VULNERABLE BODIES Caring as a Political Horizon

177 José Laguna

VULNERABLE BODIES CARING AS A POLITICAL HORIZON

José Laguna

Introduction ...... 3 1. Adam and Eve (Hidden Bodies) ...... 9 2. The Vitruvian Man (Dispensable Body) ...... 15 3. Benjamina (Vulnerable Body) ...... 19 Notes ...... 31 “We are all born poor and naked; we are all subject to disease and misery of every type, and finally we are condemned to death. The sight of these common miseries can, therefore, carry our hearts to humanity if we live in a society that encourages us to imagine the life of others.” Martha Nussbaum, Los límites del patriotismo. Identidad, pertenencia y “ciudadanía mundial”.

José Laguna is a theologian, a musician, and a member of the theological area of Cristianisme i Justícia. His earlier contributions to this collection are: And if God were not perfect? (Book- let no. 99); Taking stock of reality, taking responsibility for reality, and taking charge of reality (Booklet no. 143); Evangelical Dystopias (Booklet no. 148); Stepping on the Moon: Eschatology and Politics (Booklet no. 162); Seeking Sanctuary: The Political Construction of Habitable Places (Booklet no. 174).

Publisher: CRISTIANISME I JUSTÍCIA - Roger de Llúria 13 - 08010 Barcelona +34 93 317 23 38 - [email protected] - www.cristianismeijusticia.net Printed by: Ediciones Rondas S.L. - Legal deposit: B 18541-2020 ISBN: 978-84-9730-469-6 - ISSN: 2014-6566 - ISSN (virtual edition): 2014-6574 Editor: Santi Torres i Rocaginé - Translated by Joseph Owens Cover drawing: Ignasi Flores - Layout: Pilar Rubio Tugas Printed on recycled paper - October 2020

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This booklet was written a year ago, before COVID-19 abruptly con- fronted us with evidence of our vulnerable condition, before we as a society became conscious of the centrality of the countless tasks that involve in caring for others. We feel ever more impelled to call for a changed paradigm of civi- lization so that vulnerability and caring become society’s fundamental pillars. A year ago, thinking about a society of care was utopian; today, in times of coronavirus, it has become utterly urgent and necessary.

The West has been constructed on the es and times of one’s independence. fiction of self-sufficiency. The ideal of Childhood, old age, or sickness are western man1 is that of the sovereign considered defective moments to be individual who has absolute control overcome or combated since they pre- over his life and his property. West- sume situations of special vulnerability ern man is a self-sufficient being who and dependency on others. In paradox- decides, along with other subjects as ical contrast, those scarce biographical independent as he is, to form a pre- moments when we phantasize that we ventive pact of non-aggression, thus don’t need anybody or anything are creating the myth of the social contract held up as the ideal model for a fully that grounds the educational, juridical, realized life. and political institutions of our liberal The moral version of self-sufficien- democracies. cy, called “autonomy,” suffers from the In this paradigm of self-sufficiency, same individualistic bias. In its Kantian growing and maturing are synonyms formulation, autonomy assumes that for continually expanding the spac- all persons possess in themselves the

3 sources of morality. In other words, our or care; the one possible exception is personal conscience dictates to us the article 25, which refers tangentially to moral imperatives that should regulate the need of care in the stages of mater- our behavior, apart our social relations. nity and childhood.

The exhaustion of the paradigm The West has been of self-sufficiency constructed on the fiction of self-sufficiency. Until a few decades ago, the narrative of self-sufficiency may have responded satisfactorily to the demands for recog- nition and protection made by auton- However, as soon as the narrative omous individuals who join together of self-sufficiency comes up against with others through freely accepted reality, the fissures of its inconsisten- pacts of non-aggression, but such is cy appear. To begin with, we human not the case in the epochal shift that beings have never been self-sufficient; has characterized change in the pres- we exist and we develop thanks to the ent millennium. We see the emergence help of other humans; we are an es- of “new subjects” who are vulnerable, pecially fragile animal species, con- but there is no juridical or political dis- demned to non-existence whenever we course with which they can articulate lack the care given by others. As re- their demands. We see voiceless, ig- gards our supposed ability to conduct nored collectivities such as the impov- ourselves autonomously for rational erished majorities, which are excluded and/or moral ends, there are abundant from the community of dialogue where examples of persons who lack the free- the joint criteria of justice and the com- dom of judgment or action that define mon good are decided. We see the us as human beings according to West- non-rational animals, which are inca- ern norms. How is it, then, that such pable of arguing any moral end beyond a fragile and questionable foundation their instinctive responses. We see the succeeded in becoming the prevailing “planetary subject,” which is suffer- narrative in what we are accustomed to ing the exploitation of its resources calling Western culture? Or converse- and the extinction of its biodiversity ly, why do the obviousness and the and yet has no voice with which to de- universality of our shared vulnerabil- mand help from humanity. And we see ity, interdependence, and need for care the identities hidden by the dominant not form part of the basic narratives of hetero-patriarchal discourse, which our social institutions? Care has never denies recognition and rights to those formed part of western political dis- who do not fit the hegemonic pattern course. To take a classic example, not of normative gender. All these subjects one of the 30 articles of the Universal move in a sphere of vulnerability that Declaration of Human Rights alludes cries out for care. However, since they to vulnerability, fragility, dependence, are not free and conscious parts of any

4 existing moral and political commu- tal dimensions which the former par- nity, they cannot demand their rights, adigm relegated to the private sphere at least not according to the canonical of personal motivations or virtuous discourse of dignity. actions. In the paradigm of self-suffi- While based on the power of the ciency, care operates in the context of human species, the “androcentric dig- so-called “imperfect duties” such as nity” that has served as the foundation compassion, almsgiving, philanthro- for the rights of “free men and citizens” py, and hospitality. Such voluntary ac- has shown its limits in the face of the tions encourage us to help others, but silent demands of vulnerable subjects, there is no political or juridical chan- for these subjects aspire to recognition nel through which they can be claimed by virtue of the “cosmocentric dignity” strictly as rights. In a world of self-suf- that is based on the ethical principle of ficient beings, no institution can oblige responsibility and the political impera- me to care for another, and no “other” tive of care. can demand my care. The cries of a planet on the verge of If we want to include care in the po- collapse, united to those of millions of litical sphere and make it a structuring migrants who roam through the world principle of social institutions, then it in search of welcoming countries, have must be removed from the sphere of woken us from the narcissistic slumber voluntary benevolence and made to of senseless individualism. Mother operate in the realm of demandable Earth confronts us with a responsi- rights. Such a transfer would not be bility that is urgent and radical: if she the result of lengthening the list of hu- does not survive, we do not exist. At man rights; it would come about only the same time, the migrants, refugees, through a change of cosmovision: it and internally displaced persons make would require that we pass from the plain the fragility of an “immunolog- paradigm of autonomy and rights to ical social contract”2 that is incapable that of vulnerability and care. of establishing universal and effective Like Boaventura de Sousa, we be- rights of citizenry. These two realities, lieve that the discourse of human rights among many others, provide us with a has entered an inflationary stage. The diagnosis of the terminal state of the steady increase in the panoply of rights paradigm of autonomy that is epito- (of first, second, third, fourth genera- mized most notably in the Universal tions) has ended up producing low-in- Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. tensity democracies:

We frequently hear commentary Political rights or private care? warning us against overloading the politics of human rights with new, Vulnerability, interdependence, care, more advanced rights or with differ- and responsibility are the key term of ent, broader conceptions of human a newly emerging paradigm. A new rights. Such commentary is a belated cosmovision is seeking to place on manifestation of how the emancipa- the public political agenda these vi- tory claims of Western modernity

5 have been reduced to the lowest level consequences of forgetfulness of the of emancipation that worldwide cap- body on the part of substantialist pa- italism enables or tolerates. Low-in- triarchal philosophy, which generates tensity human rights are the other a discourse promoting eco-social irre- face of low-intensity democracy.3 sponsibility. As Seyla Benhabib states, without “body” there is neither care nor justice:

From the rights of a universal Universalist moral philosophy, and being to the care of a corporal concretely the universalist theories of being justice, have accentuated our value as moral persons at the cost of forgetting The absence of a language of vulner- and repressing our vulnerability and ability in our juridical and political dependency as corporal beings. The culture is not an accident. It is the fi- networks of dependency and the fab- nal outcome of a hegemonic discourse ric of human affairs in which we find that has systematically disparaged the ourselves immersed are bonds that accounts of human fragility through- unite us; they mold our moral needs, out its historical development. These our identities, and our conceptions of alternative accounts have always been the good life. The autonomous self present in the culture, but they have is not a disincarnate self. Universal been consistently ignored in favor of moral philosophy must recognize the an essentialist discourse that prefers profound experience that is the for- to affirm an ethereal universal subject mation of the human being, which with bonding responsibilities. requires care and justice.4 The paradigm of vulnerability that is currently being constructed with the The “substantializing” of the sub- help of critical theories and subaltern ject not only affects the philosophical epistemologies seeks to impugn the definition of same; it also has ethical, essentialist models of modernity. To juridical, and political consequences of affirm the universality of our constitu- great scope, because an incorporeal be- tive vulnerability and interdependence ing automatically becomes a responsi- is to recognize ourselves primarily as bility-free individual. Philosophy still corporal beings because the basis of has pending the challenge of conceiv- our identity, our fragility, and our need ing universality from the perspective of care resides in our physical bodies. of vulnerability, care, and responsibili- In contrast to an “abstract universal ty. “This point is important,” says Rey- subject” that neither suffers nor grows es Mate, “because universality is the hungry nor gets tired nor dies, every touchstone of any rationality worthy of person without exception experiences the name. Philosophy has not succeed- the fragility and the inescapable limits ed in thinking this way, either because of the body. it aims high and builds an abstract uni- Critical feminist theory has ob- versality (as concepts do), because it served and denounced the political conceives of universality as the expan-

6 sion of particularity (as empires do), or mato-political” discourse which, by because it conceives of universality as drawing on the universal language of only the sum of the elements actually vulnerability, places at the center of present (thus excluding those that are social praxis the ethical demand for absent).”5 The politics of care takes up exercising responsibility and political the challenge of conceiving universal- concern regarding care. ity from the perspective of vulnerable In order to elaborate the politi- and wounded singularities. cal narrative of care, I propose that we consider the two key stories that have helped to shape the foundational myths of the West: “Adam and Eve” The paradigm of and “Vitruvian Man.” Analyzing these vulnerability seeks to myths will help us to understand how impugn the essentialist irresponsibility and neglect of the body ended up crystalized in the mod- models of modernity. el of the Western man. Deconstructive analysis of these stories will place us on the threshold on a new paradigm in Our contribution to the elaboration which the icon of “Benjamina”—the of the new paradigm of vulnerability name given to “cranium 14” found at is situated among other analyses crit- the “Pit of Bones” deposit in Atapuer- icizing the narratives that have shaped ca (Spain)—will provide us with keys the Western worldvision of self-suffi- to elaborate a new social-origin myth, ciency and forgetfulness of the body. one in which vulnerability and care de- Starting with a prior deconstructive fine us and determine us as the human moment, we will strive to create a “so- species.

7

1. ADAM AND EVE (HIDDEN BODIES)

Along with other philosophical, scientific, and literary accounts, the myth of Genesis is part of the DNA of our Western culture. It captures the moment when Adam and Eve, after eating the forbidden fruit, sud- denly become aware of their nakedness; they feel shame and cover their bodies with fig leaves (cf. Gen 3,7). There are countless inter- pretations of this passage, and most of them reflect on the motifs of transgression, guilt, sexual desire, or modesty. For our purposes it is sufficient to consider only the element of hiding. From the very begin- ning of creation, the human body abandons the scene: our first parents hide their bodies from the gaze of others, even from the eyes of God: “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked” (Gen 3,10).

Although in the cited passage both by his spiritualization or divinization, Adam and Eve hide their bodies, the while Eve’s body, in contrast, will be cultural appraisal of masculine and hidden under the weight of contempt. feminine bodies will develop along Adam and Eve both feel the same divergent paths. The human male, in shame, and they cover themselves with the wake of Platonism, will become the same fig leaves, but it is Eve, ac- progressively free of his body since it cording to the erroneous and prejudi- conditions and limits qualities such as cial patriarchal interpretation of the reason, freedom, and will. In contrast, biblical text, who with her body seduc- the human female will remain “bound es and deceives the ingenuous Adam. to nature,” the prisoner of a sinful We should notice, however, that de- body that is the source of passions and spite all the efforts of artistic portrayal a weapon of seduction. The hiding of and theological tradition to present Eve Adam’s body will be accompanied as the voluptuous woman who befogs

9 the mind of Adam with her “femi- polis. What we want to highlight here nine charms,” not one verse in Gene- is the mythical origin of this dynam- sis describes the feminine body as an ic that limits women to the sphere of instrument of deceit or seduction. As vulnerability (body, fragility, suffering, feminist theology stresses quite right- death, sin, voluptuousness, seduction, ly, Eve’s transgressive proposal is not vice, maternity, etc.) while it launch- of a sexual nature but operates rather es men into an essentialist orbit and at an intellectual and moral level; she makes the incorporeal, irresponsible invites the man to enter into the realm male the prototype of humanity. of moral knowledge of which she is the precursor. It is Eve who enables the first man to leave behind his child- ish moral heteronomy and set out on Eve’s transgressive the adult path of free and responsible proposal is not of a sexual choice. She is the first human being nature but operates rather who dares to think, reflect, and decide for herself, thus inaugurating the path at an intellectual and moral that Kant praises as the apex of human level. autonomy. This narrative of feminine preeminence is immediately obscured, however, when they are expelled from Despite their subjection, women paradise and Eve’s activity is restrict- became the repositories of a tradition ed to the domestic sphere of maternity. of care that they have transmitted from She becomes a prisoner of her unbri- generation to generation. Present-day dled body, a body dominated by desire feminism is now restoring that tradi- and submitted to the control of males tion to the public sphere, from which (Gen 3,16: “I will greatly increase your it never should have been separated. pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall By neutralizing the cultural attribution bring forth children, yet your desire that links women with caring, critical shall be for your husband, and he shall feminism seeks to give new political rule over you”). Adam, for his part, meaning to the practices of care, es- is “condemned” to labor in the public tablishing them as actions that are es- sphere (Gen 3,23: “The Lord God sent sential for every social institution and him forth from the garden of Eden, to every sexual condition. till the ground from which he was tak- en”). We cannot, in the space of this booklet, investigate the genesis of these 1.1. The rupture of essential hetero-patriarchal narratives that con- bonds fine women to the reproductive space of their bodies—and therefore to the The myth of Genesis not only marked domestic sphere—while they liberate the beginning of the slide toward “in- masculine souls from the strictures of corporeality” that culminates in the matter so that they can dedicate them- Western metaphysics constructed at selves to the noble art of governing the the cost of vulnerability; it also paved

10 the way for the rupture of two very ba- earth and shaped by the same Potter), sic human relations: the bond with na- but that essential link was dramatically ture and the bond with the other. broken with the expulsion from para- As is well known, the book of Gen- dise. From that point on, the accursed esis contains two creation stories. In earth will offer its fruit only after hard the first, which comes from the Yah- struggle with it: “Cursed is the ground wist tradition, God-Yahweh creates because of you; in toil you shall eat of Adam from the clay of the earth and it all the days of your life; thorns and then creates Eve from the rib of that thistles it shall bring forth for you; and creature of clay. In the creation story you shall eat the plants of the field. By from the Elohist tradition, which is the sweat of your face you shall eat more primitive, God-Elohim creates bread until you return to the ground, man and woman simultaneously in his for out of it you were taken; you are own image and likeness (Gen 1,27). dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen Despite their differences, both myths 3,17-19). Moreover, the enmity estab- communicate the same divine mandate lished with the seducing serpent marks regarding responsibility for creation. the origin of the hostility between hu- The Elohist story expresses it through man beings and the rest of the animals the commands to dominate and subdue: (Gen 3,14-15). “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have domin- ion over the fish of the sea and over the 1.2. The rupture of fraternity birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Gen According to the account of Genesis, 1,28), whereas the Yahwist account the rupture of the bonds with nature express the responsibility for creation leads to the dissolution of social bonds. in terms of labor: “The Lord God took Cain’s disturbing response to God’s the man and put him in the garden of question about the fate of his broth- Eden to till it and keep it” (Gen 2,15). er Abel, “Am I my brother’s keeper? Assuming the benevolent interpreta- (Gen 4,9), presages the question that tion of the creation stories proposed by runs through all human history. In the Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato context of the narrative, the divine Si´, we will take these narratives as a question is rhetorical, and Cain’s an- divine invitation “to work and to care swer is a delaying tactic; both God for” the garden of the world. and the readers of the story are aware Following the papal hermeneutic of of the fratricide that occurred. The these first chapters of Genesis, we find myth seeks not to resolve the enigma the semantics of care and responsibil- of Abel’s death but rather to establish ity expressed in the divine mandate to definitively the transcultural question protect, preserve, and guard the crea- that throbs in the heart of every socie- tion.6 We humans are responsible for ty: why should we be concerned about a creation to which we are intimately the fate of our brothers and sisters? connected (ultimately, all things and Can it be true, as Zygmunt Bauman all human beings are made of the same provocatively states, that there is no

11 “good reason” why we should be our question posed by orphanhood. We be- brothers’ keepers or why we should lieve that the isolation produced by or- show moral concern for others? Ex- phanhood needs to be resolved through pelled from paradise, we human be- the bond of filiation, not through some ings wander through history trying to type of oceanic fusion. But apart from hide from the divine gaze that reminds the terminological dispute, we agree us again and again of the eco-social re- with him in affirming that the new pol- sponsibility that derives from our pri- itics of an orphaned world requires the mordial bonds: before being self-suf- help of narratives of bonding. ficient individuals, we are carers and brothers and sisters.

Before being self-sufficient 1.3. Orphans? individuals, we are carers and brothers and sisters. The ecologist Jorge Reichmann is right to characterize our age as one of exis- How are we to carry out our tential “orphanhood.” Anthropocentric fraternal obligations in a humanism has placed us outside and situation of orphanhood? above nature, thus breaking the essen- tial bond with nature that ecological praxis seeks to restore. We need narratives which, as Ade- One of the fundamental principles of la Cortina writes, remind us that others the brilliant humanism of the Euro- are for us “flesh of our flesh and blood pean Renaissance was precisely “a of our blood” and that that is very rediscovery of the unity of human reason we have mutual obligations.8 beings with nature,” but the objection What is at stake in the sociopolitical has often been raised that humanism semantics of vulnerability and care is is precisely what separates human precisely our ability to reconstruct the beings from nature. What we need is vital filial relationships that the dis- a de-centered humanism, a human- course of Western modernity has bro- ism of orphanhood. Such a non-an- ken, ignored, or diluted. How are we to thropocentric humanism is not the carry out our fraternal obligations in a humanism of persons who feel out- situation of orphanhood? How can we side of nature and above it; rather, it treat one another as sisters and broth- is the humanism of those who feel ers if we don’t recognize that we are all that they are within nature and are offspring of a common Mother-Father symbiotically building with nature.7 (beyond the religious expression of this essential link)? We agree with the diagnosis of Re- It could happen that Nietzsche’s ichmann, although it seems to us his superman, who in his bid for freedom proposal of symbiosis with nature does proclaimed the death of the Father, not respond satisfactorily to the radical will end up living under the progeny

12 of Cain in a society where a shapeless sents God, Yahweh of the Covenant conglomerate of orphaned supermen and Lord of the hosts, we are power- neither need one another nor care for fully struck by the way it portrays an one another. I do not think I am ex- alternative masculinity that contrasts aggerating if I state that our neolib- sharply with the patriarchal discourse eral societies are not too far from the of that time. Jesus presents God as a Cainite scenario. “dad” (Abba) who is concerned about One of the best contributions that feeding his children (“give us this day religions can offer to the shaping of our daily bread,” Luke 11,1-4) and is a new eco-social narrative is keeping almost obsessively worried about the alive their narratives and their tradi- fate of a prodigal son (Luke 15,11-34). tions of fraternity, care, and vulner- The hymn in Paul’s letter to the Phi- ability. Modernity has taught us that, lippians insists on the “corporal root- in the absence of narrative of care, the edness” of the primitive christologies only social myth available is that of when it affirms that Jesus relinquished the “contract,” but it is clear that “con- his equality with God in order to take tract” and “care” establish very differ- on the condition of a slave (Philippians ent social bonds and political practices. 2,5-7). Before there existed essentialist christologies that proclaimed universal dogmas about a God who was Father, 1.4. Christianity: body and Man, and Omnipotent (all with up- fraternity per-case letters), the theologies of the New Testament were offering “bodily As we will explain below, Christianity stories” about a God who was a slave is one of the religious traditions that and a vulnerable dad (in lower-case can make a significant contribution to letters). the elaboration of a new somato-po- If, as we have been arguing, body litical narrative of care. It can do this, and fraternity are two of the condi- though, only insofar as it frees itself tions of possibility for constructing from the essentialist readings imposed the political discourse of care, then by the theological discourse of moder- Christianity offers itself as a privi- nity. leged ally since it is able to recover Christianity makes two basic affir- the corporeal-historical rootedness mations about divinity: God takes on that later theological reflection trans- flesh, and God is Father. The gospel formed into universalist dogmatics. of John grounds divine incarnation The God who became a “poor man,” in “historical corporality” by affirm- who walked along the dusty roads of ing that the Logos became sarx (John Palestine, who was thirsty, who cured 1,14). The statement “the Word was the possessed, and who touched lepers made flesh” means that the Word be- should not end up becoming, through came “vulnerability” because that theological reflection, a universal ref- is the radical meaning of the Greek erence point for a “divinized human word “flesh.”9 Considering the model nature.” Also, the fraternity construct- of fatherhood with which Jesus pre- ed around the precarious situation of

13 the prodigal son who squandered his for every time and every place, even inheritance living riotously should not for non-existent, a-historical beings. be uncritically equated with a modern There is no need for such a metaphys- egalitarianism that boasts of making ical christology, which presents Jesus no distinction between Jew and Greek, as a man of the Enlightenment, more free and slave, male and female (Gal concerned about defending the modern 3,28). There is no need to change Jesus principle of equality than about an- Christ, God become flesh and blood, nouncing the Kingdom of a politically into a metaphysical hero who is the incorrect God, where the last will be bearer of a universal salvation valid first and the first will be last.

14 2. THE VITRUVIAN MAN (DISPENSABLE BODY)

The Vitruvian Man drawn by Leonardo da Vinci around 1490 is one of the most significant graphic expressions of the process of essentializ- ing humanity that we have been describing in these pages. Using the texts of Vitruvius, an architect of ancient Rome, da Vinci proposed a harmonious model of the perfectly proportioned human being, but we should not forget that it is a model of humanity that excludes women.

The iconic image of a man inscribed model of the ideal man. Their ge- within the contours of a square and ometrical balance evokes a vocation a circle spontaneously suggests two of universality: the proposed model of readings. The first stresses the isolation man serves for all time and for every imposed by the limits of the geometri- place. But universality carries with it cal figures framing the man. The draw- a great risk: to the extent that it works ing conveys the Renaissance vision of with general abstractions that pretend man as the center of the world. It is this to represent all humanity, it fails to de- perspective, says Gregorio Peces-Bar- fine any particular, real human being. ba, that gave rise to the modernity that The idealistic philosophies that ground has elaborated the principles of human our social myths exceed the reasonable dignity and human rights.10 The isolat- limits of generalization and so end up ed, solitary Renaissance man acts as a falling into an incorporeal universal- self-sufficient microcosm that contains ism that defines a being that is as per- in itself all the elements that constitute fect as it is non-existent. the universe. In their more extreme expressions, The second reading considers the the theories about a universal man set of proportions that establish the developed by the fathers of modern

15 thought would continue to be valid timately to death. “Philosophy,” writes even in the hypothesis that no human Reyes Mate, “has not had the courage being ever existed on the face of the to look death in the face because it has earth. Such is the case with the epis- been interested only in what is abstract temology of Descartes and the moral and essential, that is, in the ‘All,’ and theory of Kant. For Descartes the a the ‘All’ does not die. It is the individ- priori that is the basis of his methodi- ual who dies, but the individual is of cal doubt continues to “function” even no interest to philosophy.”14 Western in the absence of the body: “Next I ex- thought has been built at the expense amined attentively what I was. I saw of suffering, pain, finitude, death, and that while I could pretend that I had no most definitely vulnerability. Both body and that there was no world and metaphysics (Kant, Hegel) and for- no place for me to be in, I could not for mal ethics (Habermas, Rawls) exclude all that pretend that I did not exist.”11 concrete individuals from history, sub- Kant, for his part, did not consider suming them in a universal subject that the uniqueness of historical corporal- views its ultimate significance and its ity relevant for the elaboration of his ethical duties from the vantage point moral system; moreover, he held that of universal principles or according anything empirical could contaminate to neutrality-game rules that refuse to the universal reason that precedes the be affected by suffering. In contrast moral subject as a categorical legisla- to such idealist abstraction, the soma- tor.12 Joan-Carles Mèlich rightly criti- to-political semantics of care make cizes Kant for believing that “ethics is the reality of vulnerability an essential harmed when it takes into account con- part of the definition of human being. tingency, emotions, body, and finitude. The wound of vulnerability closes the Even if no human being existed in door to all philosophical escapism. The the world, even if nobody was moral, question of what the human being is [Kant’s] ethics would continue to be must ultimately be answered by look- absolutely true and universally valid ing death in the face (the limit expres- since it never depends on empirical sion of vulnerability): factors.”13 It is necessary for a man, once in his life, to go out of himself. He must one 2.1. Without a body there is no day, entirely recollected, take in his suffering hand the precious fishbowl. He must for one time experience his fearful As we observed above, the process of poverty, solitude, and detachment from de-corporalizing man in favor of uni- the entire world, and he must sustain versalizing postulates has made a deci- for a whole night the contemplation of sive impact on the ethical, juridical, and nothingness. But the Earth lays claim political systems that structure our dai- on him again. He should not drink the ly lives. When a social system is con- dark juice that night. He is destined for structed on the basis of a general “All,” another escape from the narrow pas- it becomes immune to suffering and ul- sage of nothingness, so as not to fall

16 into the jaws of the abyss. Man should nobody tells him to do it. That solip- not cast away from himself the anguish sistic autonomy is at the root of the of earthly reality: he should remain in ethico-political weakness of our current the fear of death. social systems. We have created moral, juridical, and political institutions that define and protect the individual duties and rights of the “Vitruvian Men” who There is an urgent need claim they do not need one another. to recover narratives of They are identitary circles impervious vulnerability in order to to the suffering of others, the ones who ultimately call out for care. neutralize the monocultural Let us admit for a moment the ve- neoliberal discourse. racity of the biopolitical fiction that all human beings are born free and have equal dignity and rights, and that we … If philosophy did not cover its are gifted with reason and conscience, ears against the cry of anguished hu- as is solemnly stated in the first arti- manity, it would have to admit—and cle of the Universal Declaration of to do so with conscience—that the Human Rights of 1948. What happens nothingness of death is something and when what is proposed there as an im- that each new nothingness of death is perative becomes a question? That is, something new, always newly vapo- why does the premise of being born rous, and should not be put aside either free oblige us to treat one another in with words or with silence. And while a fraternal manner? Why does believ- the one universal nothingness sticks its ing that we are all equal necessarily head in the sand before the anguished mean that we should practice solidar- cry of death, the only desire of a philo- ity? This naturalist fallacy (connecting sophy that proceeds from the one uni- “being” with “duty”) is the foundation versal knowledge, have the courage to of a large part of ethical, juridical, and hear that cry, and refuse to close your political thought in the West. It is a eyes before the atrocious reality.15 fragile discourse that is beginning to show signs of exhaustion. The cracks now threatening the social contract 2.2. Vitruvius, a man without that supports the edifice of our welfare brothers? states are evidence that the foundation was deficient from the start. Although The self-sufficiency of the Vitruvian the revolutionary triad—liberty, equal- Man prompts us to ask how he can be ity, fraternity—is presented as a solid drawn out of his self-absorption in or- system of bonding, the significant de- der to take the path toward caring for velopment of the values of freedom others. As a self-sufficient microcosm, and equality have not carried over into Vitruvius possesses within himself the greater doses of fraternity, for the sim- sources of morality and sociability; he ple reason that fraternity has a very dif- knows what he should do even when ferent foundation.

17 As much as the West may seek to verse ideology is using the proclama- derive duties from an apparently objec- tion of the universal rights of human tive human nature, we should observe beings as an excuse for violating the that ethics arises wherever the suffer- real rights of concrete individuals. Is ing of others demands my response; it it necessary to recall that thousands arises when the circumference and the of bodies of “free” persons, possess- square establishing the borders of pre- ing “equal dignity and rights,” now dictable morality are broken. The elab- lie at the bottom of the Mediterranean, oration of the politics of care arises as which has become a common grave? a response to God’s question about the The neoliberal market also uses fate of Abel: “Where is your brother?” the discourse of universality to justify That is a question that the “Vitruvius financial practices that theoretically Man,” educated as an only son, cannot benefit a global planetary subject while even hear. ignoring the concrete individuals who are suffering in their flesh the effects of a predatory economy. 2.3. The collapse of universality There is an urgent need to recover and restore narratives of vulnerability We do not deny that juridical and po- in order to neutralize the monocultural litical gains have been achieved by the neoliberal discourse, which, while ap- discourse of universality. The gener- pealing to principles of solidarity and alization of individual rights benefits universal egalitarianism, ignores the society, but we should not ignore the de facto historical suffering of concrete ideological inversion now taking place individuals and peoples, and the planet with regard to human rights. A per- itself.

18 3. BENJAMINA (VULNERABLE BODY)

In the year 2001 a group of paleoanthropologists found part of a very fractured skull at the Pit of Bones in Atapuerca, Spain; it was called “cranium 14.” The following year they found more fragments that al- lowed them to reconstruct almost completely that anomalous head. Cranium 14 presented a deformity that experts identified as cranio- synostosis, a rare disease that involves premature fusion of the head bones and that in modern times affects fewer than three persons out of every 100,000. After the researchers determined that the asymmetrical skull was that of a preadolescent girl, they baptized her “Benjamina.” The girl with the deadly disease lived a half million years ago; what is surprising is that she lived to ten years of age.

The question immediately asked by called “Miguelón” suffered a dental the team of paleoanthropologists was infection that would have prevented whether such an individual could have him from eating unless another person survived on her own strength in a no- pre-chewed the food for him; he lived madic group of hunter-gatherers. The to around age 35. A hominid called answer was obviously negative. If “Elvis” had a degenerative hip disease Benjamina had survived for ten years, that would have prevented him from it was because the group had cared hunting, walking long distances, or for her: they had fed her, they had even standing by himself; amazingly, carried her from one place to anoth- he died an old man at age 45. er, they had provided her shelter and Benjamina, Miguelón and Elvis clothing, etc. The case of Benjamina are palpable evidence of a strong bond is not unique in Atapuerca. A hominid of compassion in our human nature;

19 they show that interdependence and tutive elements of political practice, mutual care define us as a species. then the narrative of vulnerability must Our humanity is built on vulnerabili- enter as a Trojan horse into that noo- ty, the first “social contract” in a “pact sphere where our beliefs are woven. of caring.” If this is so, we repeat our questions: why is it that vulnerability, interdependence, compassion, and car- ing do not form part of our founding Why do we choose to myths? Why have we decided to define keep constructing our ourselves as autonomous rather than sociopolitical fictions on a vulnerable beings? Why does the fic- tion of autonomy obscure the universal defensive necropolitics and truth of vulnerability? not on the biopolitics of I am not naïve. I do not want to care? paint an idyllic paradise of compas- sionate hominids ruled exclusively by the principle of care, nor do I seek to rework the myth of the “good sav- Vulnerability, care, and interde- age.” Paleoanthropology also provides pendence are not simply nuances examples of aggression, cannibalism, or sensibilities to be added to some and violent defensive alliances, but we socially accepted political practice. can still wonder at—and be surprised “Care” should not be just an adjective by—the bias that exists in the selec- used to modify well-established nouns tion of narratives that found our social (such as rights, justice, democracy, myths. Why do we choose to keep con- equality). Care must occupy a central structing our sociopolitical fictions on place among them so as to give new a defensive necropolitics and not on meaning to culture and politics. Care the biopolitics of care? seeks to penetrate into the very heart of democracy in order to transform it from within. We agree with Joan C. 3.1. Building the politics of care: Tronto when he states that the time narratives and practices has arrived for care to enter into the shaping of democratic citizenship: All political practices are sustained by “The inclusion of care in the activities, a narrative of meaning: we build our interests, and lives of democratic citi- social, juridical, and political insti- zens truly represents the next frontier tutions on the evidence provided by (perhaps the last) to be crossed by the well-defined philosophical, epistemo- theory of democracy.”17 We propose logical, ethical, and cultural concepts. to replace the “paradigm of Vitruvius” It is what Edgar Morin calls the “noo- with the “paradigm of Benjamina” in sphere,”16 that is, the atmosphere of be- order to derail the hegemonic narrative liefs that envelops us and that attempts of self-sufficiency and recover the pe- to make sense of the world. So if we ripheral narratives of interdependence. want caring to be one of the consti- Our self-definition and our social and

20 political organization must be based Vulnerability, says Judith Butler, on the vulnerable, dependent body of is a condition that cannot be ignored, Benjamina, not on the pure, responsi- overcome, or reversed: “By virtue of bility-free spirit of Vitruvius. our bodily experience, we are from For this narrative that is still being the beginning, even before individua- developed, it is important to nourish tion, handed over to others: this makes the semantic field that provides it with us vulnerable to violence but also to content. Out of a desire to bolster the other types of contacts, contacts that significance of the politics of care, I range from the extreme of eradication propose to consider some of the politi- of ourselves to the other extreme of cal signifiers that are hidden behind the physical maintenance of our lives. We concept of vulnerability. cannot ‘rectify’ this situation, nor can we recover the origin of this vulnera- bility since it precedes the formation of 3.2. We are vulnerable ‘self.’ We cannot effectively contend with this condition of being ‘exposed’ Vulnerability is not an accident, some- from the start, dependent on persons we thing that happens only occasionally to do not know. We come into the world an otherwise immune, self-sufficient ignorant and dependent, and up to a being. At certain critical moments in certain point we remain that way.”19 life we may be especially conscious of our fragility, but the truth is that at every moment of life we are entangled in an unseen web of relations of inter- To build any social dependence and care that constantly re- institution without taking mind us of our constitutive vulnerabili- into consideration our ty. We can argue about whether we are born free and equal, whether we pos- fragile human condition is sess a common human nature, or what to lay its foundations on is the meaning of the dignity we share, quicksand. but what is beyond any doubt is that all of us as living beings are vulnerable:

It can be discussed, and in fact it is A society founded on the fiction that discussed philosophically, whether we are the authors of ourselves and the human beings enjoy a special dignity absolute proprietors of our ideas, works, in the realm of nature. It is discussed and lives will resist accepting vulnera- whether their preeminent place in the bility as the keystone for constructing cosmos is authentic or is simply a bi- policies and will consider such policies ased assertion, but what does not en- weak. In the face of such resistance, we ter into the arena of discussion is their should recognize that to build any so- radical vulnerability. What unites us cial institution without taking into con- human beings, beyond our evident sideration our fragile human condition differences, is vulnerability.”18 is to lay its foundations on quicksand.

21 In fact, our present-day “liquid society” Vulnerability is the obsession with is wallowing in the sludge of old ways the other or the drawing close of the of self-sufficiency. other. It is for the other from behind the other who stirs one. It is a draw- ing close that is not reducible either 3.3. Vulnerability and ecosocial to the representation of the other or to interdependence the awareness of proximity. To suffer for others is to hold them in care, sup- To say vulnerability is to say interde- port them, be in their place, be con- pendence, and therefore relation. To sumed by them. All love or all hate define human beings as vulnerable of the neighbor reflects and supposes is to recognize them as open to dia- that prior vulnerability: mercy, “being logue rather than to the monologue of viscerally moved.” Through sensibil- self-sufficient individualism. While the ity the subject is for the other: substi- paradigm of autonomy would “func- tution, responsibility, expiation. But it tion” even in the absence of human is a responsibility that I have not as- beings, the paradigm of vulnerability sumed at any moment, at no present makes sense only with the radical af- time. Nothing is more passive than firmation of sociability. Alluding to this judgment prior to my freedom, the thought of Judith Butler on vulner- than this pre-original judgment, than ability, Joan-Carles Mèlich insists on this frankness. It is the passivity of the social character of our corporality: what is vulnerable, the condition (or “The body is mortality, vulnerability, non-condition) by which being shows fragility, heteronomy, ambiguity. Skin, itself to be creature.21 flesh, senses, memory, desire—they all expose us, taking us out of ourselves We are vulnerable beings called and placing us before others. That is to respond to the demand for care by why our body is not completely ours; the vulnerability of others. Today the it is not something private but public. “Other” is planetary. I stated above, My life is not exclusively mine. We quite intentionally, that all living be- come into the world in need of hos- ings are vulnerable, thus breaking pitality, and this vulnerable condition through the barrier of the human in cannot be avoided or overcome.”20 order to place myself in a holistic para- The sociability inherent in our vul- digm in which animals and ecosystems nerable condition signifies responsi- also demand recognition and care. bility. Levinas is the writer who most Vulnerability unites us with all living forcefully expresses the responsive beings (human and non-human) in the condition of every person. We are not horizon of “multi-species communi- born free and equal; we are born re- ties” that require us to deconstruct our sponsible, responsive to the call of the concept of being-in-the-world. The suffering Other. The divine question semantics of vulnerability refers us about the fate of our sisters and broth- to a holocentric paradigm that place ers pierces into the depths of every the “unified-us” before the “autono- person. mous-I” of modernity.

22 Advancing toward a civilization of Ho- tribution of vulnerability.23) However, los is not only an option; it is essential without denying the need to attend dif- for survival. Fortunately, it is not im- ferently to these especially precarious possible, nor is it unprecedented. The situations, somato-politics affirms that type of change involved forms part of every body has scars and that the ide- the evolution of human societies, an alized body of Vitruvius does not exist. evolution that began with the mythical Although our utopian nature constant- civilizations of the Stone Age, contin- ly projects ideal models of life, we ued with the theocratic civilizations should not build our social existence and archaic empires, and subsequent- on the tales of immortal heroes. ly produced the human civilizations based on reason inaugurated by the ancient Greeks. Now the reign of Lo- gos is reaching its end: the short-term In contrast to the rationality that underlies the presently self-sufficient aura of dominant form of civilization produces heroes, “the peculiar beauty more heat than light—more negative social, economic, and ecological con- of the human condition sequences than positive and humanly resides precisely in its desirable results. The time has arrived fragility and vulnerability.” for one more change: advancing from a civilization of Logos to one of Holos.22

We have never been heroes be- 3.4. Vulnerability: singular cause heroes do not live in the po- wounded bodies lis. To be citizens we must renounce self-sufficiency, recognize the singu- The politics of care is somato-politics; larity of our bodies, and assume our it is built on particular bodies and, mortal condition. This is the decision more specifically, on always vulnera- made by the classical heroes, accord- ble bodies. It is the “wounded” body ing to Javier Gomá. Achilles, the son of Benjamina that unleashes the ethical of the goddess Thetis, had to make a dynamic from which flows the political choice: he could embrace vulnerability action of care. Such benevolence is not and form part of the human polis, or some asymmetrical action that takes he could maintain his immortality by pity on the deficiency of the other; it is remaining in the gynoecium where his rather an egalitarian decision that ac- mother had hidden him. knowledges our shared vulnerability. It is true that some lives are subject to Being a citizen of the polis is to be an extreme level of vulnerability and mortal because we must renounce are therefore in need of greater care. our own self-divinization in order (Isabell Lorey distinguishes between to enter the city. When we do so, precariousness as shared vulnerability however, we paradoxically find our and precarity as unequal political dis- authentic individuality in the world.

23 That is shown mythically in the story cisely because we are vulnerable; our of Achilles, who is born of Zeus and horizon, our objective, is the search for the goddess Thetis and so must first that autonomy. Our intrinsic anthro- learn to die—not desiring to die but pological vulnerability is thus not so wanting to experience social mortal- much recognition of our weakness as it ity as the inescapable prior require- is affirmation of our life as project, as ment to become the hero he is. And something to be built out of our radical after his death the hero leaves an ex- finitude.”26 Progressing from what we ample which the city blesses.24 are to what we desire to be is the vital itinerary of every human life, and that In contrast to the self-sufficient aura “from what we are” is also called vul- of heroes, “the peculiar beauty of the nerability. human condition resides precisely in its fragility and vulnerability. We are the children of time. We are born and we die in provisionality, in deficiency, Vulnerability has a and in dissatisfaction.”25 If such is our structural preeminence condition, why not begin to build a po- over autonomy. lis according to the measure of fragile and vulnerable citizens?

Autonomy, independence, and self- 3.5. Vulnerability and autonomy sufficiency are not starting-points but arrival destinations. The duality of vul- Defining ourselves as vulnerable be- nerable beings aspiring to be autono- ings does not mean renouncing auton- mous is what establishes the necessary omy. We human beings are different relation between both terms. Adela from animals, though we do not want Cortina, in her proposal for “cordial to deny the singularity of each member citizenship,” recognizes that the hu- of the different species. We humans man desire for a life guided by univer- are not predetermined to reproduce salizable moral ends is a final goal that instinctive routines or defensive reac- acknowledges the unquestionable fact tions of survival; our field of decision of vulnerability: is infinitely more extensive. There are as many life horizons as there are indi- What exists is not independence, the viduals. The plasticity of our ability to watchword of atomist theories, but “construct ourselves” shapes us as au- interdependence of equals. Human tonomous beings who can project our persons, vulnerable in fact and au- own life goals. But our projection to- tonomous in project, need one anoth- ward autonomy always happens in re- er mutually in the fabric of the city lation to our constitutive vulnerability. in order to achieve their dominion.27 Lydia Feito makes this clear: “Auton- omy is a task, something to be earned. Vulnerability has a structural We must seek to be autonomous pre- preeminence over autonomy. Autono-

24 my does not remedy or overcome an propose some intuitive points that will initial vulnerability; it is not the case help future developments. that once we reach autonomy (if that Prostitutes, demoniacs, lepers, the were possible) we cease to be vul- blind, the lame, the hungry—these are nerable. Vulnerability is present and all part of the variegated mosaic of accompanies each and every one mo- wounded and vulnerable bodies pre- ment of autonomy’s ongoing matura- sented in the gospels. The New Testa- tion process, so that we never stop be- ment also shows us, in intimate relation ing vulnerable. with these bodies, a large collection of Vulnerability puts autonomy in its practices of care, narratives of filiation, place, removing it from the realm of and experiences of fraternity. These a natural law that pretends to dictate narratives and practices depict a proto- what we are and transferring it to the typical politics of care that is as novel horizon of an ethics that ideally ex- as it is unsettling. Given the perspec- presses what we should be. This trans- tive presented in this booklet, it is not ference, according to Paul Ricoeur, preposterous to refer to the Kingdom of places both vulnerability and autono- God as the concrete expression of what my in the terrain of paradox: we have been calling the somato-pol- itics of care. The charismatic-politi- The human being is both the one and cal community gathered around Jesus the other [autonomous and vulner- was an amalgam of dissident bodies able], from two different points of declared impure by the official hegem- view. Moreover, the two terms are onic discourse, but they were bodies not content with being opposed to bound together by common filiation in one another but bond together: the a caring Abba and so were committed autonomy is that of a fragile, vulner- to fraternal egalitarian practices based able being. Such fragility is thus no on service. They formed a community longer pathological but is the fragil- in which Benjamina not only would ity of a being called to achieve au- have survived but, given her especially tonomy, because in a certain manner precarious state, would have occupied that is what it always is. This is the a place of honor. difficulty with which we are faced.28 Despite their politico-theological potential, the narratives and the prac- tices of evangelical care were very quickly discarded in favor of salvific 3.6. The “somato-politics” of the and therapeutic interpretations. In fact, Kingdom of God the theological transmission of the contents of that primitive somato-po- We were anticipating it from the first litical community could not bear for pages of this booklet: once it is able to long the sight of suffering; it converted understand the true value of its narra- vulnerable bodies into mere occasions tives of vulnerability Christianity can for the “shining forth” of divine power. be a privileged ally in the construction Impure bodies were deprived of their of a new political paradigm of care. I political potential for bonding and

25 were enrolled instead in the standard the purification of feminine bodies? narrative of salvific power. What got Would it not be equally Good News transmitted to the following genera- if that sisterhood formed around Jesus tions of Christians were narratives of proudly defied the impurity imposed ex-prostitutes, ex-lepers, ex-demoni- by society? Is not the somato-politi- acs, persons who had been freed from cal challenge of impure bodies, joined their vulnerable condition by a pow- with male disciples in equality of con- erful Jesus modeled on the immortal ditions, just as disruptive as the divine classical heroes. If the Christian narra- power to expel evil spirits? tive of vulnerability, filiation, and fra- Another instance of recovering ternity is to make a contribution to the feminine bodies in the theological nar- emerging paradigm of care, we must rative is offered by mathematician and deconstruct our theology of universal philosopher Esther M. Pericás. Draw- principles and recover the narratives ing on solid exegetical studies, she of silenced bodies. The construction of defends an unsettling interpretation the politics of care needs to rescue the of the episode in which a public sin- somato-political narratives that have ner washes the feet of Jesus and dries been obscured by heroic, heteropatri- them with her hair while the Pharisee archal theological discourse. Fortu- Simon looks on in astonishment (Luke nately, some critical feminist theolo- 7,36-50). According to Pericás, the gies are already at work on it. evangelist Luke is uncomfortable with the received tradition referring to this scandalous encounter between an erot- ically attentive prostitute and Jesus, Somato-political reading who allows himself to be caressed with of the gospels is especially no hint of criticism; Luke therefore necessary when trying to transforms the event into a story of re- pentance, adding “tears” even though understand the stories there were none in the original version protagonized by women. of the story (verses 38 and 44).29 Since it lacked the motifs of weeping, repent- ance, and pardon, that primitive story Somato-political reading of the was too carnal and politically incorrect gospels is especially necessary when for the evangelist. But is it not precise- trying to understand the stories pro- ly there, in the political incorrectness tagonized by women. Many biased of this unconditional, non-judgmental interpretations allow women to be in- encounter between the Jewish Mes- cluded in the dynamic of the Kingdom siah and a grateful prostitute, that the but require them to divest themselves kernel of the somato-political alterna- of their bodies. According to Luke, tive of the Kingdom of God resides? the group of women who followed Je- Somato-politics causes disruption by sus, had “fortunately” been “cured of proclaiming that the publicans and evil spirits and sicknesses” (cf. Luke the prostitutes will enter first into the 8,1-3). Why this strong emphasis on Kingdom of God (Matt 12,31). Mean-

26 while, imperial politics tones down the from which he had previously been provocation and twists its meaning, excluded. But does not this interpreta- making it clear that only “converted tion end up justifying the exclusionary publicans” and “repentant prostitutes” religious-political system? will enter first into the Kingdom. That According to the somato-polit- timid reading leads to a different poli- ical interpretation, the offering that tics and, I fear, to a different kingdom. the ex-leper places before the priest There is no question here of denying does not function as a key that opens the transformation brought about in the door for the reintegration of the the lives of sinners by the encounter expelled one; rather, it testifies that with Jesus, but it is important to make his body, thanks to another place and clear that their conversion was a con- other practices, has been recognized sequence of following Jesus, not a con- and integrated into a non-exclusionary dition for it. community. His offering bears wit- ness to the existence of an alternative politics not ruled by the discourse and the practices of the Temple. If people Somato-politics causes have benefited from the liberating nar- disruption by proclaiming rative of a caring praxis that is inclu- that the publicans and the sive and symmetrical (remember that Jesus “touches” lepers and so shares in prostitutes will enter first their impurity), why would they want into the Kingdom of God. to return to the normative sheepfold of the hegemonic discourse of pure and impure? Would it not be better to join A somato-political reading of the a community of vulnerable bodies that gospels breaks with inclusive interpre- are able to generate knowledge and tations and normative determinations. produce narratives that dissent from From the perspective of the politics of the existing imperial epistemology? care, the gospel narratives do not re- Vitruvius offered all types of rea- inforce the prevailing political status sons to excuse himself from the ban- quo; rather, they open up cracks that quet; in response, the indignant host give rise to new hermeneutics, new ordered that all the poor Benjaminas practices, and new habitable political be invited: the blind, the lame, the spaces. Recall the passage about the infirm, all those who were hungering leper Jesus cured and sent to the priest for care in the streets and the plazas so that he could “offer the gift that (cf. Luke 14,16-24). At no point are Moses commanded, as a testimony to the invited Benjaminas required to put them” (Matt 8,1-3). A therapeutic-nor- aside their poverty, their blindness, mative reading of this text would their lameness, or their infirmity before highlight the healing power of Jesus, entering the banquet hall. Interpreta- which brings about the inclusion of an tion of this text has until now stressed ex-leper who, once cured, can be rein- the insensitivity of the rich, the mag- corporated into the normative system nanimity of the host, the eagerness of

27 those invited from the streets, or an down from their cross.” Insecurity is allegorical understanding whereby the not a state that should be considered guests represent Jews and Gentiles. sacred or natural; it is an unjust situ- All these readings have good reason ation that must be fought constantly. and basis, but is this not the time to un- Even so, the politics of care reasserts dertake a somato-political reading that the salvific and revolutionary value of places value on the alternative heresy the slow mediations of caring. On the produced by vulnerable bodies sharing level of theology and politics, the reso- food, stories, and dreams as they sit lute decision of Joseph of Arimathea to around the banquet table of the King- take Jesus’ body down from the cross dom? (Matt 27,57-60) was just as efficacious Dissident bodies welcomed as as the silent accompaniment of his ag- guests with full rights at the banquet ony by the women who remained at table of the Kingdom express and en- the foot of the cross (John 19,25). And act by anticipation the already opera- the surprising narrative of the resurrec- tive salvific reality. As Judith Butler tion also included the “useless” act of states: caring for the corpse by embalming it with aromatic spices (Luke 24,1). We see above all that it is important that bodies meet and that they bring into play political signifiers that go beyond either written or oral dis- The politics of care course. In all their extension, corpo- reasserts the salvific and real actions have different signifiers revolutionary value of the that are not, in a strict sense, discur- sive or prediscursive. In other words, slow mediations of caring. these forms of meeting are already signifiers, even before (and apart from) the claims they make. Silent The political practices of care move protests, even vigils or funerals, of- with the rhythm of accompaniment. ten signify more than the simple writ- The hero savior magically cures the ten or oral account of the reasons for wounds of the man beaten and left for convoking them.30 dead, whereas the Samaritan uses the unhurried mediations of care: binding wounds, anointing them with oil and 3.7. The slow rhythm of caring wine, lifting the man onto his own mount, taking him to an inn, paying We end our brief somato-political ap- two denarii so that they continue to proach to the gospels by referring to care for him (Luke 10,34-35). The hero the unhurried pace of caring as op- has the power to combat hunger in- posed to classical theology’s rush for stantaneously, but the somato-politics resolution. We have no objection to of care resists the temptation to change the theological-political project which stones into bread (Matt 4,3); instead, it seeks to “take the crucified peoples asks everyone to share what they have,

28 even it is only five loaves and two fish- which considered the proletarians (but es (Matt 14,17). The rhythm of sharing not the lumpen) to be revolutionary is also the cadence of care. political subjects. What revolution can The faux-leather chairs in hospi- be brought about by subjects whose tals lobbies are mute witnesses to the only political power is their impotent thousands of sleepless nights and the bodies? millions of hours of care that many persons, especially women, dedicate to their most vulnerable loved ones. Those hours are not rung up on the We are only trying to cash register of the neoliberal market, rescue from oblivion the but in the somato-politics of care they revolutionary practices of are counted as revolutionary surplus value. care that the perfectionist It is not a question of putting effi- discourse of Vitruvius cacy and care in opposition. We are discounts as irrelevant. not proposing a retreat toward a type of “charity” that is oblivious to the unavoidable revolutionary struggles against unacceptable forms of vul- Is vulnerability nothing more than nerability. We are only trying to res- the precarious situation of those beg- cue from oblivion the revolutionary ging for help from a hero? Or is it rath- practices of care that the perfectionist er the somato-political fabric that can discourse of Vitruvius discounts as ir- engender a new hope? Is the power of relevant. self-sufficient individualism the only force able to construct politics? Or can we conceive and build the polis start- 3.8. Vulnerable persons of the ing from the “impotence” of vulnera- world, unite! ble bodies? Paul B. Preciado, a gender dissident who has made his body into Pope Francis protests that in our a political banner, calls for a soma- throwaway society the excluded are to-political International that weaves not exploited; they are treated simply together vulnerable bodies that are able as waste products.31 Their lives are so to decolonize the world and transform precarious that they are not even worth “Terrapolitics.” It may be that today exploiting. Their bodies are invisible his proposal is nothing more than a and useless, condemned to wandering provocative assertion, but in the depths on the margins of society with no hope of his convocation can be heard the of ever exercising political clout. They echo of a new politics of vulnerability are the miserably poor, the lumpen and care that is already gestating on the despised even by classical Marxism, margins of the politics of empire.32

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NOTES

1. Unless otherwise indicated, I will use the term metaphysic of nature, and to practical anthro- “man” in its more restrictive sense of male, pology a metaphysic of morals, which must be white, wealthy, adult, and heterosexual. carefully cleared of everything empirical. … 2. Cf. Esposito, Roberto (2005). Immunitas. Everyone must admit that if a law is to have Protección y negación de la vida, Buenos moral force, i.e., to be the basis of an obliga- Aires: Amorrortu, p. 9. tion, it must carry with it absolute necessity; 3. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2002). «Hacia that, for example, the precept, ‘Thou shalt not una concepción multicultural de los derechos lie,’ is not valid for men alone, as if other ra- humanos», El otro derecho, no. 28, Bogotá: tional beings had no need to observe it; and ILSA, pp. 68-69. so with all the other moral laws properly so 4. Benhabib, Seyla (1992). «Una revisión del called; that, therefore, the basis of obligation debate sobre las mujeres y la teoría moral», must not be sought in the nature of man, or in Isegoría, no. 6 (1992), pp. 49-50. the circumstances in the world in which he is 5. Mate, Reyes (2018). El tiempo, tribunal de la placed, but a priori simply in the conception historia, Madrid: Trotta, p. 146. of pure reason; and although any other precept 6. Pope Francis, Encyclical Laudato si´, no. 67. which is founded on principles of mere expe- 7. Riechmann, Jorge (2018). “Ecohumanism In rience may be in certain respects universal, yet The Century of the Great Test”, in ¡Wake Up! in as far as it rests even in the least degree on Proposals for a Decentred Humanism, Barce- an empirical basis, perhaps only as to a mo- lona: Cristianisme i Justícia, Booklets no. 172, tive, such a precept, while it may be a practical p. 5. rule, can never be called a moral law.”. 8. Cortina, Adela (2005). Alianza y Contra- 13. Mèlich, Joan-Carles (2010). Ética de la com- to. Política, ética y religión, Madrid: Trotta, pasión, Barcelona: Herder, p. 143. p. 171. 14. Mates, Reyes (2013), La piedra desechada, 9. The androcentric versions that translate sarx Madrid: Trotta, p. 29. as “man” (“the Word was made man”) would 15. Rosenzweig, Franz (1997). La estrella de la come closer to the original sense of the state- redención, Salamanca: Sígueme, pp. 44-45. ment if they read “the Word was made a poor 16. Cfr. Morin, Edgar (1998). El Método IV. Las man.” The incarnational hymn of the letter ideas, Madrid: Cátedra, p. 117: “We should to the Philippians points to the same mean- remember that we live in a universe of signs, ing when it states that “Christ did not regard symbols, messages, images, ideas, and im- equality with God as something to be exploit- aginings that designate for us things, factual ed, but he emptied himself, taking the form of states, phenomena, and problems but that are a slave” (cf. Philippians 2,6-7). therefore mediators in the relations of indi- 10. Peces-Barba, Gregorio (2003). La dignidad viduals among themselves, with society, and de la persona desde la Filosofía del Derecho, with the world. The noosphere is in this sense Madrid: Dykinson, p. 21. present in every visión, every conception, and 11. Descartes, René (1980). Discurso del méto- every transaction of every human persons with do, Madrid: Espasa Calpe, p. 62. the external world, with other human subjects, 12. Kant, Immanuel. Fundamental Principles of and finally with himself. It is true that the noo- the Metaphysics of Morals: “But I only ask sphere has a subjective entryway, an intersub- here whether the nature of science does not re- jective function, and a transsubjective misión, quire that we should always carefully separate but it is an objective constituent of reality. the empirical from the rational part, and pre- This sphere is like a médium, in the me- fix to Physics proper (or empirical physics) a diating sense of the term, that places itself

31 between us and the exterior world so that we transformar la sociedad, Barcelona: Kairós can communicate with it. It is the conducting p. 105. médium of human knowledge. Moreover, it 23. Cfr. Lorey, Isabell (2016). Estado de insegu- envelops us as a properly anthroposocial at- ridad, Madrid: Traficantes de sueños. mosphere. In the same way that plants have 24. Gomá Lanzón, Javier (2007). Aquiles en el produced the oxygen of the atmosphere, Gineceo o Aprender a ser mortal, Madrid: which from that moment was indispensable Taurus, p. 66. for terrrestrial life, so human cultures have 25. Mèlich, Joan-Carles (2012). Filosofía de la produced symbols, ideas, and myths that have finitud, Barcelona: Herder, p. 24. become indispensable for our social lives. The 26. Feito, Lydia (2017). “Construyendo la com- symbols, ideas, and myths have created the pasión”, in GRACIA, Diego (coord.), Ética universe in which our spirits dwell.” y ciudadanía. II. Deliberando sobre valores, 17. Cited in Martín-Palomo, María Teresa Madrid: Fundación Xavier Zubiri, PPC, Fun- (2010). “Autonomía, dependencia y vulnera- dación SM, p. 71. bilidad en la construcción de la ciudadanía”, 27. Cortina, Adela (2010). Justicia cordial, Ma- Zerbitzuan, no. 48, Abendua, p. 63. drid: Trotta, p. 63 (emphasis mine). 18. Torralba, Francesc (2002). Ética del cuidar. 28. Ricoeur, Paul (2008). Lo justo II. Estudios, Fundamentos, contextos y problemas. Ma- lecturas y ejercicios de ética aplicada, Madrid: drid: Institut Borja de de Bioética – Fundación Trotta. Mapfre Medicina, p. 247. 29. Miquel Pericás, Esther (2007). “Jesús y 19. Butler, Judith (2006). Deshacer el género, las prostitutas”, in Miquel Pericás, Esther Barcelona: Paidós, pp. 43-44. (coord.), Ellas os guiarán al reino de Dios, 20. Mèlich, Joan-Carles (2014), “La condición Reseña Bíblica, no. 54, Estella: Verbo Divino, vulnerable (Una lectura de Emmanuel Levi- pp. 35-43. nas, Judith Butler y Adriana Cavarero)”, Ars 30. Butler, Judith (2017). Cuerpos aliados y lu- Brevis, Barcelona: Càtedra Ramon Llull Blan- cha política: hacia una teoría performativa de querna, p. 324. la asamblea, Barcelona: Paidós, p. 15. 21. Levinas, Emmanuel (2006). Humanismo del 31. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, no. 53. otro hombre, México: Siglo XXI, pp. 124-125. 32. Preciado, Paul B. (2019). Un apartamento en 22. Lasloz, Hervin (2013), El cambio cuántico. Urano. Crónicas del cruce, Madrid: Anagra- Cómo el nuevo paradigma científico puede ma, pp. 42-43.

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www.cristianismeijusticia.net Cristianisme i Justícia (Lluís Espinal Foundation) is a study center that was created in Barcelona in 1981. It brings together a team of volunteer scholars and activists who desire to promote social and theological reflec- tion that will contribute to the transformation of social and ecclesial struc- tures. It is part of the network of Faith-Culture-Justice centers of Spain and also of the European Social Centers of the Society of Jesus.

The collection Cristianisme i Justícia introduces some of the findings of the seminars held by the Centre as well as some of the essays of its staff and contributors.

166. J. SANZ. How to Think About Change Today; 167. J. BOTEY. The Protestant Reformation at 500 Years; 168. A. ARES. Sons and Daugh- ters of a Pilgrim; 169. J. MORERA. Dismantling the Hells; 170. X. CASA- NOVAS. Tax Justice, A Global Struggle; 171. J. I. GONZÁLEZ FAUS. The Silence and the Outcry; 172. J. RIECHMANN, J. I. GONZÁLEZ FAUS, C. MAGALLÓN. Wake Up!; 173. J. TATAY. Believing in sustainability; 174. J. LAGUNA. Seeking Sanctuary; 175. C. M. L. BINGEMER. Transforming the Church and Society from a Feminine Perspective; 176. CRISTIANISME I JUSTÍCIA. Life’s Embraces; 177. J. LAGUNA. Vulnerable Bodies

All booklets can be downloaded from internet: www.cristianismeijusticia.net/en/cj-booklets

N. 177 Lluís Espinal Foundation sends its Booklets October 2020 free of charge to those who ask for them. If you are interested in receiving the Booklets in your house, ask them at: cijusticia

cijusticia Cristianisme i Justícia cristianismeijusticia Roger de Llúria, 13 08010 Barcelona (Spain) CristianismeiJustícia T. +34 933 172 338 [email protected] www.cristianismeijusticia.net