspect of making and using the posters and suggest that, even in a digital age, grassroots feminist organizations will continue to rely heavily upon poster-work, often crafted in small consciousness raising contexts, because it is an economically feasible and socially familiar mode of progressive political communication, especially for those who have not always had equal voices in the public sphere or visibility in mainstream media but create mutual aid through acts of collective labor.
References
Caswell, M. & Cifor, M. (2016). From human rights to feminist ethics: Radical empathy in the archives. Archivaria, 81(1), 23-43.
Garlough, C. (2013). Desi divas: Political activism in South Asian American cultural performances. University Press of Mississippi.
Garlough, C. (2022). Haunting acknowledgment: Archiving Women’s March folklore and the political potential of care ethics. In T. Frandy & B. M. Cederström (Eds), Culture work: Folklore for the public good (pp. 353-364). University of Wisconsin Press.
Hall, A. & Tweed, H. C. (2019). Curating care: Creativity, women’s work, and the Carers UK archive. Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies, 6, Article 24.
Liew, C. L. & Lipscombe, A. (2024). Communities, conversations, & care: A new model of archiving. Information Matters, 4(2). https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4732876
Pulcini, E. (2016). Ethics of care and emotions. Etica & Politica, 18(3), 121-131.
Pulcini, E. (2021). Global vulnerability: Why take care of the future. In M. Hamington & M. Flower (Eds), Care ethics in the age of precarity (pp. 120-143). University of Minnesota Press.
Shrinjita Biswas is a graduate student in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Biswas’ research lies in the intersection of gender and performance, feminist cultural practices, and political theatre. Her PhD research on the histories and continuities of the feminist theatre movement in India intends to explore the question of feminist ethics, protest, the politics of solidarity and care, and its relationship with performance. Alongside the study of the intersecting historical processes of feminist politics, activism, and theatre from the 1970s until the present, her larger research aims to develop a holistic understanding of feminist theatre and its intertwined relationship with the notions of citizenship, caste politics, law, and nationalism. Biwas investigates how feminist discourses in post-colonial India have been manifested in theatre, performance, and new media, exploring the intricate threads of representation, identity, and resistance. Through her interdisciplinary approach, Biwas’ research delves into understanding the transformative potential of feminist performance as a site of care, solidarity, and mutual aid, as well as its role as a medium to visibilize marginalized voices and histories.
Samiha Chandwani is a graduate student at Georgia State University, Atlanta. Chandwani’s areas of interest are Gender, Community, and Media History. She is motivated to study post-colonial theories, especially Subaltern History which uncovers history from below, giving space and voice to groups that have been historically ignored. As a PhD scholar of History, she is analyzing the Representation of Women through Print Culture in colonial India and how that representation transpired into post-colonial times, thus setting gender norms and roles for women in India. Through her research, she aims to understand how the media in colonial times (largely controlled by men) under the pretext of improving women’s status in society, further burdened Indian women with Victorian ideals of domesticity and womanhood. She is further interested in understanding the efforts of women in post-colonial India towards decolonizing their identity and status using popular media as a weapon to voice their appeals and struggles.
Christine Garlough is a professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, as well as the director of the Center for Research on Gender and Women at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Garlough conducts three streams of research constellating around ethics of care, feminist political communication, and performance. For the past twenty-five years, she has worked with grassroots feminist activists in India and the U.S. who engage with vernacular culture, social media, and create local performances for social change. This research has been published in her monograph, Desi Divas: Political Activism in South Asian American Cultural Performances, as well as in journals such as Communication Monographs, Performance Research, Quarterly Journal of Speech, International Journal of Press/Politics, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Journal of American Folklore, and Women’s Studies in Communication. Her scholarly publications explore how care, as a political concept, contributes to progressive movements and mutual aid projects. As part of her public humanities scholarship, she has developed two digital archives – the South Asian Feminist Activism Archive and the Women’s March Archive – dedicated to the preservation and public availability of feminist protest posters. Her new book project, With Care: Everyday Feminist Performance and Politics, engages with political and philosophical issues at the intersection of feminist ethics of care, expressive culture, acknowledgment, and recognition studies. Co-organizer of the UW-Madison Ethics of Care Initiative, she helped to develop a Mellon-Borghesi Workshop titled “Care: Politics, Performances, Publics, Practices” and organize an international conference (virtual platform) on the ethics of care – “Relations of Care Across and After Worlds.”
Manisha Pathak-Shelat is a professor of Communication & Digital Platforms and Strategies and the co-chair of the Centre for Development Management and Communication at MICA, Ahmedabad. Pathak-Shelat believes in a scholarship that is socially engaged, accessible, and global in scope. She considers her work in academia a way to make meaningful contributions towards a better world through teaching and writing. She holds a PhD in Mass Communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a PhD in education from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India. She has worked as a media consultant, communication trainer, and researcher in India, Thailand, and the USA. Manisha’s special interests are young people’s media cultures new media, civic engagement, transcultural citizenship, media literacy, and gender. Broadly, her research over the years has addressed the question of how ordinary individuals engage with media to experience agency, explore identities, and participate in social change. Her collaborative research projects include an Academy of Finland-sponsored multi-country youth media participation project, studies on online civic engagement, Gen Z, and transcultural citizenship, the ethical future of education and work under platformisation, culture-centred ethical digital design, and an ongoing inquiry in digital youth cultures in India. She led the UNICEF-MICA partnership and the India component of the Global Kids Online study initiated by the Innocenti-Unicef Office of Research and the London School of Economics. Manisha has shared her research on several international platforms and her work has been published as books as well as in the Journal of Youth Studies, International Journal of Communication, Education and Information Technologies, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, New Media & Society, Communication Inquiry, Journal of Children and Media, Comunicar, and Media Asia.
From Columbus to Women Fighters: The Intersection of Care Ethics and Postpreservation
Citlalli Escobar Acosta
How does the removal of contested monuments inform our understanding of conservation within an overarching ethics of care? Public monuments serve as powerful symbols, shaping collective memory and sparking ongoing debate. Recent movements target monuments glorifying oppression, raising ethical questions about their removal. Drawing on the work of Tronto, Fisher, and DeSilvey, this paper proposes a framework of care to navigate the ethical challenges surrounding the removal of a Christopher Columbus monument in Mexico City. This framework reframes absence as a form of care, serving as a testament to the potential of care ethics and post-preservation to foster dialogue, inclusion, and resilience in our collective engagement with heritage and public memory.
In this paper, I will investigate the emergence of the Glorieta de las mujeres que luchan in Mexico City, a monumental site created after a Columbus monument's removal, arguing that this form of reclamation can be seen as a post-preservation action that operates care practices beyond the object. Through the ongoing transformation of the space, the Glorieta stands as an example of how the removal of contested monuments can contribute to community healing and the reshaping of memorial environments. Detailing its biography, I will juxtapose the actions of the collective involved in its making with its appreciation by local communities, which in itself offers valuable insights into the complex dynamics of memory, identity, and public space.
While care offers a pathway for healing and inclusivity, the paper acknowledges its complexities. A critical approach to care is necessary to ensure it does not perpetuate injustices for some communities while seeking to address them for others. Ultimately, this paper argues that a nuanced understanding of care, applied through this framework, can transform contested heritage from a source of division into a catalyst for social change.
My name is Citlalli Escobar Acosta. I am a bachelor’s student in History of Art, Materials, and Technology at University College London (UCL) and an incoming graduate student in Conservation of Contemporary Art and Media. My research interests lie in the intersection of art, ethics, and material culture, particularly in the context of contested heritage. My recent dissertation explored the ethical complexities surrounding the removal of contested monuments. Employing a care ethics framework, I examined the challenges and opportunities presented by the removal of M.T. Steyn's monument in South Africa, the relocation of Edward Colston's statue in Bristol, and the creation of the Glorieta de las mujeres que luchan in Mexico City. This research highlighted the multifaceted nature of care in heritage management, encompassing maintenance, conservation, and post-preservation strategies. Currently affiliated with the History of Art Department at UCL, I'm interested in exploring the ways in which art conservation practices can contribute to social healing and inclusivity.
Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
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