Embodied Care: A Critique of Heteronormative and Anthropocentric Interpretations of the Ethics of Care By Mara Gottardi Submitted to Central European University Department of Gender Studies In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies GEMMA Main Supervisor: Eszter Timar (Central European University) Second Supervisor: Emilia María Durán Almarza (University of Oviedo) CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2018 CEU eTD Collection Embodied Care: A Critique of Heteronormative and Anthropocentric Interpretations of the Ethics of Care By Mara Gottardi Submitted to Central European University Department of Gender Studies In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies GEMMA Main Supervisor: Eszter Timar (Central European University) Second Supervisor: Emilia María Durán Almarza (University of Oviedo) Budapest, Hungary 2018 CEU eTD Collection Approved by: CEU eTD Collection Abstract In this thesis I analyse the heteronormative and anthropocentric implications of a conventional interpretation of the ethics of care, showing how these questions are entangled. I take as illustrative of this framework the works of Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings: I analyse the discourse of these authors demonstrating how their ethics of care produces hierarchical differentiations between heterosexual human subjects and ‘abnormal’ human and non-human bodies for whom ethics and care remain foreclosed. Drawing on Judith Butler’s and Rosi Braidotti’s reflections, above all on Spinoza’s ethics, I propose to think care not as good or ethical per se since certain performances of care could be normative and oppressive. As I take it, care and a care ethics is not a guarantee against the exploitation, devaluation, and disposability of certain bodies, both human and non-human, but rather could be complicit of mechanisms of oppression and subordination: those bodies that for a conventional understanding of the ethics of care are worthy of being cared for, in fact, are exclusively bodies that are not only ‘human’ in an anthropocentric sense but also conforming to a specific ideal of the ‘human’, that is, to traditional and binary norms of gender and heterosexual norms. I maintain therefore that care does not necessarily enhance and support a body’s persistence in its own being but could also hinder it; moreover, I argue that an ethical approach to care should acknowledge and take into consideration what different (human and non-human) bodies in relation with one another can do, and the embodied affects that caring performances produces on them. CEU eTD Collection i Resumen En esta tesis analizo las implicaciones heteronormativas y antropocéntricas de una interpretación convencional de la ética del cuidado, demostrando, además, como estas cuestiones están profundamente entrelazadas. Mi análisis se centra en los trabajos de Carol Gilligan y de Nel Noddings, que entiendo como representativos del marco teórico de la ética del cuidado. Analizaré el discurso de estas autoras poniendo de releve como la ética que proponen produce diferencias jerárquicas entre sujetos humanos heterosexuales y cuerpos ‘anormales’, tanto humanos como no-humanos, excluyendo estos últimos tanto de la ética como de lo que entienden ser los cuidados. Basándome en las reflexiones de Judith Butler y Rosi Braidotti, sobre todo acerca de la ética de Spinoza, propongo los cuidados no son buenos en sí mismos, en tanto que pueden performarse de forma normativa e incluso opresiva. Según mi entendimiento, pueden ser cómplices de mecanismos de opresión y de subordinación, y por lo tanto no constituyen de por sí ninguna garantía contra formas de explotación, devaluación o desechabilidad de algunos cuerpos humanos y no-humanos. De hecho, los cuerpos que, según una interpretación convencional de la ética del cuidado, son merecedores de cuidados, no son solo ‘humanos’ en sentido antropocéntrico, sino que también deben ajustarse a una particular norma de lo humano, eso es, normas binarias de género y de heterosexualidad. Los cuidados no necesariamente mejoran y apoyan un cuerpo en su persistencia en su propio ser: también pueden coartarla. Propongo, además, que para abordar éticamente la cuestión de los cuidados debería tomarse en cuenta lo que distintos cuerpos CEU eTD Collection (humanos y no-humanos) pueden hacer y los afectos encarnados que las performances de cuidado producen en ellos. ii Declaration of Original Research and Word Count I hereby declare that this thesis is the result of original research; it contains no materials accepted for any other degree in any other institution and no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. I further declare that the following word counts for this thesis are accurate: Body of the thesis (all chapters excluding notes, references, appendices, etc.): 29.712 words Entire manuscript: 40.568 words Signed _______________________ CEU eTD Collection iii CEU eTD Collection iv Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 - Literature Review and Theoretical Framework ...................................................... 9 1. Ethics of Care: An Overview .............................................................................................. 9 1.1 Carol Gilligan .............................................................................................................. 10 1.2 Care, Femininity and Mothering: Nel Noddings’ Ethics of Care ............................... 14 1.3 Critiques to the ‘Ethics of Care’ ................................................................................. 18 2. Rosi Braidotti and Judith Butler ....................................................................................... 21 2.1. Braidotti’s Revisitation of the Sexual Difference ...................................................... 21 2.2 Braidotti’s Account of the Sexual Difference: A Critique .......................................... 26 2.3. Questions of Convergences and Divergences: Braidotti and Butler .......................... 28 2.4 Embodiment and Performativity in Judith Butler, and an Insight on Braidotti’s Critiques ............................................................................................................................ 30 2.5 Vulnerability in Butler’s and Braidotti’s Theories ..................................................... 34 3. The Importance of Analysing the Ethics of Care in Dialogue with Rosi Braidotti and Judith Butler ......................................................................................................................... 38 Chapter 2 - The Heteronormativity of Care ............................................................................. 43 1. Heteronormative Implications in Gilligan’s and Noddings’ Works ................................. 44 2. Questions of Dependency and Disposability .................................................................... 55 3. Dependency: An Ontological Threshold .......................................................................... 58 4. Care as Future-Oriented .................................................................................................... 63 5. Opening Alternative Paths ................................................................................................ 70 Chapter 3 - Problematizing Anthropocentric Visions of Care ................................................. 75 1. Anthropocentrism: a definition ......................................................................................... 76 2. When All (Only) People ‘Need’ Care .............................................................................. 78 3. Noddings’ Anthropocentric Caring .................................................................................. 79 4. Toward a Non-Anthropocentric Ethics of Embodied Care .............................................. 93 CEU eTD Collection 4.1. Questioning the Bios/Zoe Dualism ............................................................................ 93 4.2. What Can (Relational) Bodies Do? ............................................................................ 97 4.3. Responsibility and Response-ability ........................................................................ 101 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 105 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 111 v CEU eTD Collection vi Introduction To be cared for seems to be a condition for every life to be maintained. From the very beginning, a living being needs to be sustained and to receive certain forms of care to continue to live and grow. Caring implies relationality in its commitment to address the presence of a body’s needs, as for example to be nourished, and to seek their satisfaction; if this condition of satisfaction is not accomplished, a life is at risk of perishing. It could be said that these arguments are obvious, or they could be questioned as they convey a sort of universal and naturalizing claim or truth. Indeed, one could affirm that care is not limited to a response to needs but goes beyond that,