Krisis 2023, 43 (1)
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Editorial: The Care Dossier II
This issue of Krisis includes the second installment of the Care Dossier, as well as the re-
sponses to the “Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto,” which was published in the previous issue.
“Care,” and especially the lack thereof, has been central to diagnoses of many contemporary
crises, such as climate change and animal mass extinction, the attacks on the welfare state, and
the rightwing backlash against LGBTQ+ and reproductive health rights. These crises necessi-
tate, as the Manifesto argues, a rethinking and revaluation of nature. Many of the themes raised
in the responses to the Manifesto echo concerns that are voiced in the contributions to the Care
Dossier. In both cases, care is extended beyond a personal relationship to include attunement
to the other-than-human, and to the conditions for what Butler calls a “livable life.”
This issue opens with four contributions to the Care Dossier. Gawel reflects in her article
“Radical Care: Seeking New and More Possible Meetings in the Shadows of Structural Vio-
lence” on her engagement in a mutual aid project to show how under conditions of structural
violence, such practices of care are marked by contradictions. Govrin explores in “Debt and
Desire: Differential Exploitation and Gendered Dimensions of Debt and Austerity” the gen-
dered dimension of debt, arguing how the exploitation of feminized labour is inscribed in bod-
ies and desires, to conclude that struggles against the disciplinary effect of debt involves com-
munal projects that reorganize care work. In “The climate politics of care practices: A concep-
tual and political exploration of more than human atmospheric care under conditions of air
pollution,” Van Balen turns to the struggle for breathable air, which has come under pressure
due to pollution and climate change, to argue for the importance of “atmospheric care prac-
tices” and the entanglement of human and more-than-human agency. This issue also includes
two stand-alone articles. Oraldi shows in “Technology and society in Habermas’ philosophy:
towards a critical theory of technology beyond instrumentalism” how Habermas can be re-
garded as a philosopher of technology, and allows for a critical theory of technology. Finally,
Romm introduces his readers in “Ruins in the Expanded Field” to the “necroaesthetical ruin,”
objects that are made to commemorate the violence yielded on art objects and other material
heritage, to reflect on the imbrication of necropolitics and history.
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The sixteen responses to the “Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto” cover a variety of fields in
which “nature” is discussed, from Critical Theory and approaches defined by a critical engage-
ment with German Idealism, to approaches that start from postcolonial and indigenous theo-
ries, which have a longstanding tradition of thinking about the more-than-human that moves
beyond the nature-culture opposition. This issue concludes with four book review essays. Van
den Belt reviews the latest book by Hermsen on Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt; Van
Reekum and Hammana read Çankaya’s Mijn ontelbare identiteiten as an invitation to collec-
tively reflect on the operations of race and ethnicity in the Netherlands, in an essay that uses
the same autobiographical method as Çankaya; Vintges’ essay looks at Van Oenen’s Culturele
veldslagen: Filosofie van de culture wars and left wing critics of “identity politics” and their
use of concepts that were coined by the right, such as “cultuurmarxisme” and “culture wars”;
Willemse discusses Didi-Huberman’s Survivance des lucioles, which recently appeared in a
Dutch translation. Closing this issue is Zamani’s discussion of Timothy Brennan’s biography
of Edward Said.
