Presentation
Thursday, 23. 01. 2020., at 19:00
Filodrammatica (great hall), Korzo 28/1, Rijeka
FREE ADMISSION
Taking stock of the care matrix between neoliberal coercion and insurgent social reproduction
Valeria Graziano’s presentation will take stock of some of the main current debates surrounding care labour, in order to situate the research trajectory underpinning the Pirate Care project.
Presentation and accompanying discussion will be held in English, on Thursday, 23rd of January at 7 pm in the large hall of Filodrammatica.
Presentation will sketch in broad brushstrokes the contours of recent debates around social reproduction, of which care labour is a subset, to examine under which material and historical conditions care practices implicate processes of repression and discipline, as much as opportunities for liberation and self-actualisation.
Care has been defined in different ways, from the labour that goes into tending to those who cannot or are not inclined to look after themselves; to the making and reproducing of social bonds in the everyday and intergenerationally; or as the activities of maintenance and repair of our world so that humans and non-humans can live in it as well as possible. Across the different conceptual lineages, matters of care call into question racialised and gendered subjects, sexed bodies, ableist dispositions, technological objects, as well as class struggles around the conditions of experiencing interdependence.
Departing from the ‘crisis of care’ that characterises capitalist relations not only in the present, but historically, Graziano considers how the question of the just re-organisation of care labour is at the centre of many contemporary international movements and struggles, which are rejecting the main institutions regulating it, such as the state, the market, the church and the family. Her goal is to extend these debates into a conversation with those present, to explore different political imaginaries on how it might be possible to access, receive and give care, or refuse to do so, in more just ways.
Valeria Graziano is a researcher at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University. Over the years, she has been involved in numerous initiatives of militant research and collective pedagogy across art institutions and social movements. Her research focuses on organisational practices and tecnopolitical tools that foster the refusal of work, the creative redistribution of social reproduction and the politicization of pleasure. With Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, Valeria is convening Pirate.Care, a project commission for the Dopolavoro programme by Drugo More, part of Rijeka European Capital of Culture 2020. She is co-editor of ‘Repair Matters’, a special issue of ephemera: theory & politics in organization (2019). Other recent publications include ‘Recreation at stake’ (in A Live Gathering: Performance and politics in contemporary Europe, b_books, 2019) and ‘Learning from #Syllabus’ (in State Machines, Institute of Network Cultures, 2019)
