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
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