Rethinking the political in the pluriverse: The ethico-political significance of care

Abstract

Postfoundational political thought is characterized by a distinction between “politics” (a socio-symbolic order that delineates what is knowable and thinkable) and “the political” (the instantiation of a socio-symbolic order). This article critically engages with the postfoundational thought of Jacques Rancière to rethink “the political” in the context of the pluriverse, a matrix of multiple distinct yet interconnected worlds. In so doing, this article challenges the idea that “care” is not properly political. Specifically, I argue that in the context of the pluriverse, socio-symbolic orders, or worlds, are not instantiated as such; rather, they must be established and, importantly, reestablished in the face of one another. From this vantage point, caring for and maintaining worlds—especially worlds marginalized by relations of power in the global political economy—is of political and ethical significance. This article thus offers a decolonial and feminist approach to thinking about the political as it (a) destabilizes the Westerncentric assumption that there is one-world, and takes different worlds as worlds seriously; and (b) centers issues of care and reproduction, demonstrates how they are politically and ethically salient, and thereby contributes to the project of foregrounding the political import of care.