WHO CARES?

Amidst the public health crises of the coronavirus; systematic violence of anti-Black racism; regular and blatant abuses of governmental power; widespread disregard for the environment, we might ask, who, in fact, cares? Whose role is it to care and for whom? What are the costs, labors, and rewards of care? How are matters of access to care influenced by race, gender, class, ability, location, age, and other factors? How are cultural trends of care (of the self, as mutual aid, in the forms of protest and uprising, for instance) informed by sociopolitical, economic, and environmental realities? What praxes of care are at work in our homes, communities, classrooms, research and art? The word “curate” derives from the Latin “cura” or care; in a digital age that simultaneously lends itself to isolation as well as alternative forms of community and world-making, we wonder what forms of care are most generative? Where is care to be found? When might it be better to care less?