Matters of care: speculative ethics in more than human worlds

“Care? Why should I care about care?” This question, raised by one of María Puig de la Bellacasa’s colleagues, is one that could be reasonably posed by any critical scholar. Care is, after all, a deeply fraught concept. Historically, the ideal of caretaking has been used to justify women’s domestic confinement and their lack of remuneration. More recently, it’s been coopted by corporations in their altruistic marketing strategies (think “CBS Cares” or “Chase Cares” or “Nordstrom Cares”). Taking seriously care’s ambivalent, non-innocent character, Matters of Care offers a praiseworthy posthumanist intervention into the politics of caring, working to recuperate care from the trappings of neoliberal biopolitics.