María Puig de la Bellacasa: Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds (2017)

“To care can feel good, or it can feel bad. It can do good, it can oppress. But what is care? A moral obligation? A burden? A joy? Is it only human? In Matters of Care, María Puig de la Bellacasa presents a powerful challenge to conventional notions of care, exploring its significance as an ethical and political obligation for thinking in the more than human worlds of technoscience and naturecultures.

Matters of Care contests the view that care is something only humans do, and argues for extending to non-humans the consideration of agencies and communities that make the living web of care by considering how care circulates in the natural world. The first of the book’s two parts, “Knowledge Politics,” defines the motivations for expanding the ethico-political meanings of care, focusing on discussions in science and technology that engage with sociotechnical assemblages and objects as lively, politically charged “things.” The second part, “Speculative Ethics in Antiecological Times,” considers everyday ecologies of sustaining and perpetuating life for their potential to transform our entrenched relations to natural worlds as “resources.”

From the ethics and politics of care to experiential research on care to feminist science and technology studies, Matters of Care is a singular contribution to an emerging interdisciplinary debate that expands agency beyond the human to ask how our understandings of care must shift if we broaden the world.”

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2017
Posthumanities series, 41
ISBN 9781517900656, 1517900654
265 pages

Reviews: Miriam Ticktin & Katinka Wijsman (Hypatia, 2017), Sonja Jerak-Zuiderent (Science & Technology Studies, 2017), James McMaster (Women & Performance, 2017), Kelly Dombroski (Journal of Cultural Economy, 2018), Stephen Healy (Journal of Cultural Economy, 2018), Elizabeth Reddy (Journal of Cultural Economy, 2018), Gerda Roelvink (Journal of Cultural Economy, 2018), Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (response, Journal of Cultural Economy, 2018), Katie Ulrich (Cultures of Energy, 2018), Garrett Bunyak (Configurations, 2018), Sarah Weiger (ISLE, 2019), Farhan Samanani (Society+Space, 2019), Richard Brons (Ethics of Care, 2019).

Commentary: Michelle Murphy (Social Studies of Science, 2015).

Interview with author (Cultures of Energy, 2018, 70 min)

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The Techno-Galactic Guide to Software Observation (2018)

“This techno-galactic software survival guide was collectively produced as an outcome of the Techno-Galactic Software Observatory (Brussels, 2017). This guide proposes several ways to achieve critical distance from the seemingly endless software systems that surround us. It offers practical and fantastical tools for the tactical (mis)use of software, empowering/enabling users to resist embedded paradigms and assumptions. It is a collection of methods for approaching software, experiencing its myths and realities, its risks and benefits.”

With contributions from Manetta Berends, Željko Blaće, Larisa Blazic, Freyja van den Boom, Anna Carvalho, Loup Cellard, Joana Chicau, Cristina Cochior, Pieter Heremans, Joak aka Joseph Knierzinger, Jogi Hofmüller, Becky Kazansky, Anne Laforet, Ricardo Lafuente, Michaela Lakova, Hans Lammerant, Silvio Lorusso, Mia Melvaer, An Mertens, Lidia Pereira, Donatella Portoghese, Luis Rodil-Fernandez, Natacha Roussel, Andrea di Serego Alighieri, Lonneke van der Velden, Ruben van de Ven, Kym Ward, Wendy Van Wynsberghe, and Peter Westenberg.

Compiled by Carlin Wing, Martino Morandi, Peggy Pierrot, Anita Burato, Christoph Haag, Michael Murtaugh, Femke Snelting, and Seda Gürses
Publisher Constant, Brussels, 2018
Free Art License 1.3
ISBN 9789081145961
244 pages

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