Articles

Careful Cracks: Resistant Practices of Care and Affect-ability

Authors

  • Ludovica D'Alessandro Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21827/krisis.42.1.37886

Keywords:

Care, Resistance, Affect

Abstract

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, several institutional policies and discourses, speaking in tandem with a ‘health’ and ‘financial crisis’, have highlighted what seems to be the consequences of an aporetic disentanglement of capitalist relations of production and reproduction. Indeed, partial halts to economic production in the wake of COVID-19 have become equivalent – through symbolic and material actualisations of vulnerability and care – to a suspension of people’s capacity to sustain themselves. This dynamic has thus overshadowed alternatives to the capitalist tie of economic production with social reproduction. Resisting this landscape, local solidarity groups have emerged globally to counter the flattening of reproduction for the perpetuation of the socio-economic status quo by creating networks of mutual aid and support. Learning from these movements, I propose affect-ability as a philosophically productive term and tool to conceptualise resistant practices of care, toward underscoring the inherent relationality and vulnerability of bodies as well as its unequal and inequitable effects, while rethinking the notion of care itself from these ontological, political, and ethical premises.

Author Biography

Ludovica D'Alessandro, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Ludovica D’Alessandro is a PhD student at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her philosophical and artistic research focuses on the biopolitics of vulnerability, affective relationalities, and critical care practices. Her current project is specifically concerned with afflictions in bowel movements as related to trauma, psychosomatics, and sexuality.

Published

2022-12-08

How to Cite

D’Alessandro, Ludovica. 2022. “Careful Cracks: Resistant Practices of Care and Affect-Ability”. Krisis | Journal for Contemporary Philosophy 42 (1):18-28. https://doi.org/10.21827/krisis.42.1.37886.