Nash, Jennifer C., Pinto, Samantha. On Exhaustion: Toward a Post-Care Feminism
2025, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 36 (1): 87–114
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Joke StruyfAbstract:
This essay is a critical response to the emergence of “care” as the antidote to the multiple crises that plague the present. The call for care— intramural care, radical care, mutual aid, etc.—has proliferated in gender and sexuality studies, black studies, critical ethnic studies, and a variety of Left political projects. This intervention foregrounds the exhausting nature of care, and calls for a feminist theory that centers exhaustion. The authors read an archive of black feminist texts, including work by Patricia J. Williams and Nella Larsen, for feminist attachments to exhaustion as a necessary position from which to root our theorizing.Comment: A rich and accessible text, that can be read and discussed in combination with 'traditional' care ethics texts.
Stramondo, Joseph A.. Tragic Choices: Disability, Triage, and Equity Amidst a Global Pandemic
2021, The Journal of Philosophy of Disability. 1: 201–210
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Added by: Chris Blake-TurnerAbstract:
In this paper, I make three arguments regarding Crisis Standards of Care developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, I argue against the consideration of third person quality of life judgments that deprioritize disabled or chronically ill people on a basis other than their survival, even if protocols use the language of health to justify maintaining the supposedly higher well-being of non-disabled people. Second, while it may be unavoidable that some disabled people are deprioritized by triage protocols that must consider the likelihood that someone will survive intensive treatment, Crisis Standards of Care should not consider the amount or duration of treatment someone may need to survive. Finally, I argue that, rather than parsing who should be denied treatment to maximize lives saved, professional bioethicists should have put our energy into reducing the need for such choices at all by resisting the systemic injustices that drive the need for triage.Comment (from this Blueprint): Stramondo critiques triage protocols that were put into place, or at least proposed, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stramondo argues that protocols that prioritize quality of life involve ableist commitments. While chance-of-survival protocols might do better here, he argues that they are also vulnerable to creeping ableism. Stramondo’s paper is valuable not only for its perspective on triage protocols, but also for highlighting some crucial theoretical contributions by philosophers of disability and by bioethicists. Stramondo also argues not to cede too much ground to fatalism in thinking about triage protocols; bioethicists should also, and perhaps primarily, resist the framing of triage as inevitable, rather than a product of various privileged interests.
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