A Politics of Radical Care - Lynne Segal

Watch Lynne Segal's plenary session from the BSA Virtual Annual Conference 2024: Crisis, Continuity and Change which took place online from 3-5 April 2024.
Abstract: Life at present is plagued by drama and emergencies. We see rampant inequality and carelessness entrenched, ensuring that essential resources are ever harder to access for many, while environmental disasters continue to threaten us, even as continuous warfare around the globe results in ever more people on the move in search of asylum. One response is evident in the rise of the Right, with its populist nationalism and policies of exclusion. A second involves more inclusive practices of resistance and hope, which nowadays often address the need not just to prioritize care, but to explore its complexities and significance, noting its constant devaluation.
In this presentation I draw upon my latest book, Lean on Me, which argues that the only way to combat the pessimism feeding reactionary movements is by insisting upon our globally entwined interdependence and shared vulnerability. We know that the recent and still ongoing Covid pandemic spotlighted exactly this global interdependence, along with our lifelong needs for differing forms of care and support. At its height the pandemic did stimulate heroic efforts from care workers globally, as well as generating a host of grassroots practices of mutual aid for those in want of care and companionship, some of which continue today. However, the recognition of our mutual dependency is always threatened by people's deep fear and disavowal of dependency, encouraged by illusory rhetoric of personal autonomy along with market promises of individual fulfilment, irrespective of others. In reality our human condition is one in which our bodies frequently fail us, just as our desires are often thwarted or dismissed. This means that none of us survive without the care and kindness of others, underpinned by diverse social infrastructures that either enable or curtail the flourishing of all living creatures, and the world itself. Embracing the interconnected vulnerability of human existence can help us to cement our ties to others, near and far, while encouraging us to respond to the persistent perils of the present and fatalistic forebodings of the future by deepening our commitment to a compassionate, inclusive sociality, placing expanded notions of care at the very heart of our politics and democratic survival.
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