Private Dependence, Public Personhood: Rethinking “Nested Obligations”

Abstract

This paper responds to Love's Labor, Eva Feder Kittay's seminal contribution to feminist disability theory, arguing that Kittay's “nested obligations” approach creates a two‐tiered system of justice in which care relationships built around private dependence and private obligation are figured as wholly prepolitical, to the detriment of both gender justice and disability justice. I suggest that centering the civic membership of the disabled person allows us to keep what is valuable in Kittay's contribution, namely her theorization of the nature of care and its political significance, and her call for collective support of care relationships, while omitting the nesting of obligations and resituating care recipients and care workers as equal and interdependent.