Skip to main content

care

Pandemic times. A conversation with Lisa Baraitser about the temporal politics of COVID-19

Introduction

Lisa Baraitser is Professor of Psychosocial Theory at Birkbeck, University of London. In her research, she combines psychoanalytic and social theories to address the temporal, ethical and affective dimensions of care. In this interview, Prof. Baraitser helps us think through the temporal politics of COVID-19 and the ways in which pandemic conditions transform the affective dimensions of care work in Europe and US-America.

Revisiting precarity, with care: Productive and reproductive labour in the era of flexible capitalism

Introduction

The concept of precarity – a term describing the flexible and uncertain working and living conditions in the contemporary world – is often presented in opposition to the idea of stability. On the one pole stands the idea of a permanent job or career: a secure and stable life-long chain of economic pursuits and social relations that promise steady upward mobility across generations (Sennett, 1998: 9). On the other pole remains the hyper-flexible contractual labour and displaced life advanced by new forms of managerial capitalism. 

Repair matters

...

She said: What is history?

And he said: History is an angel

being blown backwards into the future

He said: History is a pile of debris

And the angel wants to go back and fix things

To repair the things that have been broken

But there is a storm blowing from Paradise

And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future

And this storm, this storm is called Progress

Laurie Anderson – The Dream Before (for Walter Benjamin)

Album: Strange Angels, 1989

Subscribe to care

All Issues

| vol. 23, no. 2
| vol. 23, no. 1
| vol. 22, no. 3