This paper proposes a conversation between Jacques Rancière and feminist care ethicists. It argues that there are important resonances between these two bodies of scholarship, thanks to their similar indictments of Western hierarchies and binaries, their shared invitation to “blur boundaries” and embrace a politics of “impropriety”, and their views on the significance of storytelling/narratives and of the ordinary. Drawing largely on Disagreement, Proletarian Nights, and The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, I also indicate that Rancière’s work offers (...) crucial and timely insights for care ethicists on the importance of attending to desire and hope in research, the inevitability of conflict in social transformation, and the need to think together the transformation of care work/practices and of dominant social norms. (shrink)

The gods, however, took pity on the human race, born to suffer as it was, and gave it relief in the form of religious festivals to serve as periods of rest from its labors. They gave us the Muses, with Apollo their leader, and Dionysus; by having these gods to share their holidays, men were to be made whole again . . .That Plato1 regarded music as an extremely powerful means to cultivate morality and good citizenship is well-known.2 In the (...) Laws we are told that musical license is the chief reason for political license, and in the Republic Socrates insists that music education is the greatest bulwark of a polis.3 The Platonic corpus is also peppered with striking suggestions that the well-educated soul is, above .. (shrink)

Bureaucracy has had few admirers, as a quick perusal of 20th-century political and social theory readily indicates. In recent years, several feminist theorists have also joined this vociferous anti-bureaucracy chorus, denouncing bureaucracy’s excessively hierarchical, impersonal, cold and controlling nature. The goal of this article is to review these charges and to show why the term ‘caring bureaucracy’ is not an oxymoron. In the first two sections, the author considers the various reasons why bureaucratic structures are said to be bad both (...) for the people who work in them and for those who deal with them. The author proposes to discuss these charges in light of some research on feminist organizations and street-level bureaucracy. The intention is not to offer a paean to street-level discretion or to the claims of ‘the heart’ in public service; it is, rather, to underscore at once the beauty and the danger of discretion. It is also noted that feminist theorists ought to be cautious when they call for ‘flattened hierarchies’ and for fewer rules in large institutions – for these might work against the best interests of women. The last part of the article offers the outline of a caring bureaucracy and suggests avenues to be explored in future care ethics research. (shrink)

The goals of this paper are twofold. First, the paper seeks to show the relevance of French philosopher Simone Weil’s writings on work for contemporary political and social theory. More specifically, by drawing on Weil’s “factory writings”—i.e. the diary she kept during the many months she spent working in factories, and the essays and letters that followed shortly after—the article shows that Weil’s analysis of speed, humiliation and affliction is highly pertinent for reflecting upon the consequences of the increasingly ubiquitous (...) recourse to digital tracking and monitoring tools by today’s employers. Secondly, the paper proposes to read Weil’s account of degradation and affliction in light of the contemporary scholarship on “slow violence”. Inspired by Rob Nixon’s work, this scholarship is interested in forms of harm that are slow-paced, attritional, ‘out of sight’ and intimately tied to our (distracted) attention regimes. As I argue, Weil very lucidly described the paradox at the heart of many types of modern work: namely, that its fast pace causes the slow death of workers’ souls and bodies. Demonstrating the important resonances of Weil’s account of factory life and contemporary suffering in the era of digital surveillance, the paper underlines the significance of Weil’s account of affliction for understanding the depths of the harms caused by these forms of domination. (shrink)

Depuis leur naissance aux États-Unis au début des années 1980, les éthiques féministes du care ont fréquemment puisé dans l’œuvre de Simone Weil afin de théoriser les qualités morales nécessaires pour le soin – en particulier, l’attention. Toutefois, la pertinence de Weil pour penser le travail est rarement considérée par les théoricien.ne.s du care. Si le care peut être compris à la fois comme disposition/qualité morale et comme activité/travail pratique, nous souhaitons montrer la pertinence du corpus weilien pour penser ces (...) deux facettes. Nous soulignerons, avec Weil, que le bien-être au travail requiert d’accorder une importance accrue au rythme et à l’autonomie temporels ainsi qu’aux dynamiques entourant la considération sociale et les responsabilités. Nous soutiendrons aussi brièvement que le concept weilien de « malheur » préfigure ceux de « mort lente » (Berlant) et de « violence lente » (Nixon). (shrink)

There are many prominent examples of artists with autism. However, even when confronted with evidence of these accomplished autistic savants, pragmatic aesthetic theories cannot adequately account for the work of these accomplished artists as artists. This article first examines the nature of autism and explores a prominent psychological theory that purports to explain autistic symptoms. This prominent theory, the theory of mind thesis, holds that autistic symptoms are the result of the failure of persons with autism to make certain types (...) of secondorder propositional attitude attributions. Second, the article describes the work of three visual artists with autism. There can be no doubt that these individuals are in fact artists. Third, the article examines pragmatic aesthetic theory and demonstrates why the pragmatic theory fails to adequately account for the accomplishment of autistic artists. The unique psychological deficits that characterize autism present a challenge to pragmatic aesthetic theories in particular. The conclusion is that the pragmatic theory’s inability to accommodate the artist autistic artist is a profound shortcoming. A revision of the pragmatic theory is called for, as is embracing of the development of the special talents of persons with autism. (shrink)

It is well known that Friedrich Nietzsche loved to refer to himself as the “last disciple of Dionysus.” On the basis of this famous self-characterization, it would seem warranted to describe Nietzsche’s ideal as Dionysian—as Tracy Strong, Bruce Detwiler, and Daniel Conway have done. This paper seeks to reassess the extent of Nietzsche’s Dionysianism via an examination of what the philosopher had to say about music—in particular, Richard Wagner’s music. What the paper argues is that Nietzsche’s musical aesthetics is remarkably (...) Apollonian (or classical), and that elements of this aesthetics can be detected in every period of Nietzsche’s intellectual life. While some scholars have acknowledged the classicism in Nietzsche’s middle-period, I go further and argue that Nietzsche’s earlyworks already indicate that the philosopher was not an entirely loyal disciple of Dionysus. (shrink)

It is well known that Friedrich Nietzsche loved to refer to himself as the “last disciple of Dionysus.” On the basis of this famous self-characterization, it would seem warranted to describe Nietzsche’s ideal as Dionysian—as Tracy Strong, Bruce Detwiler, and Daniel Conway have done. This paper seeks to reassess the extent of Nietzsche’s Dionysianism via an examination of what the philosopher had to say about music—in particular, Richard Wagner’s music. What the paper argues is that Nietzsche’s musical aesthetics is remarkably (...) Apollonian (or classical), and that elements of this aesthetics can be detected in every period of Nietzsche’s intellectual life. While some scholars have acknowledged the classicism in Nietzsche’s middle-period, I go further and argue that Nietzsche’s earlyworks already indicate that the philosopher was not an entirely loyal disciple of Dionysus. (shrink)