Call for Papers: Why Care?

July 2018 the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI Berlin) organizes the symposium Why Care? This symposium will explore aesthetic and political practices of care in their historical dimensions and contemporary manifestations across critical disability studies, crip, queer, feminist theories, political theory, and literary studies.

Call for Papers

From care for the environment to care for the young and elderly, from mental health care to humanitarian care, from care understood as an obligation, as a gift, or as an affect, from the intimacy of care among loved ones, to the work of care giving in institutional settings, to the responsibility to care for those one does not know, the notion of ‘care’ encompasses a proliferating field of diverse relations. The question of care presents a central ethical and political challenge that is bound up with the increasing regulation and management of care relations by governmental institutions as well as its privatization, quantification, and commodification on the global market. As a result, certain kinds of care – for certain people, animals, things, or the environment – are dismissed or ignored in the name of ostensibly more urgent, more practical, and often more profitable concerns.

To ask: Why care? is an attempt to critically explore the massive mobilization of care in modern life. It interrogates the biopolitical ambivalences of the modern institutionalization of care as well as the prevailing economies and economics of
care regarding what counts as care, the value of care, and its differential allocation. [pullquote]Download the full Call for Papers.[/pullquote]

Submission

Participants are welcome to submit formal academic-style papers or to experiment with the form of presentation. We ask that participants be prepared to pre-circulate a short piece of writing (8-10 pages) among participants, which will then form the basis of discussion at the symposium. Please email an abstract (300 words max.) and a short bio-bibliographical profile (100 words max.) to why.care@ici-berlin.org by 30 March 2018.