The Nurturing Language of Care Ethics and of Other Related Feminist Approaches: Opposing Contemporary Neoliberal Politics

Abstract

This chapter offers a comparison between care ethics and different approaches such as ‘affective equality,’ the ‘ethic of social flesh,’ and ‘social reproduction.’ Against the neoliberal and neopopulist devaluation of social projectuality and collective responsibility, the feminist approaches considered here stress the role of bodily vulnerability, interdependence, cooperation, and relationality. The chapter focuses on the similarities between their languages, illustrates the content of each approach, and highlights their differences as well as the challenges they pose to care ethics. The chapter suggests that Joan Tronto’s broad definition of care had—and still has—a great impact on contemporary literature because of its capacity to include almost all ideas and concerns that are also shared by these alternative approaches. Considering them in this light may enable us to underline some of Tronto’s more implicit, underdeveloped points and unanswered questions but also better appreciate the strengths of her theory and more in general of the most recent theorizing in care ethics.