If anything, the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of care in the proper functioning of the world. Who needs care? Who can provide it? Who has access to it and who doesn’t? Answers to these questions can map out a society’s shortcomings and vulnerabilities and raise complex questions: How can we think of care work as morally virtuous and socially essential yet so drastically underpay it? Does this have anything to do with the historical association of care work with women and people of color? Can a society value care and at the same time produce the very vulnerabilities that require it? If care remains entangled with racism, sexism, and other forms of social exclusions, can we also reclaim it as a resistant political practice? Can care serve as a model for ethical relations with others in general? At a more abstract level, what does it actually mean to care about someone or something? And what is self-care anyway?

In this course, we will look at literature, essays, and films and discuss various topics, such as feminist ethics, global migration, humanitarianism, healthcare, disability, dependency, social vulnerability, etc.

Taught in French.