This was such a timely read! I think now in a pandemic we're seriously grappling with the limits and possibilities of community care, when we're cut off from community in our routine ways (which has created space for other kinds of growth and healing but it hasn't been easy!) - so there's this interesting space to really question what self-care is/should be/has become. Definitely the problematic neoliberal cooptation of self-care as you discuss, and its sinister (???!!) impact of prioritizing the individual (who is almost always more privileged, whose well-being comes at the cost of others). It seems that your time with the communities of domestic workers in HK inspired you to think through some of this - would love to read more about such practices of care and resistance that are also going against the grain of state-sanctioned 'hygiene and self-protection' dictates
Thank you - I hope to report on migrant domestic workers in HK this year! I think we have so much farther to go in terms of interrogating and understanding the politics of care - especially during a pandemic. It's clear that we depend on careworkers entirely and also that self care has been co-opted entirely, and yet this pervasive idea of self care continues to spread... I'm interested on if and how feminist discourse and practices can evolve to acknowledge the gaps and co-optation that capitalism/neoliberalism/violent authoritarianism create. In other words, if we can think about rest and care as work, then we can understand the limits of what we can fully communicate when we are talking about rest and care. I also highly recommend this essay by Alice Sarmiento for Terremoto https://terremoto.mx/en/revista/descansar-es-cuidar-cuidar-es-trabajar/
This was such a timely read! I think now in a pandemic we're seriously grappling with the limits and possibilities of community care, when we're cut off from community in our routine ways (which has created space for other kinds of growth and healing but it hasn't been easy!) - so there's this interesting space to really question what self-care is/should be/has become. Definitely the problematic neoliberal cooptation of self-care as you discuss, and its sinister (???!!) impact of prioritizing the individual (who is almost always more privileged, whose well-being comes at the cost of others). It seems that your time with the communities of domestic workers in HK inspired you to think through some of this - would love to read more about such practices of care and resistance that are also going against the grain of state-sanctioned 'hygiene and self-protection' dictates
Thank you - I hope to report on migrant domestic workers in HK this year! I think we have so much farther to go in terms of interrogating and understanding the politics of care - especially during a pandemic. It's clear that we depend on careworkers entirely and also that self care has been co-opted entirely, and yet this pervasive idea of self care continues to spread... I'm interested on if and how feminist discourse and practices can evolve to acknowledge the gaps and co-optation that capitalism/neoliberalism/violent authoritarianism create. In other words, if we can think about rest and care as work, then we can understand the limits of what we can fully communicate when we are talking about rest and care. I also highly recommend this essay by Alice Sarmiento for Terremoto https://terremoto.mx/en/revista/descansar-es-cuidar-cuidar-es-trabajar/