Countering Romanticization: Queer and Feminist Struggles for Care
Care takes place in relation, it is a form of relatedness that shapes how people live together and structure their lives on a daily basis. Global capitalism, however, is not oriented towards care, but the opposite: it is structurally careless. This is being felt by more and more people, not just in post-pandemic life. In political struggles, this carelessness is being confronted with a culture of care. Queer and feminist movements in particular are developing different concepts that point to the ambivalent—or at least contested—aspects of care. How people want to live together, which relationships are being normalized, framed as caring or carefree, or desired will be defined through these struggles. The contestation over the meaning of care points to the contradictory nature of social relations and the complex conditions of collective care struggles. Against romanticization, Cari Maier searches for conditions to salvage utopian potential.
Cari Maier is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Social Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and is pursuing a doctorate on feminist conceptions of care. Cari's research interests are queer and feminist social theory, labor relations and relationships, care and violence. They have taught at the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna, the Department of Political Theory at the Technical University of Dresden and the Department of Social Work at the FH Campus Wien. Cari is a member of the feminist theory collective fe.ory (Vienna), the research group »Ideologies and Politics of Inequality« (Vienna) and the working group »Gender, Kinship, Sexuality« at the Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt am Main).
»Die Perspektive der Sorge im strukturell sorglosen Staat«, in: Gundula Ludwig und Birgit Sauer (Hg.), Das kälteste aller kalten Ungeheuer? Perspektiven intersektionaler Staatstheorie, Frankfurt am Main/New York 2024.
mit Judith Goetz, Marcella Torrez Heredia, Kyra Schmied, Femi(ni)zide. Kollektiv patriarchale Gewalt bekämpfen, Berlin 2023.
»Nicht ohne ihre Kämpfe! Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen der 24-Stunden-Betreuer*innen und vieles zu lernen für feministische Theorie«, in: Momentum Quaterly, 2(2022), Vol. 11.
»Zur Möglichkeit eines feministischen Subjektbegriffs«, in: Femina Politica – Zeitschrift für feministische Politikwissenschaft, 2(2020).
Im strukturell sorglosen Kapitalismus wird Sorge zur politischen Artikulation des Begehrens nach anderen Beziehungen. Insbesondere in Archiven queerer und feministischer Proteste finden sich Flugblätter, Manifeste, Bilder und theoretische Texte, die Sorge auf unterschiedliche und teils widersprüchliche Bedeutungsebenen politisieren. Der Vortrag wird die widersprüchlichen Bedingungen kollektiver Kämpfe um Sorge reflektieren.