Essays in Philosophy

Volume 24, Issue 1/2, January/July 2023

Care Ethics Otherwise

Zena Sharman
Pages 11-25

Imagining More Care-Full Futures
Care Work as Prefigurative Praxis

This essay explores care ethics and possibilities for caring otherwise through the lens of prefigurative praxis. It draws on the conceptualizations and critiques of care, care practices, and care futurism of writers, theorists, activists, and organizers from Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC), disabled, and/or LGBTQIA+ communities, particularly those whose work is underpinned by disability justice and prison industrial complex abolition. It understands disability justice and abolition as integral to our ability to collectively respond to care crises in ways that think beyond austerity, carcerality, and institutional forms of care.