Care Ethics and the Refugee Crisis: Emotions, Contestation, and Agency 0367435659, 9780367435653

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Care Ethics and the Refugee Crisis

This book advocates for the philosophical import of care in reevaluating problems of humanitarianism in the context of the ongoing international refugee and forced migration situation. In doing so, it rethinks the human capacity to care about the suffering of distant others. At a time when emotional resources are running low, there is a need to recast what it means to care, with the aim of generating a productive movement against the rise of value fundamentalism globally—embraced in mantras of “good and evil” and “us and them”—and to confront xenophobia and oppressive politics. The author draws upon a wide array of rich traditions, including historical and contemporary writings on self-care and care of the other, to reexamine the intersection of care ethics and justice. She also rethinks the relationship between care and contestation, here analyzed in the aesthetic, ethical, political, and religious domains of human experience. From within the context of this contingent historical repetition of political oppression, the book constructs a reminder not only of what it feels like to care, but how and why we should act upon our care. Care Ethics and the Refugee Crisis is an important contribution to the growing philosophical literature on care ethics and immigration/forced migration. It will also appeal to scholars and advanced students working in other disciplines such as political science, refugee and migration studies, and social anthropology. Marcia Morgan is Associate Professor of Philosophy and 2020–2021 Program Director at the Center for Ethics at Muhlenberg College, U.S.A. She is the author of Kierkegaard and Critical Theory (2012) and the co-editor of Richard J. Bernstein and the Expansion of American Philosophy: Thinking the Plural (2016).

Routledge Research in Applied Ethics

The Ethics of Counterterrorism Isaac Taylor Disability with Dignity Justice, Human Rights and Equal Status Linda Barclay Media Ethics, Free Speech, and the Requirements of Democracy Edited by Carl Fox and Joe Saunders Ethics and Chronic Illness Tom Walker The Future of Work, Technology, and Basic Income Edited by Michael Chobli and Michael Weber The Ethics of Eating Animals Usually Bad, Sometimes Wrong, Often Permissible Bob Fischer Self-Defense, Necessity, and Punishment A Philosophical Analysis Uwe Steinhoff Ethics and Error in Medicine Edited by Fritz Allhoff and Sandra L. Borden Care Ethics and the Refugee Crisis Emotions, Contestations, and Agency Marcia Morgan For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Applied-Ethics/book-series/RRAES

Care Ethics and the Refugee Crisis Emotions, Contestation, and Agency Marcia Morgan

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Marcia Morgan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-43565-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-00522-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgementsvi Introduction 1 Contextualizing the Problem: Rethinking Care Beyond Good and Evil

1 22

2 Aesthetic Care: Witnessing the Muteness of Human Suffering49 3 From the Aesthetic to the Ethical: Self-Care and Care of the Other as Contestation

77

4 From Care Ethics to Political Care: Dependency, Misidentification, and Justice

102

5 Affective Rejoinders: Reconsidering the Role of Emotions and Imagination in Political Care

130

6 Contestatory Care as Love: Toward an Understanding of Religious Care

152

Bibliography175 Index183

Acknowledgements

The following individuals, committees, and institutions provided generous financial and practical support of my research for this project: John Ramsey, Former Provost of Muhlenberg College, and the 2014–2015 and 2015–2016 Faculty Development and Scholarship Committee granted me 2015 and 2016 summer research funding and a 2016 sabbatical; Kathleen Harring, former Provost and current President of Muhlenberg College, and the 2017–2018 Faculty Development and Scholarship Committee granted me the Hoffman Fellowship for the full 2018–2019 academic year. I am humbled and honored to have received this generous funding. I would like to thank my colleagues and students at Muhlenberg College for all they have taught me and motivated me to challenge and explore. Sue Curry Jansen offered invaluable encouragement throughout the entire process of writing this book. Through the years-long reading group with Sue and Jefferson Pooley, my research has been moved in generative ways in inter-disciplinary developments in social and political theory. Their combination of hermeneutic generosity and rigor in academic research has been an ongoing source of inspiration. I am indebted to my professors and friends from the New School for Social Research in New York for their support of my work and everimpactful teaching and commitment to philosophic truth: Richard J. Bernstein, Dmitri Nikulin, and in loving memory, Ágnes Heller. Many heartfelt thanks to Chiara Bottici for affording me the opportunity to present related work at the New School and for her important comments from the domain of feminist philosophy. Professor John Rundell from the University of Melbourne was extremely kind to offer an endorsement with Routledge. Megan Craig from Stony Brook University has been an exemplar in scholarly collaboration, and it has been an honor to receive her support. Her recent publications and our conversations on care have meant a great deal to the development of my thinking. The conference presentations listed below provided important opportunities for discussion of my scholarship that contributed to the completion

Acknowledgements vii of this book. I recognize the significant work done by the organizers and thank them for their commitment of time and dedication to philosophy. June 4, 2019: “Kierkegaard’s Critique of Christian Nationalism and Current E.U. Refugee Policy,” Diverse Lineages of Existentialism II Conference, George Washington University. May 4, 2019: “Reading Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaard as Educator: Paideia, Seduction, and the Ways of the Negative, Graduate Philosophy Department, New School for Social Research, New York. January 9, 2019: “Kierkegaard’s Critique of Christian Nationalism and the Current E.U. Refugee Crisis,” American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Annual Meeting, New York. March 28, 2018: “Reading Kierkegaard,” Political Theology Group, American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Annual Meeting, San Diego. October 13, 2017: “Beyond the Good and Evil of Humanitarian Crisis: A Comparative Analysis of Budapest and Berlin,” Philosophy of the City Annual Conference, Faculty of Letters, University of Porto, Portugal. (I was unable to present the paper in person.) April 29, 2016: “The Affect of Dissident Language: A Possible Dialogue between Adorno and Kristeva,” Association of Adorno Studies Annual Meeting, University of Montreal. April 2, 2016: “Bodies at Borders: Post-Secular Ethics and the E.U. Refugee Crisis,” Bodies in Negotiation: Rethinking Dangers and Pleasures in the 21st Century, Gettysburg College. March 31, 2016: “Dissident Language and Aesthetic Emancipation at the Margins: A Dialogue among Adorno and Kristeva,” Graduate Philosophy Colloquium, New School for Social Research, New York. March 10, 2016: “The Affect of Dissident Language: A Possible Dialogue between Adorno and Kristeva,” Visiting Speaker Series, Graduate Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Ontario. October 8, 2015: “The Affect of Dissident Language: A Possible Dialogue between Adorno and Kristeva,” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy Annual Meeting, Emory University, Atlanta. The following individuals offered questions and comments on various portions of my research on Kierkegaard or other authors included in this monograph by reading a chapter, participating in a conference panel or attending a guest lecture, or delivering a response to my paper, and I learned a great deal from them: Jamie Aroosi, Joydeep Bagchee, Richard J. Bernstein, Daniel Berthold, Denise Brennan, Edward Butler, James Dodd, Maura Finkelstein, Gordon Marino, Radu Neculau, Leore Rinott,

viii  Acknowledgements Nathan Ross, Darren Surman, Katie Terezakis, Cille Varslev, and Yi Wu. I am grateful for the papers from fellow panelists Sabeen Ahmed and William M. Paris and the moderator comments from Zekeh Gbotokuma at George Washington University. Some of the ideas for my argument in chapter 6 were developed through the research for my chapter “Reading Kierkegaard,” written for the Companion to Adorno (Blackwell Companions in Philosophy), co-edited by Peter E. Gordon, Espen Hammer, and Max Pensky, published by Blackwell in 2020. I am indebted to them for the opportunity. A portion of my argument in chapter 2 was previously published in open access form in my article “The Affect of Dissident Language: A Possible Dialogue between Theodor W. Adorno and Julia Kristeva,” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, ed. Scott Davidson (University of Pittsburgh Press), vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 167–91. I am grateful to the editor, Scott Davidson, and to Nathan Ross for their backing of this research. Many thanks are due to Andrew Weckenmann, acquisitions editor at Routledge, for his advocacy and careful guidance throughout the publication process. His insights have been especially helpful. Allie Simmons facilitated a very efficient and speedy process with her assistance at Routledge. The comments and suggestions from the anonymous reviewers significantly improved the quality of the final manuscript. I recognize the heavy burden of time and labor in their high quality peer review. Their comments generated numerous positive developments for the completion of the monograph, and I am indebted to their impressive care in philosophic scholarship. I take full responsibility for any shortcomings and errors that may remain. My parents, John and Michelle Morgan, have given me their unconditional love, immeasurable care, and infinitely valuable teachings throughout my entire life. I cannot express enough all they have done to enable me to flourish. Their generosity and kindness have shaped my life in the best possible ways. For her unending willingness to be the Socratic interlocutor on any and all themes, I am forever grateful to my sister, Jennifer Levkulic, my life-long best friend. She has been a true support system. My twin sons, Benjamin and David, have been the most transformative gift of my life. It has been the greatest privilege to care for and with them, and to receive their care. I am immensely proud and thankful for all they have accomplished. This book is in memory of my philosophical mentor, teacher, and friend, Ágnes Heller (May 12, 1929–July 19, 2019), from whom I learned a great deal over the last 25 years. At our last meal together—I didn’t know it would be our last—she debated me at length on my argument for this monograph, propelling me to finish it. She was a remarkable role model. Her amor mundi is ever in my thinking and acting.

Introduction

I began formulating the questions to be answered in this book on a summer research grant in 2015 and completed the initial phase of research during my sabbatical in 2016, a timeframe during which the so-called refugee crisis began to grip the European Union dramatically. The images of two Syrian toddlers—Aylan Kurdi, whose lifeless body washed ashore on the beaches of Bodrum in Turkey in 2015 after drowning while attempting to cross the Aegean Sea with his family,1 and Omran Daqneesh, a boy rescued from the rubble of his residence by emergency medical responders in Aleppo in 20162—had taken the world stage during the early period of my research. Although they are regularly referenced as now iconic photos, even vastly in research monographs and journal articles in addition to online accounts, there is no sustained philosophical-aesthetic reflection on these images that can connect to a substantive ethico-political grappling with the ongoing humanitarian situation. My book begins by undertaking such a task. One year elapsed between the appearances of the two photos, yet the changes during that time and since then have been overwhelmingly negative. That little to no progress has been made—we may even certainly speak of a regress—is manifest in the fact that those who do try to help and speak out in advocacy of refugees’ and forced migrants’ agency and human rights have been arrested either literally or figuratively, as in the example of Carola Rackete, who defied orders and docked her migrant rescue vessel on the island of Lampedusa in Italy, only to be detained and later released by judge’s orders,3 and Angela Merkel, who lost political dominion as the German Chancellor because of her insistence, at least initially, on accepting large numbers of asylum seekers and migrants against the will of an ever-increasing portion of the German population.4 There may be lower numbers of people seeking refuge in Europe in 2019 compared to one or two years ago thanks to the xenophobic politics and policies of several new henchmen in office5—including the reelection of Viktor Orban’s regime in Hungary, Andrezj Duda’s administration in Poland,6 anti-immigrant rhetoric as a key motor of Brexit in the U.K., the brief tenure of Interior Minister Matteo Salvini in Italy, the uptake

2  Introduction of parties or movements such as Alternative für Deutschland and Identitäre Bewegung in Germany,7 which invoke not insubstantial tropes of Third Reich ideology in Germany, not to mention Donald Trump’s racist, bigoted, and white supremacist rhetoric and policies—one could go on. But, the fact remains that the numbers of people in need of humane living conditions continues to increase, and the overall number of deaths of migrants attempting dangerous journeys has subsided only for disturbing reasons.8 The ratio of deaths to attempts to reach the borders of the E.U. has significantly increased because of fewer accessible safe routes, fewer permissible rescue boats, and fewer available areas of legal reception.9 These tactics are repeated at the U.S. border with Mexico.10 They are followed up with administrative delays in providing aid at the borders and cruel, punitive policies that function to thwart international asylum law.11 Realpolitik arrangements have been made to keep migrants and refugees where they are; borders have been partially or completely shut off, de facto or de jure, to those seeking safe haven, whether from extreme poverty, uninhabitable land, everyday violence, or outright conflict and war. The philosophy of the émigré has been foundational to my research since the writing of my master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation. There I focused on the texts of Theodor W. Adorno, a Jewish-German exile who fled during the Nazi Reich and whose writings vigorously and relentlessly question how one might possibly think and act ethically “after Auschwitz.” The dislocated core, if you will, embedded in Adorno’s thought constellations profoundly impacted the history of philosophy and the attempts of philosophic aesthetics to represent reality in the second half of the twentieth century. This was not least because of Adorno’s visceral integration of his “damaged life” in his provocative writings in a manner that sought a radical rethinking of Western ethics, art, knowledge, truth, and existence.12 In my dissertation, and since then, I have examined Adorno’s émigré philosophy through the lens of what I have called “the aesthetic-religious nexus” of human existence, modeled on the major insights of both Adorno and the nineteenth-century Danish religious thinker Søren Kierkegaard, about whom Adorno successfully completed his second dissertation for university professorship in 1933 in Germany.13 I continue to take this approach here. An aesthetic-religious nexus mediated by the ethico-political realm provides the lens through which I analyze the humanitarian situation of refugees and forced migrants attempting to reach the E.U. and the U.S. today. An additional ground stone of my philosophic work comprises the writings and lectures of Ágnes Heller. As a Holocaust survivor and dissident in communist Hungary, Heller’s arguments on individual choice in the face of the most extreme forms of oppression and destruction of humanity, and her never-ending commitment to contestation against authoritarianism, have been motivating features for my argument. Her

Introduction 3 life’s insights as a survivor of two totalitarian systems in the twentieth century call out to those inheritors of the historical past and interpreters of the historical present who can never accept what Adorno called “the wrong state of things.”14 In recent interviews and public lectures up until the last day of her life on July 19, 2019, Heller drew comparisons between what she experienced as a girl in the Budapest ghetto during the Nazi occupation, what she lived through as a dissident in communist Hungary, and what needs to be vigorously addressed and vehemently fought against today. In fact, on the evening of her death, she engaged in an impassioned discussion developing strategies to prevent the authoritarian regime of Orban from taking away even more of the academic freedoms his government had already consolidated in their power. Thus, my work over the last two decades on aesthetics, ethics, and religious experience “after Auschwitz,” situated within the German philosophy of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“working out the past”) and émigré philosophy, have been modeled primarily on the works of Adorno and Heller in addition to other major figures in the tradition of German critical and social theory—Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Richard J. Bernstein, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas. One can study the past a great deal and still undergo a qualitatively different experience when confronted with images in the present that repeat historical problems, such as those that have tragically flooded the news since 2015. This is not to assert a caesura between 2015 and the years or decades before. Both common sense and the literature on refugee and migration studies demonstrate vividly that the failures of international asylum law and the significant weaknesses in the international “refugee regime” have been ongoing since the time the laws were conceived and further advanced, from 1951 to 1967 to 2016.15 And since the time I began researching and writing this book, the images of Aylan Kurdi and Omran Daqneesh have only been added upon with devastating realities such as the tragic photo of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25, and Angie Valeria, a 23-month-old, a father and daughter whose deceased bodies washed ashore at the U.S.-Mexico border at the banks of the Rio Grande in June 2019, to name only two among numerous recent migrant deaths at the border or in U.S. custody.16 Deaths of African migrants trying to access Europe via the Mediterranean Sea continue as ever.17 Debates have ensued about comparisons of currently existing migrant detention centers to concentration camps.18 Activists, politicians, scholars, and everyday citizens are questioning whether the political developments we now witness warrant the label of “fascism”—already, or not yet?19 Every week the intensity of the racism and anti-immigrant politics becomes ever more intensified. Take the recent example of Donald Trump’s adoption of white supremacist language employed in the segregationist U.S. South. The phrase “Go back to your own country” appeared in his own statements and in the chants of his followers at a political rally

4  Introduction as a declaration to Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee turned American citizen currently serving her first year as a U.S. Congresswoman.20 Thus, the collective moment of these images appears to me in a rather different sense as both a break with and a somber reminder of the past—a break because it betrays what we claimed to have overcome, which is simultaneously a reminder that Adorno was right. Together with Max Horkheimer, his co-author of the Dialectic of Enlightenment published in 1944, Adorno wrote forcefully that the moment Western thinkers view themselves fully emancipated by reason, they have already regressed into myth.21 Hannah Arendt, another most renowned Jewish-German philosopher who was likewise a refugee during the Nazi Reich, has taught us that we do not learn from history. Yet she warns us that we are obligated to study genealogies to prepare for the dark forces that may contingently rear their ugly heads at any given moment.22 There is no necessary teleology of “good and evil,” but there are repeated failures of humankind, across eras and places, to contest authoritarian regimes and campaigns adequately and to prevent their worst actualization before it is too late. The both/and constitution of where “we” are now—those who ascribe to the humanitarian conventions accomplished in the aftermath of the two World Wars, and who have attempted to prevent that dark side of history from being repeated by acts of resistance through scholarship, teaching, and political action—has only become more alarming since I began writing this book. The basic questions with which I began formulating my analysis—why should we care, how do we care, and how can and should we act upon our care about the issue at hand?—have become more urgent and complex. My overarching project arose from a perceived sense of nihilism because of the flood of images and news flashes that seem to paralyze viewers and observers ever more. But I wanted to press more deeply into this nascent iteration of what Arendt called “dark times,”23 with its contemporary twists and turns in lethargy and nostalgia, and the vacillating dynamics of emotional-analytical impasses and outbursts, with steadfast refusals to respond to refugee and migrant needs coupled with protest and political movements against those refusals. In regard to the countervailing tendencies even within the category of those who advocate humanitarian care and acceptance of refugees and forced migrants beyond borders, the images of Aylan Kurdi and Omran Daqneesh have been both revered and criticized. They have been upheld as images that have “changed the world” for the better,24 ushering in at least isolated or incremental policy and practical changes; and they have been regarded as mere reinforcement of the status quo of inaction, resurgent racism, and value fundamentalism that prevent the establishment of effective humanitarian care in the Global North. As has been evidenced in the documentary “Sea of Images,” higher-level decisions by senior journalists and N.G.O. workers went into play to select precisely

Introduction 5 these images for global audiences because of the frustration with the lack of political and social response to the humanitarian situation and because of the awareness that these images would provoke empathy, whereas others would not.25 The parody of Aylan Kurdi’s image in Charlie Hebdo speaks to the double-sided nature of this representation.26 Although no one would doubt the sheer destruction, devastation, and extreme loss suffered by Syrians because of the war, the images of these two toddlers have been singled out as yet more representations of light-skinned “innocent” individuals, in this case children, who are viewable and acceptable to Western and Northern media audiences as opposed to the gruesome depictions of bodies torn asunder and individuals and groups whose identities are far removed from the requisite socio-political interests and personal sentiments. Moreover, the “nice” side of the images belies what is lurking in the dark side of Western reception: the suspicion of boys grown into men who will assault allegedly “Western” values. Such a message was powerfully lambasted in Ágnes Heller’s analysis of the “illiberal” democracy currently at work in Hungary, which nonetheless becomes “dressed in the formal attire of democratic processes,” whereby the fear is propagated that “Millions of criminal migrants are ready to pounce, to rape and pillage our women, crush Christianity and implant Islam instead, destroy our way of life and even our cuisine.”27 It is the double nature of the reception of these images that I wanted to tackle in my opening investigation, and I continue this line as a thread throughout the book, for it is productive of continued analysis in the ethico-political and religious domains of human experience as well. True to the constitution of aesthetic experience, a Janus-faced dilemma is presented. As I argue in my opening chapters, individuals and groups need to be reminded of the suffering of distant others, and the aesthetic is the paradigmatic case to initiate this. Yet the aesthetic is by definition deceptive; what reels us in may say more about our shortcomings and short-sightedness, and even our narcissism, than the opposite, and this is precisely what disaggregating the creation of the aesthetic object, its variation through re-presentation and repetition, and its manifold receptive experiences can teach us. For all the above reasons, I turn to Adorno’s illuminations of the unendingly dialectical movement between these two sides of aesthetic experience as a way to begin my analysis, in manner that never reaches a reconciled conclusion. As a further development of my scholarly pursuits since graduate school, as mentioned, I have also modeled my analysis in the present study in a manner influenced by the writings of Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard’s three categories of human existence—the aesthetic, ethical (political), and religious—provide the structure of my overarching analysis. Like him, I begin with aesthetic experience as the impetus to care about human suffering. Indeed, for Kierkegaard, it is a narcissistic beginning.28 From there I move to the impact of the aesthetic on, and its complicated relationship

6  Introduction to, the ethical constitution of socio-political norms, regarding the ethical as always already political. I subsequently culminate my argument in the religious domain of human experience, ever with renewed consideration of the aesthetic and ethical. While Kierkegaard has been interpreted as fully leaving the aesthetic and the ethical realms behind as he moves to his radical understanding of religious faith, I argue, by way of contemporary example, that the aesthetic and ethico-political can be taken up into religious existence in a manner that still appreciates Kierkegaard’s great provocations for late (late) modern times. *** From out of this history and background context, the structure of my argument in the book is twofold. On the one hand, I reconsider the relationship between care and justice. Traditionally, care has been relegated to the private sphere of family and loved ones, focusing on caring relationships with kin and the care work historically performed for low or no compensation by women, people of color, and lower-class populations. When care has been taken into consideration in previous eras, it has been almost strictly within the domain of personal ethics, for example, in the role of emotion Aristotle’s ethics. In contrast to the private or personal domain of care, justice has been historically regarded as belonging to the public sphere of “men among men,” where social, economic, and political decisions and broader societal transformation have traditionally taken place. Justice has been construed as the domain of politics and reason, which has been overwhelmingly conceived as separate from care and emotions. Following important developments in the field of care ethics since the 1990s in which the private capacity to care and the necessity of the inclusion of emotions have been united and examined with the public need for social justice,29 I recast the definition of what it means to care by reconceiving care as contestation of the problematic social-political norms and empty sentiments of benevolence, empathy and compassion embedded within certain extant regimes of humanitarianism. Let me be clear that I am not speaking for all iterations of humanitarian regimes, but rather to those which problematically uphold a binary conception of human existence broken down into categories of “good and evil” or “innocent and guilty” and translate such categorical thinking into policies and practices that forestall care and cause protracted harm. My book aims to counter the current emptiness of emotional reaction to the ongoing refugee and forced migration situation by examining the potentiality of care defined as the inclusion of affective transformation in public forms of reason and justice through a framework of care as contestation. I rethink care by including figures not traditionally investigated for the development of care ethics. That is, I focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers who have written on the care of the self and care of the other through counter-conducts and acts of contestation

Introduction 7 prior to the development of care ethics in the late twentieth century. I subsequently bring historical and genealogical insights on self-care and care of the other through contestation into conversation with contemporary developments in care ethics from the last decade. On the other hand, I look to insights from philosophic arguments and recent provocations from theories and examples of aesthetic, ethicopolitical, and religious experience, as mentioned in regard to my influence from Kierkegaard. I therefore bring these two parts together: care becomes reconceptualized as contestation by looking to developments of counter-conducts and acts of interruption and disruption within aesthetic, ethico-political, and religious domains of existence. As in Kierkegaard, in my argument there is no necessary, teleological connection among these three spheres of existence. Yet, they may impact each other contingently and become taken up into each other retroactively, at times becoming interdependent and therefore unpredictably yet powerfully informing their respective developments. In other words, the aesthetic, ethico-political, and religious domains can become remarkably entangled in ways unforeseen, yet in a manner with which we must reckon ex post facto precisely because of their constitution through acts of contestation. For example, there is no necessary link between aesthetic experience and the ethico-political; such a requirement is a key component of propaganda. Yet, through its affective stimulus and retroactive rational reflection, the aesthetic has the potential to bring individuals and groups to ethical, social, political, and religious transformation. This is what I aim to demonstrate throughout the following chapters. By bringing together the framework of care and justice, on one hand, and aesthetic, ethico-political, and religious experience as contestation, on the other hand, my book puts forth three categories of care as contestation: 1) what I call “aesthetic care,” 2) an ethically-reconceived form of political care, and 3) what I describe as “religious care.” Aesthetic care develops an affective relationship between individuals and distant others who have no connection to the individual’s “circle of concern.”30 Aesthetic care takes place, first of all, through the act of aesthetic witness, a form of representation that leads to the potential and yet contingent transformation of the observer (whether the observer is the witness herself or another individual). Aesthetic witness serves as the first form of care as contestation. Ethico-political care comprises self-care and care of the other as contestation against politico-religious authority, which in my investigation is all-encompassing. Here I stand against the liberal tradition of radical individualism and self-sovereignty that regards the individual human being as the discrete unit of ethical and moral consideration. Instead I countenance individual and group acts of contestation grasped within frameworks of interdependency, mutual imbrication, and mutual responsibility. Through my analysis, ethical-political care first undergoes a

8  Introduction deconstructive process by establishing itself through a form of individuation that challenges its subjection to political-religious authority. The autonomous agent only arises out of the initial and unavoidable subjection to this power. The individual’s counter-conducts against her own subjection establish individuation through the care of the self as a practice of freedom. In my argument, there is choice even when the individual is not free or liberated. Yet, there is another, reconstructive side of care that begins when counter-conducts become applied to group forms of care as contestation through acts of political assembly. I thus regard the individual and group actions of refugees and migrants seeking humane living conditions in the E.U. and the U.S. as contestatory acts of political assembly that move forward with actualizing transnational justice. I further this reconstructive dimension of care by turning to the major accomplishments of care ethicists who define care as a form of intersubjective relationality experienced first and foremost emotionally and affectively in a manner that emphasizes a heightened responsibility between the self and other, and which highlights context and historical situation, as well as place and location, in the administration of any care. My model establishes a renewed understanding of human agency grasped under the currently oppressive conditions of the treatment of refugees and forced migrants. My position underscores the care ethical “dependency critique” of Western liberal theories of ethics, justice, and equality, and associated problems with prohibiting agency of distant others, best demonstrated through examinations of interdependent care. Bringing the theorists I have selected together in my argument, through both the deconstructive and reconstructive analyses I have engaged and reinterpreted, highlights the previous errors of ethics that have impacted Western humanitarian regimes and openly critiques the false attribution of Western forms of care and humanity onto the rest of the world. But a normative basis is nonetheless required if care is to be established for humanitarian purposes. Therefore, I proceed by turning to a normative argument that expands the current understanding of international human rights to think and act more vigorously vis-à-vis the needs of refugees and migrants for humane flourishing. I therefore subsequently apply my newly constructed model of care as contestation in a political manner through an argument that advocates resistance against the illegalization of immigration. The expansion of human rights develops out of acts of disobedience against those rights not being applied through legal proceduralism, and through a critique of the inadequacy of the formulation of the laws themselves. Rights are granted, but little is done to recognize the agency of refugees and forced migrants when they act to claim their rights; on the contrary, refugees and migrants are viewed negatively in the Global North when they do so. This is precisely what my argument aims to overturn. My position on ethico-political care intermittently but inevitably connects back to the emotional, affective transformation motivated

Introduction 9 by acts of aesthetic witness that serve as a possible impetus for further acts of contestation and highlights the necessity of including the emotions in rational ethical and political theories of care. My book’s framework culminates with my theory of religious care. Here I turn to specific claims from Kierkegaard on his religiously motivated acts of disobedience against state-religious authority in which emotion and a necessary relation to an other who is radically different from one’s circle of concern become applied to contest the suffering of distant others. I close by providing a concrete example of a protest movement that carries out multi-denominational religious ritual and serves as witnessing acts to the deaths of migrants and their improper burial in mass, unmarked sites. The witnessing acts offer a religiously informed experience of aesthetic and ethico-political contestation to living family members and asylum seekers related to those who died attempting to reach safe haven. The act of contestation is here constituted by the fact that the burial goes against state authority, namely, the bodies of refugees are buried in land in the heart of a major metropolis in Europe in direct defiance to the state’s laws as a corrective against their nameless, improper mass burial at the borders of the E.U. My book therefore concludes with a living and ongoing example of “the aesthetic-religious nexus” actualized in care as contestation applied as a reconceived form of political care. *** Allow me now to outline the internal development of each chapter to provide a more detailed overview of the book’s argument. Chapter 1 demonstrates the requisite approach to rethinking care as contestation. I make clear the value fundamentalism at play in conceptions of humanitarianism by connecting problems in certain iterations of humanitarian care in the E.U. and U.S. to recent scholarship on the threat of nascent fascism in liberal democratic societies. In this introductory chapter, I contextualize the problems, immediately manifest in the manufacturing of the terms refugee, crisis, and illegal immigrant, among others, and pay homage to genealogical work from both the past and the present that seeks to move beyond the “good and evil” of value fundamentalism. The aim of this chapter is to undo the specious dichotomies in value theory— such as “innocent and guilty,” “good and evil,” and “us and them”— that become imbricated in the lack of effective transnational care. Value fundamentalism relieves individuals and groups of the burden of caring for distant others because it oversimplifies and segregates groups and identities; that is why it is so effective and dangerous. I provide detailed information on the motivations, approach, and background for my argument. Moreover, I discuss the significance of my book for the field and evidence its contributions to the longstanding literature on the intersection of care ethics and justice, and for theories of contestation in the aesthetic, ethico-political, and religious domains of human experience.

10  Introduction Major authors engaged in this chapter include Ágnes Heller and Richard J. Bernstein. In chapter 2 I construct my model of what I call “aesthetic care” as the first form of care as contestation. Aesthetic care addresses the double constitution of the witnessing act of aesthetic representation. I argue that we can learn to care by first considering the aesthetic provocations that preliminarily move us to feel something for the suffering of distant others, no matter how superficial or seemingly ineffective our reactions or the aesthetic provocations may appear at the outset. I urge us to think through images with which we are already familiar, such as overly referenced photojournalistic pictures, to take the reader through a process of seeing the images in a complex manner that can bring about more ethically and politically effective forms of care. The chapter first demonstrates the seeming muteness of the subject represented; subsequently, I evidence ways in which the representation of the allegedly mute subject can break through the trope of silent victim. To show this double constitution, I engage arguments about the images under consideration dialectically in a manner that requires further development and does not permit any resolution or permanent conclusion. The aim of my argument on aesthetic care is to begin to demonstrate the voice and agency of refugees and forced migrants who have been represented in this double sense of muteness—at once through an assumed silence and subsequent manipulation into a perceived threat the moment the allegedly silent victim becomes agential. My argument sets the stage for the role of witnessing internal to an ethico-political understanding as will be elaborated in chapters 3 and 4. In chapter 2, I examine seminal aesthetic questions about the images selected by turning to compelling insights from the aesthetic theories of Adorno, Susan Sontag, Michael Kelly, Luc Boltanski, Sara Ahmed, and Jacques Rancière. In chapter 3, I move forward with my ethical analysis by presenting a conception of contestation as the self-constitution of subjectivity that has arisen out of the challenges from the aesthetic sphere. In aesthetic experience, a person is moved to care, even if what moves them is hindered by the medium of aesthetic representation necessarily separated from direct ethico-political action. If an aesthetic stimulus contingently develops into ethical understanding, it will be brought into a more normative, although not yet broadly socialized grasp. An admixture of aesthetic care and ethical care—separate, yet related spheres of experience—can yield a new form of ethical understanding that can, in turn, serve an improved politics. I elaborate my argument for these claims in chapter 3, although I refrain from discussing political care in detail until chapter 4. Ethics in chapter 3 is defined as self-care and care of the other via contestation as the self-constitution of subjectivity. Recent anthropological and sociological research demonstrates harmful conceptions of the subject endeavoring to help refugees and forced migrants, and the lives

Introduction 11 of those displaced have been conceived as “the human waste” of civilization.31 The argument in chapter 3 tackles this double dilemma in a twofold manner. First, I continue to repudiate the constructions of “innocent versus guilty” internal to the value fundamentalism critiqued in chapters 1 and 2. I turn to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche as an originary source of contestation against the value fundamentalism of resentment and false pity in traditional Western ethics. Nietzsche’s critique resonates with today’s political and cultural developments in the E.U. and U.S., and his negative evaluation of compassion and false understandings of equality further develops my concluding discussion from chapter 2, where I incorporated Rancière’s argument that equality is a political disruption of the assumed normative “aesthetic order.” Although I disagree with Rancière’s direct politicization of aesthetics and claim that the aesthetic cannot take on immediate ethico-political action, I argue that, like the aesthetic but effectively moving beyond it, a renewed ethical understanding of subjectivity should agitate and disrupt abuses of power in ways that rehumanize those stripped of their humanity. I therefore turn to what Michel Foucault has described as “counter-conducts” in the face of governmentality—the inception of self-individuation in the context of religious authority, which serves as a hermeneutical analogue to contemporary ethico-politicized religious authority underlying allegedly secular governments and their humanitarian regimes. I conclude chapter 3 with a discussion of freedom by drawing on additional scholarship from Foucault and Heller. Individuals are always trapped within extended forms of state power, even when the state appears to be non-binding. Through its attempt to unbind—expel, reject, dehumanize—the state nonetheless captures the existence of the individuals within its matrices of power. This was Judith Butler’s point, on which my argument is dependent. Therefore, I argue a form of freedom as a practice of the care of the self and other through counter-conducts and contestation of the political-religious authority to which one is inevitably and interminably subjected. Ethical self-constitution begins as individual acts of counter-conducts. Yet as a qualification of Foucault’s limitations in his theory that we cannot be free unless we are liberated, I argue that there are practices of choice possible when we have no freedom or liberty, following the work of Heller. This element of choice facilitates additional possibilities for contestation such as the movement of refugees and forced migrants as transnational acts of political assembly, and sets the pretext for my advocacy of political contestation through refugee protest movement in chapter 4. For these reasons, chapter 3 deals at length with evaluations of humanitarian norms and the institutions that carry out these conventions, for example, in the scholarship of Miriam Ticktin, Zymunt Bauman, Gayatri Spivak, and Judith Butler. On one hand, chapter 3 shows the lineage between the latter authors’ writings against the ideology of “good

12  Introduction versus evil” in certain iterations of contemporary humanitarianism. On the other hand, the chapter examines seminal insights of Nietzsche interpreted through Bonnie Honig’s scholarship on ethico-political contestation and the dilemmatic spaces of individuals and collectives, and on Foucault on the care of the self vis-à-vis the collective political-religious order. The aim of chapter 3 is to provide a nuanced account of the historical significance and genealogy of my overarching argument. However, the ethical critiques of humanitarianism and governmental forms of appropriation have been one-sidedly deconstructive until this juncture of my analysis. It is therefore the task of chapter 4 to establish a constructive response to the negative dismantling of the problematic and staid ethical norms addressed until now. Chapter 4 turns to a new conception of care ethics applied to political contexts of exclusionary policies and further considerations in transnational justice, with the aim of putting forth a new notion of political care in the purview of the international humanitarian situation of refugees and forced migrants. To accomplish this, I offer a series of intersectional analyses from care ethics and theories of political care, as these carry over into problems of misidentification. The focus on care is based on the feminist emphasis on dependency internal to ethically constituted subjectivity, which necessarily entails an interdependent and mutually constitutive relationship between self and other. Here my argument has been motivated by the care ethical position of Kelly Oliver and the role of witnessing therein, relating back to my position on aesthetic care from chapter 2. As my argument develops, I distance my framework from some of the earlier care ethics positions that have essentialized care work as feminine, and/or which hone a provincial understanding of the need to care for others based only on those near and dear. Such an understanding of dependency requires development into transnational political action. This can be best grasped through a newly conceived form of political care. In chapter 4, I therefore construct a notion of political care that carries out acts of contestation with the aim of applying this to transnational justice. However, I do not first construct an ethical framework and then apply it politically. Rather, I construe the ethical project of care as presented in the previous chapters as always already inherently political. That is a position already evidenced in chapter 3, where each ethical critique carried within itself political contexts, applications, and repercussions. The theorists I selected for my investigation clearly situate ethics internal to a political mode of thinking and acting. In my argument, therefore, there is not first an ethical deduction which then becomes taken up in the political domain; rather, the ethical and political are intrinsically embedded within one another. In this my project agrees with the early work of Joan Tronto in the field of care ethics. I contend that care ethics should be further reevaluated and reconceived within contemporary discussions of transnational justice and political

Introduction 13 care. Tronto’s more recent scholarship has initiated the general parameters of such a discussion, and she emphasizes the need to reinvigorate citizens’ caring about their own democracy. Tronto’s work is impactful on my scholarship here, as I aim to advance her initial encounters and provocative investigations into “political care,” “caring democracy,” and “justice and care” into a specific application to humanitarianism by looking at acts of transnational contestation instead of examining markets and equality as she does. My project is thus distanced from liberal conceptions of equality, as seen in my analyses of Rancière in chapter 2 and Bonnie Honig’s scholarship in chapter 3, which draws upon Nietzschean contestation. Motivated by Rancière, I have turned to newfound conceptions of redistributing the sensible by seeing equality as a form of disruption. Influenced by Honig, I have advanced a position of politics as a site of interruption that understands the need to resist abusive power. Honig’s publications underscore the need to challenge Western conceptions of ethics and justice grounded on virtue, as the latter contains difference instead of permitting its appearance and flourishing. Here we see a crossover between Rancière’s and Honig’s work on disruption and interruption, which I incorporate into contestation, and feminist care ethicists’ rejection of virtue ethics, for example, in the advancements of care ethics by Virginia Held. Therefore, the challenge to equality I have incorporated into my analyses of Rancière and Honig is additionally supplemented by the feminist care ethic focus on dependency. Eva Feder Kittay’s groundbreaking work on a care ethic “dependency critique” of the liberal ideal of equality is motivational for my study as well. Daniel Engster’s scholarship has furthermore impacted newfound understandings of political care in care ethics. Engster’s writing highlights claims from early care theory that may conjoin with the goals of traditional Western justice theorists. My aim diverges from Engster’s and Tronto’s because I underscore the need to think about care through alternative means, namely by countenancing the contestatory and dilemmatic processes (Bonnie Honig’s term) that constitute ethical subjectivity both with and against traditional Western justice theories. This extends our understanding of justice into a more transnational framework and includes, in chapter 6, religious experience formulated into a possibility of what I call “religious care.” Although my project presents a different conception of care, my argument is indebted to significant components of Tronto’s and Engster’s political applications of care ethics by fundamentally emphasizing interdependency in global theories of justice. Yet, in contrast to Engster’s book, which takes a notion of care and a notion of justice and adds them together, I argue that one first needs a new notion of care as a politically embedded understanding of contestation internal to ethically constituted subjectivity before advancing to applications in transnational justice.

14  Introduction To carry out the latter aim of chapter 4, I engage the scholarship of Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Shakira Hussein, and Parvati Raghuram to construct a notion of care as an emplaced practice of completion via contestation. Their illuminating, intersectional analyses of the representation of refugees and forced migrants show the matrix of misidentification that feeds serious dysfunction in systems of humanitarian care. Their writings initiate new possibilities of witness that attribute robust ethical agency to refugees and migrants. Moreover, these writings spark the need to consider recent arguments from international public policy on ethical approaches to refugee and migration solutions, which I take up here. My conclusion in chapter 4 concurs with recent advancements that advocate open borders and acceptance of transnational migration as a de facto human necessity. In the chapters presented so far, I have called attention to value fundamentalism and analyzed its pernicious effects on both the understanding of and reaction to the ongoing international refugee and forced migration situation, striking both rational and emotion registers. In chapter 5, I circle back to my initial questions from the beginning of the book, which ask why we should care and what it means when we do care, individually and collectively. I now return to one specific dimension implicit within those questions, namely, the inquiry into what can motivate us to care in a manner that agitates against the oppressive tendencies and problematic pull of value fundamentalism. I do this by focusing on a prominent thread interwoven throughout the previous chapters, namely the theme of affective transformation and the emotions. An analysis of the role of emotions therefore becomes a centerpiece for political care and further links the discussion to the role of imagination. In this chapter, I aim to achieve more clarity in my overarching argument and to set the stage for the concluding chapter on religious care. I want to add that until now, implicitly for conceptions of human rights and for human dignity, I have included both the emotional and the rational dimensions of human existence. My focus in chapter 5 does not minimize any previous emphasis on rationality, but serves as an important supplement to it, as a rejoinder to any argument that dismisses the emotions as part of the rational self and community and polity at large. Prior to chapter 5, I considered care in the form of contestation, initially stirred up by the emotions and subsequently applied in a rational manner, for example, in the argument at the conclusion of chapter 4 through specific acts of migrant protest and witnessing as acts of contestation. The question of what moves us to care, and subsequently to act, served as a core element of the position I developed over the last several chapters. I diagnosed the emptiness and inefficacy of emotions in response to the ongoing humanitarian situation. The limited range of emotion in humanitarian care—focusing mostly on compassion and empathy—can constrict individuals in need of receiving actual care and lead to policing measures

Introduction 15 that detain or harm refugees and forced migrants. In contrast, a robust form of care as contestation can lead to acts against systemic measures that, for all intents and purposes, imprison those most in need. Chapter 4 concludes with an example of migrant protest movement linked to an emotionally motivated and rationally applied form of radical cosmopolitanism. The example of migrant protest movement and accompanying acts of witnessing were analyzed as possibilities of contestation against systemic injustice, now understood via theory of transnational justice. What I have been discussing so far as an overarching framework of the book is an emotionally grounded form of care as contestation that becomes applied in a rational manner through the potential of transnational acts of contestation. In chapter 5, I move to a detailed examination of how emotions can become manifest in contestation, and I ask whether there should be an emotional ground or impetus to ethico-political action in the first place. Emotions are slippery and can lead in all sorts of problematic directions. Nonetheless, I challenge the claim that it is either possible or advisable to eliminate emotions from politics, considering the argument I have constructed on the aesthetic impetus to care and the ethico-political retroactive collaboration with the aesthetic motivation, founded on the affective transformation initiated by emotional reaction to aesthetic representation of suffering. In chapter 5, I first consider analyses of problematic contexts and applications of emotion in politics (for example, as elucidated by Jason Stanley and Richard J. Bernstein) as well as arguments in favor of emotion in political understandings of citizenship and ethico-political obligation (for example, in the writings of Michael Hardt, who argues against Hannah Arendt’s banishment of emotions from politics). Building on the positions of these authors, including their respective points of emphasis on the necessity of taking emotions seriously in politics in an inclusive manner, I then add important developments, both historical and contemporary, from ethics and democratic theory that emphasize the role of imagination and its link to emotional well-being. I conclude by showing the normative force of empathy, based on a recent argument by Remy Debes that eschews extreme sentimentalism and grounds empathy in a normative position for ethics. I apply these insights to my critique of shortcomings in Martha Nussbaum’s position on political emotions, which argues that a person can develop an emotional attachment to an abstract principle and that emotional attachment requires the foundation of connecting to one’s circle of concern (only those people who directly impact us, such as family and close loved ones). The limitation of the circle of concern in Nussbaum’s argument recalls the troubling proviso of caring almost exclusively about those near and dear, illustrative of some early iterations of feminist care ethics. I contend that the normative force of empathy can connect to the power of imagination in aesthetic representation and can lead an individual or group to develop an empathic

16  Introduction attachment to complete strangers experienced through contestatory acts of aesthetic witness and representation. This returns my book’s argument to my initial position on aesthetic care, the foundation of my theory of care as contestation. My critique of Nussbaum’s theory of political emotions links to my critique of an overarching reliance on liberal conceptions of equality in Western ethics, the latter of which has been one of the main targets of the early care ethicists. As a care ethicist and staunch defender of the role of emotions in ethics, Michael Slote has argued that the errors of previous attempts to meld care ethics with theories of political care have been caused by the problem of care ethics being tied to liberal conceptions of morality, inevitably based on liberal definitions of equality and justice. For this reason, my book’s argument has taken up Slote’s challenge to avoid a hybrid model in which dependent care is simply combined with justice and equality. I aim to overcome the deficiencies of such a hybrid approach throughout my argument spanning chapters 3, 4, and 5. In chapter 6, I develop my theory of religious care modeled on the form of religious contestation presented in the writings and actions of nineteenth-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. I connect Kierkegaard’s application of the emotional quality of love in human existence to transnational justice. Kierkegaard is a generative figure to study for the concluding chapter of my monograph, especially because he begins his musings on resistance, or contestation, with aesthetic forms of human experience. Kierkegaard eventually leapt to a religious form of existence, although he always maintained aesthetic components of witnessing and representation in all spheres of life, wherein he created a model of love as work against the suffering of others, near and far. Kierkegaard’s groundbreaking work on alterity influenced twentieth-century ethics and religious philosophy in profound ways. I show in my argument on religious care the manner in which a Kierkegaardian position advocating otherness is a powerful culmination of care as contestation. Certain iterations of contemporary humanitarian care in the E.U. and U.S. have inherent within them politically misidentified and preordained notions of religion, as evidenced in my previous chapters. In chapter 6, I consider the notion of political care in more detail in the context of religion. The dilemmatic space (Bonnie Honig’s term) of ethically constituted subjectivity entails wrestling with religious differences, including religious versus secular ideologies. We must ask what it means to think about religious care in the context of political care. I demonstrate that we only have a substantive and ethically grounded notion of political care if we account for at least the possibility of religious resources for protest. We must also consider the ways in which non-Christian religious frameworks ought to be attributed ethical agency in the same manner as Christian ethical subjectivity historically, namely through acts of contestation. If Foucault was correct about ethical self-care as the grounding

Introduction 17 constitution of the self, as I argue in chapter 3, then such a constitution ought to be afforded as a possibility for other religions as well. My argument does not impute a Foucaultian or Christian-based understanding onto other religions and perspectives; rather, I advocate that if the Christian perspective is afforded the self-constitution of ethical agency as contestation in religiously formed subjectivity, then it ought to be vigorously, actively attributed as a possibility for all others, as Kierkegaard argued. What kind of Christianity is it that only attributes ethical selfconstitution to Christians? The answer lies in what Kierkegaard pejoratively called Christendom in nineteenth-century Europe, and it relates tellingly if contingently to the Christian nationalism we see today, diagnosed in contexts of humanitarianism in chapter 4. Some theorists have argued that only a secular framework should be maintained in Western conceptions of humanitarianism. However, recent compelling scholarship has made clear that there is no clean line between the secular and the religious and that those societies that have claimed secular origins and prided their self-development on a break from religious dominance, have relied in fact on religious foundations and interpretations of selfhood and ethical-political agency and human dignity.32 This is not to say that religious tolerance and pluralism are not possible, whether within religion or within secularism or between religion and secularism. On the contrary, I agree with Richard J. Bernstein, who elaborates the “clash of mentalities” as “cut[ting] across morality, politics, and religion” and “manifest[ing] itself in all areas of human experience.” He argues, “It is fashionable today to associate the quest for certainty and the craving for absolutes with religion.”33 The insights from Bernstein raise the question of what kind of religious model could become incorporated into what I have presented as political care. Is there a religious perspective that grants the ethical self-constitution of all subjectivities and that prevents religious dogma from barricading out the needs of distant others? I argue that we can find one kind of progressive answer to the predicament of religious fundamentalism, including the problem of what plays out under the false auspices of secularism, in the religious writings of Kierkegaard. I therefore conclude my book by returning to his philosophy of how to move forward with a commitment to the seemingly impossible task of loving one’s neighbors, no matter how far away or different from one’s own experiences, identities, and understandings, to contest the nationalism, fundamentalism, and nascent fascism of the times. My argument began by ushering in a potent form of aesthetic care as witness that aims to recast both the subject and object of the witnessing act as having a robust constitution of agency, in contrast to the myriad “empty” notions of subjectivity in certain contemporary formations of humanitarian care. My book therefore rightfully ends with yet another aesthetic argument, this time taken up within the context of religious care and standing in union with ethico-political contestation. I show

18  Introduction such a form of religious care as comprising aesthetic and ethico-political resources by way of a recent example. The contestatory acts examined throughout my book have included the aesthetic witnessing acts of photojournalism and subsequent aesthetic and ethico-political deliberations and interpretations on the images produced, as well as overt ethicopolitical acts of resistance, interruption, disruption, and contestation against the sheer destruction of refugee movement and forced migration discussed in the Introduction and chapter 1. My analysis of the selected culminating example demonstrates care as contestation within religiously informed subjectivity in a manner that vigorously agitates against value fundamentalism broadly and against Christian nationalism, specifically, both of which are alive and destructive to current administrations of humanitarian care of refugees and forced migrants in the E.U. and U.S. This book is written for those steeped in distant observation and mired in the dilemmas of Western and Global North hegemonic power. If, in the following chapters, I can shed even a little light on possible ways to move out of this predicament for those in the role of ordinary citizen, distant spectator, and so-called everyday humanitarian, as well as those in more overt positions of power, then I will have succeeded in my goal.

Notes 1. Ismail Küpeli, “We Spoke to the Photographer Behind the Picture of the Drowned Syrian Boy,” Vice, September 4, 2015: www.vice.com/read/nilferdemir-interview-876, accessed 10/25/16. 2. Zaid Jaber, Ammar Sheik Omar, and Alexander Smith, “Cameraman Who Filmed Omran Daqneesh’s Rescue in Aleppo Recounts Boy’s Silence,” NBC News, August 23, 2016: www.nbcnews.com/storyline/aleppos-chil dren/cameraman-who-filmed-omran-daqneesh-s-rescue-aleppo-recountsboy-n636561, accessed 10/28/16. 3. Elisabetta Povoleto, “Judge in Italy Orders Release of Captain of MigrantRescue Ship,” New York Times, July 2, 2019: www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/ world/europe/sea-watch-captain-italy.html, accessed 7/6/19. 4. Noah Barkin, “Incensed Over Refugees, East Germans Punish Easterner Merkel,” Reuters, September 24, 2017: www.reuters.com/article/us-germanyelection-merkel-east/incensed-over-refugees-east-germans-punish-easternermerkel-idUSKCN1BZ120, accessed 7/16/19. Merkel’s intentions have been heavily debated. For different perspectives see Volker Resing (ed.), Angela Merkel: Daran glaube ich: Christliche Standpunkte (Leipzig: Benno Verlag, 2013); Philip Plickert (ed.), Merkel: Eine Kritische Bilanz (Munich: Finanzbuch Verlag, 2018); and Robin Alexander, Die Getriebene: Merkel und die Flüchtlingspolitik: Report aus dem Innern der Macht (Munich: Penguin Verlag, 2017). See also Karl-Heinz Meier-Braun, Schwartzbuch Migration: Die dunkle Seite unserer Flüchtlingspolitk (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2018) for a powerful review of Germany’s history of refugee policy and de facto refugee and immigration politics. 5. “Migrant Crisis: Illegal Entries to EU at Lowest Level in Five Years,” BBC, January 4, 2019: www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46764500, accessed 7/6/19.

Introduction 19 6. Christian Davies, “Poland’s President Addresses Far Right at Independence March,” The Guardian, November 11, 2018: www.theguardian.com/ world/2018/nov/11/poland-far-right-independence-centenary, accessed 7/6/19. 7. Katrin Bennhold, “Germany’s Far-Right Rebrands: Friendlier Face, Same Doctrine,” New York Times, December 27, 2018: www.nytimes.com/2018/ 12/27/world/europe/germany-far-right-generation-identity.html, accessed 7/6/19. 8. Adam Rasmi, “The Drop in Migrants Dying in the Mediterranean Hides a Disturbing Reality,” Quartz, January 4, 2019: https://qz.com/1514244/ the-disturbing-reality-behind-the-drop-in-mediterranean-migrant-deaths/, accessed 7/6/19. 9. Lorenzo Tondo, “Mediterranean Will Be a Sea of Blood Without Rescue Boats, UN Warns,” The Guardian, June 9, 2019: www.theguardian.com/ world/2019/jun/09/mediterranean-sea-of-blood-migrant-refugee-rescueboats-un-unhcr, accessed 7/8/19. 10. Leah Varjacques and Jessica Ma, “To Stop Border Crossings, the U.S. Made the Journey Deadlier,” New York Times, op-doc: www.nytimes.com/interac tive/2019/05/29/opinion/migrant-crisis.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic %2FIn-Custody%20Deaths&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics ®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement =2&pgtype=collection, accessed 7/8/19. 11. Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfield Davis, “Photo of Migrants Shocks, but Congress Stalls on Border Aid,” New York Times, June 26, 2019: www. nytimes.com/2019/06/26/us/politics/migrants-congress-border-aid.html?rre f=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FIn-Custody%20Deaths&action=click&con tentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version =latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection, accessed 7/8/19. 12. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (London and New York: Verso, 1974). 13. Adorno’s Habilitationsschrift (the second dissertation required for university professorship in Germany at the time) on Kierkegaard served as the topic of my own dissertation. See Theodor W. Adorno, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, trans. with a Foreword by Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). In German: Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Ästhetischen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1962). Originally published in Heidelberg: Mohr Siebeck, 1933. I developed my dissertation into my first book, adding contemporary developments in Frankfurt School critical theory to my original historical analysis. See Marcia Morgan, Kierkegaard and Critical Theory (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2012). I have advanced my original thesis again in my recent chapter on “Reading Kierkegaard,” in Peter E. Gordon, Espen Hammer, and Max Pensky (eds.), A Companion to Adorno (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy) (New York: Blackwell, 2020). 14. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1995), p. 11. 15. David Ingram, World Crisis and Underdevelopment: A Critical Theory of Poverty, Agency, and Coercion (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 16. Bill Chappell, “A Father and Daughter Who Drowned at the Border Put Attention on Immigration,” NPR, June 26, 2019: www.npr.org/2019/06/26/ 736177694/a-father-and-daughter-drowned-at-the-border-put-attention-onimmigration, accessed 7/6/19.

20  Introduction 17. “More than 80 Migrants Feared Drowned Off Tunisia Coast,” Reuters, July 4, 2019: www.nytimes.com/2019/07/04/world/africa/libya-migrantseurope-deaths.html, accessed 7/8/19; Tondo, ibid. 18. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Ocasio-Cortez Calls Migrant Detention Centers ‘Concentration Camps’, Eliciting Backlash,” New York Times, June 18, 2019: www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/us/politics/ocasio-cortez-cheney-detentioncenters.html, accessed 7/6/19. 19. Jason Stanley, “Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Fascism’ Claim Too Extreme?” New York Times, July 4, 2019: www.nytimes.com/2019/07/04/opinion/ fascism-trump-ice.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homep age, accessed 7/4/19. 20. Julie Hirschfield Davis, Maggie Haberman, and Michael Crowley, “Trump Disavows ‘Send Her Back’ Chant After Pressure from G.O.P.,” New York Times, July 18, 2019: www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/us/politics/ilhan-omardonald-trump.html, accessed 7/19/19. 21. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Continuum, 1998). Originally published as Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1944). 22. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” in Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (eds.), The Jewish Writings (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), pp. 264–274. 23. Hannah Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts About Lessing,” in Hannah Arendt (ed.), Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1955), pp. vii–32. 24. Peter Stepan (ed.), Photos That Changed the World (Munich and London: Prestel, 2016) includes the photo of Aylan Kurdi in Bodrum, Turkey; Jennifer Welsh, The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First Century (Toronto: Canada: House of Anansi Press, 2016), p. 111, includes discussion of how this photo positively impacted policy changes and public sentiment. 25. Daniel Trilling, “How the Media Contributed to the Migrant Crisis,” The Guardian, August 1, 2019: www.theguardian.com/news/2019/aug/01/mediaframed-migrant-crisis-disaster-reporting, accessed 10/19/19. See also Magda Abu-Fadil, “A Sea of Images: Ethics Debate on How Media Handles Photos,” HuffPost, December 15, 2017: www.huffpost.com/entry/a-sea-ofimages-ethics-debate-on-how-media-handle_b_5a336f0be4b0e1b4472ae 53e, accessed 10/19/19. 26. Amanda Meade, “Charlie Hebdo Cartoon Depicting Drowned Child Alan Kurdi Sparks Racism Debate,” The Guardian, January 14, 2016: www. theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/14/charlie-hebdo-cartoon-depictingdrowned-child-alan-kurdi-sparks-racism-debate, accessed 7/8/19. 27. Ágnes Heller, “What Happened to Hungary?” New York Times, September 16, 2018: www.nytimes.com/2018/09/16/opinion/politics/what-happenedto-hungary.html, accessed 7/21/19. 28. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2 vols., trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). 29. This history is reviewed and developed by the chapters in Daniel Engster and Maurice Hamington (eds.), Care Ethics and Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 30. I borrow this phrase from Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 11. 31. Zygmunt Bauman, Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts (Cambridge, UK, Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2004).

Introduction 21 32. See Ètienne Balibar, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism: Critical Hypotheses on Religion and Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); and Seyla Benhabib, Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled Times (Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011) for two of the most important examples. 33. Richard J. Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil: Religion and Politics After 9/11 (Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2005), p. viii.

1 Contextualizing the Problem Rethinking Care Beyond Good and Evil

Ordinary citizens must stand up to and oppose the political abuse of evil, challenge the misuse of absolutes, expose false and misleading claims to moral certainty, and argue that we cannot deal with the complexity of the issues we confront by appealing to—or imposing—simplistic dichotomies. There is a role for public intellectuals, educators, journalists, and artists to help guide the way. . . . Those who share a democratic faith that abhors the appeal to rigid ideologies must seek alliances with like-minded individuals throughout the world. . . . There is a democratic ethos that must be kept alive. And this takes constant attention, work, and practice [my emphasis]. —Richard J. Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion Since 9/11 Fascism today might not look exactly as it did in the 1930s, but refugees are once again on the road everywhere. In multiple countries, their plight reinforces fascist propaganda that the nation is under siege, that aliens are a threat and danger both within and outside their borders. The suffering of strangers can solidify the structure of fascism. But it can also trigger empathy once another lens is clicked into place [my emphasis]. —Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works

In June 2018, as she was boarding Air Force One to visit child detainees at the U.S.-Mexico border, the First Lady of the United States donned a jacket bearing the statement, “I Really Don’t Care. Do You?” in large script photographed for the world to see. In response to the backlash, she immediately issued a brief retort through her spokeswoman that people should notice what she does instead of what she wears.1 However, that focus also would not have served her interests at the time, as she silently sat by and tacitly endorsed her husband’s brutal dismantling and perversion of U.S. immigration and asylum policies. Melania Trump later conceded that the message on the coat was directed at the left-wing media, yet openly admitted that she believed in her husband’s policies by affirming that “we need to be very vigilant.”2 Hence the message of her coat was

Contextualizing the Problem 23 indeed a statement on her feelings about the lives of the very people she was visiting that day: they are to be vigilantly kept out or detained under inhumane conditions. President Trump has infamously rolled back any recent advancements in U.S. immigration and asylum policies—slashing the number of asylum seekers admitted into the U.S. from 45,000 in 2017 to 30,000 in 2018 to 18,000 in 2019, falling far below the 96,000 annual pre-Trump average and constituting the lowest number in the nearly 40 years of current refugee law.3 His notorious “Muslim ban” that rejects asylum seekers from predominantly Muslim countries and his attempts to end the D.A.C.A. program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) that protects hundreds of thousands of people currently living in the U.S. serve up xenophobic case studies par excellence.4 He has extended some of the most horrifying punitive measures for the treatment of those who attempt to enter the U.S. by whatever means possible in order to escape extreme poverty, uninhabitable land, military conflict, political strife, domestic violence, and gang warfare—namely, separation of children from their families, a clear instance of state-sponsored child abuse. My study therefore begins with the question of why you or I, individually and collectively, should care about the masses of refugees and forced migrants currently seeking safe haven and humane living conditions in the E.U. and U.S. Attempting to answer this question and more, my investigation rethinks the human capacity to care about the suffering of distant others. By “distant” I mean those individuals or groups who do not have any direct connection to or impact on one’s circle of concern,5 who may be (at least initially) located in a distant region or embody an identity far removed from one’s own. The fact that human beings care for each other, founded on the primary experiences of care with those near and dear to them, is indisputable.6 But, how a person or group ought to care for distant others, for “the suffering of strangers” highlighted in the epigram from Jason Stanley, requires renewed investigation and clarification.7 My book does not diminish the ethical need to care for those close to home, particularly in light of the vast inequities present; nor does it forget about the problems of domestic care, including childcare, elder care, and care of the ill and people with disabilities, including related social pathologies such as domestic violence and other forms of abuse. Nor does my analysis downplay the crucial ethical and moral considerations of those internally displaced, such as those within nations afflicted by war, conflict, and climate disaster, a population constituting two-thirds of forced migrants globally—the most recent figure shown as more than 41 million people worldwide, the highest number ever recorded.8 Rather, I focus on the fact that we as individuals and collectives ought to countenance also the suffering of distant others, drawing upon the important scholarly and practical lessons from the field of care ethics that have addressed domestic care and its related issues, and my attention is given to those

24  Contextualizing the Problem who risk it all to cross the borders of the E.U. and U.S.—those placed within the rubrics of refugees and forced migrants. The field of care ethics has historically focused on those close to home. I take the arguments and their important recent developments and apply them to concerns in transnational humanitarian care. In the following chapters, I therefore advocate the philosophical import of care for reevaluating humanitarianism in the context of the ongoing international refugee and forced migration situation at the present political moment. I recognize the terminological difficulties of several components here. First, the notion of “humanitarian” is not meant to represent a monolith. It is clear that the international community and aid sector is not one homogenous group.9 Second, the concepts of “refugee” and “forced migrant” have been rightfully critiqued.10 Yet, I retain these terms because I draw on the historical and contemporary literature from both refugee and forced migration studies while I repeatedly approach the concepts critically, in addition to maintaining an important evaluative distance from the observed manufacturing of any “crisis” resulting from movement and displacement. My argument is positioned against those iterations of humanitarianism in the E.U. and U.S. that instantiate oppressive standards drawing from and continuing this history. One underdeveloped feature in the scholarship on humanitarianism is the need to recognize both the “compulsion and choice,” both the “agency and constraints” paradoxically captured in rigorous analysis of forced migration.11 For these reasons, it is important to retain usage of the terms, and my book aims to further correct this underdevelopment. To do so, I draw upon a wide array of rich philosophic traditions, including historical and contemporary writings on self-care and care of the other that facilitate a choice of the self in the face of encompassing oppressive conditions. In the process, my analysis reexamines the intersection of care and justice and reconceives the understanding of care through various frameworks of contestation. At a time when emotional resources may be running low, there is a need to recast what it means to care, with the aim of generating a productive movement against the rise of value fundamentalism globally—embraced in mantras of “good against evil,” “innocent and guilty,” and “us and them”—and confronting the xenophobia and oppressive politics of the nascent fascistic developments of the times. All the fields of care in my investigation have inherent within them the capacity to contest problematic systems of power and governmentality, as these systems directly impact and frequently hinder effective humanitarian solutions.12 I draw upon nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures in Continental and American philosophy and reinterpret their insights in conjunction with contemporary developments in anthropology, sociology, and political theory. Hence I present an interdisciplinary argument that aims for an accessible position. Whereas writings in the political and social sciences have broadly engaged the theme of contestation in the

Contextualizing the Problem 25 context of migration and refugee movements, there is little in the field of philosophy that addresses care ethics or contestation in this specific socio-political development.13 The philosophic arguments historically have been distanced from the migrant protests and acts of contestation themselves, with a few recent exceptions of which I take note in my chapters’ arguments. Because of this, refugees and forced migrants are treated as non-agential, vulnerable objects of benevolence and compassion by those deemed capable of helping, according to the paradigm of theoretical consideration. The stereotypical trajectory of humanitarian care has thus been described by Paula Banerjee and Ranabir Samaddar as follows: Humanitarianism is an ideology that works like a machine. We begin with sentiments, we create institutions to give effect to those sentiments, and then we legitimize those institutions with an overarching ideology of care, which often glosses over the injustices of the entire process through which persons have been reduced to being objects of care and protection. Hence we often hear the question of agency. And in any case a large number of the displaced millions on earth, possibly the majority of the displaced persons, do not depend on these legal arrangements. Care operates in the lives of the millions in a different way.14 Therefore, I work against the gravity of this problematic arc in which care receivers are reduced to “objects of care and protection,” further begging the question of agency. I establish an analysis of care that begins with the possible affective transformation in the aesthetic realm of human experience through the agency of witnessing and representation. From there I move to an ethico-political position that counters the lack of effective care institutionally and that vigorously speaks out against the “ideology of care” that forestalls or eliminates help for those most in need. Thus, my monograph moves from the aesthetic to the ethico-political and subsequently to the religious through the constant feature of contestation against false institutionalization of care, keeping in mind the agential capacities of both the care giver and receiver at any given juncture. There has been a long-standing debate in the field of care ethics that alleges an irredeemable divide between care and justice, whereby care has been relegated to personal ethics of the private realm and justice has been positioned in the public-political arena. As a reaction to this debate, some scholarship bridges this merely apparent divide and constructs generative responses to the ethical, political, and global needs of the times by drawing on innovative claims of early care ethicists.15 For example, Joan Tronto’s work breaks down the barriers between care and justice and reason and emotion;16 and Virginia Held’s scholarship has expanded the parameters of how to move forward in melding

26  Contextualizing the Problem the groundbreaking insights of care ethics and global justice.17 Yet, the foundational assumptions and philosophic-moral principles in care ethics prove incompatible with liberal political and legal views. As Michael Slote has written: One way out of the problem would be and in effect has been simply to grant that [Kantian or Rawlsian-oriented] liberalism is right and says all the right things about political/legal issues, thus treating care ethics as mainly an approach to the ethics of personal or private relationships. That has—with certain important qualifications—been the approach taken by Virginia Held and certain other care ethicists. But this way of pursuing care ethics is problematic on a number of theoretical grounds.18 I take up Slote’s challenge to avoid constructing a hybrid of liberal political philosophy (in the tradition of Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, or the like) with care ethics because, as Slote argues effectively, this approach has not truly resolved the breach between care and justice. The liberal political bias in philosophical applications of justice to care ethics is mired in abstract rationalism and universalism and does not adequately reflect or address the concrete lack of care transnationally. To remedy the problem, my argument develops a connection between care and justice by critiquing underlying assumptions of abstract rationalism and universalism and by reincorporating the emotions into rational agency to construct a form of contestation against ineffective policies that repeat oppressive structures. I work through a variety of concepts and applications of care, including some of the most important innovations in care ethics. I also revisit Nietzsche’s transvaluation of Western ethics and include the contemporary political theory of contestation as a form of interruption, informed by Bonnie Honig’s impactful interpretation of his moral-ethical challenges to Western prejudices. Honig’s political theory provides an impetus for my framework and subsequently connects to my critique of recent arguments on political emotions that are situated within liberal conceptions of equality and justice.19 Although there is no universal definition of care ethics—which turns out to be more of a benefit than disadvantage—the following themes can fairly be regarded as core components of any care ethical approach: a relational and intersubjective approach to morality; a heightened sense of responsiveness to the other; the importance of place and context, which creates a particularist approach to ethics instead of an abstract universal one, thus opposing deontological and teleological philosophy. Additional components include the move to cross over previously constructed moral boundaries whereby the motto “the personal is political” strongly resonates, and a consideration of the “emotions as informative and motivating moral tools” that can help “create empathic connections

Contextualizing the Problem 27 that promote caring actions.”20 Of all the emotions formative in care ethics, empathy has been foremost among them.21 I bring each of these components to speak to the process of rethinking care as contestation in the context of refugees and forced migrants’ need for transnational care. It is important to highlight that one ought not impute Western and Global North conceptions of care onto other regions and perspectives. Yet, the history of feminist care ethics is fraught with such a shortcoming.22 For this reason, Parvati Raghuram has called for an emplacement of care ethics and a robust reconsideration of context when attempting to analyze and understand care ethics and politics. My argument incorporates crucial arguments from scholars who address problems of misidentification that take place in allegedly compassionate and humane responses to refugees and forced migrants’ care needs, such as in the scholarship of Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Shakira Hussein.23 I relate these arguments to the care ethical focus on empathy which, as Maurice Hamington pointedly summarizes, facilitates the capacity to work beyond stereotyping, emboldens an alternative approach to moral ontology, serves as a basis for moral action, encourages moral progress, and serves as a foundation for expanding what I previously indicated as the limited circle of concern, namely, the circle of those only near and dear who receive care.24 In the chapters that follow, as mentioned, I examine human care as contestation within three distinct and yet mutually impactful domains of human existence: aesthetic, ethico-political, and religious experience. So far in the trajectory of publications on the intersection of care ethics and global justice there is extremely little, if any, consideration of the connection between care ethics and aesthetics or religion, respectively. Consider Held’s delimitation of her project from “religious belief” because she argues that the latter carries “divisive baggage.”25 My monograph moves stridently in a different direction by including what I theorize as “aesthetic care” and “religious care,” whereby both aesthetic and religious experience are investigated as resources for better conceptions of transnational justice. Scholars of refugee and migration studies have importantly called for a new sense of intellectual responsibility and a renaissance of ethics in the field to address the disturbing conceptions—including the very use of the term crisis as a manufactured predicament—that have stymied the theories and ideologically manipulated the development of better policies.26 As Alex Sager has written: What constitutes a migration crisis is far less clear than often recognized. Moreover, the identification of migration as a “crisis” is a value judgment, not a straightforward description of a state of affairs. The term “crisis” is frequently mobilized for political and ideological reasons. Humanitarian organizations frame migration as

28  Contextualizing the Problem a crisis in an attempt to shape policy and secure resources. More alarmingly, the language of “crisis” is often connected to securitization of migration as well as to racist and xenophobic ideologies. Identifying migration as a crisis can justify harsh policy measures aimed at deterrence, detention and expulsion, as well as contribute to the illegalization of migrant populations.27 What it means to care, I argue, is therefore to contest the false normative structures and ideological iterations of “crisis” that prevent remediation of suffering. For example, we should ethically reconceive empathy and compassion, core values of humanitarianism, beyond empty gestures and useless expressions employed to forestall care. We are obliged to critically evaluate sentimentalist constructs such as empathy and compassion and redefine them as necessary acts of contestation against the ongoing suffering caused by ill-formulated policies and applications of humanitarianism. A key component of my argument rests on the claim that acts undertaken by refugees and migrants compelled to flee for a multitude of reasons, including the escape from poverty and everyday violence, constitute political acts of assembly that contribute to transnational justice and ought to be actively recognized as such. On this point, I have sought resources from migrant protest movements; such movements become included in my analysis where I bring together aesthetic, ethico-political, and religious forms of contestation as care.28 My book is further oriented against sedentarist presuppositions in liberal conceptions of justice and equality.29 In this context, even the term refugee can be considered “redundant” when recognizing the current constellation of factors necessitating mobility and migration for transnational justice. Consider the mutual implications and responsibilities of those fleeing and those who ought to receive them, described by Stewart Motha: The redundant refugee is a mirror image of Europe’s own redundancy. The problem of what it means to be European is already a question that is out of time. . . . The status of “refugee” will always be out of time by coming after the act of defiance that compels people to move to a better and safer life. One need not have radical opinions to seek refuge. To refuse internment at the borders of Europe; to want more for your children than charity; to risk everything by crossing seas and land borders—these are all political acts [my emphasis]. The newcomer and the migrant are a constitutive force. They venture toward a future in which the label “refugee” is always already redundant. It always comes too late. If the refugee is out of time and out of place, how might the condition of exile open political possibilities?30

Contextualizing the Problem 29 In light of the above, the very term refugee has been contextualized in my monograph by the current humanitarian situation as a non-radical act of political contestation understood through the everyday needs of human flourishing and which can form a collective of transnational political assembly.31 But why should we think about what it means to care, in the specific manner I have described above, at this juncture in history? Since the 1990s and ever increasingly in the last several years, we are witnessing an alleged “return of history.”32 Jennifer Welsh recalls Francis Fukuyama’s utopic thesis that history has “ended” because “the demise of the confrontation between East and West in 1989 constituted much more than the end of the Cold War. It also signaled the endpoint of humanity’s sociocultural and ideological evolution and the ‘universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.’ ”33 Welsh explains that Fukuyama predicted an end to traditional power politics and massive conflict and the crystallization of a more peaceful world.34 However, she points out that the initial optimism brought on by the United Nations in the 1990s has transitioned into “frustration and despair” because of a failure by U.N. member states to mount “a collective and decisive response to situations of conflict, instability, and migration.”35 This statement highlights the failure of multilateralism to protect displaced people, such as the stalemate in the U.N. Security Council, the withdrawal of the U.S. from U.N. agencies, wars fought in Syria or Yemen by proxy, and more. Welsh points out that the number of displaced persons—65.3 million in 2015, and ever increasing—is greater even than the numbers of displaced persons at the end of World War II.36 Furthermore, she articulates the fact that Nation-states that not long ago were praised for making democratic transitions—for example, Thailand or Turkey—are now exhibiting symptoms of a backslide into authoritarianism. Even the liberal democracies of Europe and North America are lumbering under significant levels of unemployment, slow growth, and increasing wealth inequality, as well as rising intolerance toward immigrants and refugees.37 Yet, diagnoses of any “backslide into authoritarianism” cannot be restricted to distant lands or imputed to distant others. Recent developments have demonstrated convincingly that authoritarian tendencies are rapidly developing within the E.U. and U.S. In How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley, and in The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion Since 9/11 by Richard J. Bernstein, cited in the two epigraphs at the beginning of this chapter, both authors respectively outline in clear and accessible terms the strategies and complex

30  Contextualizing the Problem determinants of these developments. Stanley argues compellingly that “the suffering of strangers can solidify the structure of fascism. But it can also trigger empathy once another lens is clicked into place.”38 Bernstein makes abundantly clear that “Ordinary citizens must stand up to and oppose the political abuse of evil” and that “There is a democratic ethos that must be kept alive. And this takes constant attention, work, and practice.”39 My book’s goal is to continue the process of “clicking” another “lens into place,” as Stanley’s and Bernstein’s books have elegantly and powerfully initiated. We must challenge the fact that common citizens, in addition to political leaders, have experienced a reduction in their capacity to care about distant others, or have developed an animosity toward caring about individuals and groups distant both in identity and geopolitically. The answers given in recent times to the question of whether we have a greater obligation to care for those distant, but most at risk for future survival—those trapped in war zones and territorial conflicts that hinder or eliminate the possibility of survival—or whether the greatest obligation is to care for those at home, but who demand an ever-higher standard of living in an ever-increasingly neoliberal and self-serving society, have been intensifying in their divisiveness. In 2016, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at that time, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, asserted that war crimes were being committed in “historic proportions” and that there is a dangerous trend in the international community not only of a reduced capacity to care about those displaced, suffering, and killed by the ongoing brutal wars of the present century, but also of the development of hostility toward those affected.40 As Ágnes Heller stated in an interview with La Repubblica in 2015: “When I see the refugees in Keleti station [in Budapest], they remind me of myself when I was a twelve-year-old girl in the ghetto during the Nazi occupation.”41 How have we come to such a disastrous, repetitive although contingent approximation of twentiethcentury history? While my book cannot account for all the multiplicities of complex constellations of causes behind this contingent repetition of history, I explore some of the current iterations of the problem and aim to analyze the human capacity to care in response to it. My book advocates a different mindset and some solutions. From the Latin notion of caritas as love or care for humanity to the German existential concept of Sorge to contemporary movements in feminist and biomedical care ethics, the concept of care has permeated Western philosophy over the last several centuries and beyond. Just a brief glance at the etymology of the English care takes us to the Old High German chara and charon as grief or lament and grieving, respectively, and to the Old Norse kor, translated as “sickbed.” This genealogy makes it obvious that our conceptualizations of care are deeply embedded in the corporeal, ethical, emotional, and spiritual self-understandings that impact our notions of existence per se. But the notion of care has more

Contextualizing the Problem 31 recently also taken on a political form. Scholars writing about the current refugee crisis, migrant crisis, or humanitarian crisis—to mention just three phrases that have come to signify the highest number of refugees, forced migrants, and internally displaced persons since World War II— have underscored the need to analyze political care in a more precise manner. Political care has been maintained as an antidote to the overabundance of simplistic media and ideologically politicized representations of the international refugee and humanitarian situation—which has led to near-paralysis in our ability to act and think and feel in the context of the needs of the present. Previous studies on the intersection of care ethics and refugee studies have focused on phenomena such as global care chains, family migration schemes, and the feminization of care,42 all of which are crucial analyses for an understanding and remediation of the problems involved in the current humanitarian situation. Certain elements of such analyses of care enter my argument in specific contexts, for example, in chapters 3 and 4, through a critique of the feminization of care and gendered and racialized stereotypes that destructively impact human care work and the notion of what care means. However, my book takes on a broader focus, true to the some of the powerful critiques of the early foundations of feminist care ethics, as I argue for a construal of the human capacity to care that rises above differences in gender, ethnicity, religious belief, sexuality, disability, and race through contestation of barriers to mobility and human flourishing and resistance to stereotypes of what kinds of persons and bodies are capable of giving care and what kinds are assumed to receive it.43 In this work, the field is again indebted to the scholarship of Raghuram, who critiques Global North presuppositions and hidden foundations in concepts of care. As Ann Bartos has succinctly summarized, Raghuram’s aim to “trouble care” calls “more attention to the diversity of caring practices in a variety of spaces,” questioning any formative position of the Global North.44 I also formulate my argument outside the formal professional purview of care work, such as nursing, social work, or domestic (both paid and unpaid) care work. But let me note that analyses of the connection between care and justice in such formal professional settings have been informative and influential for my study as well.45 One of the fundamental impacts of this scholarship comprises the need to approach care ethics through interdisciplinary means. Recent publications in refugee studies and humanitarianism have put forth compellingly that the framework of humanitarianism today is at best ineffective and at worst destructive to those it intends to help. For example, anthropologist Miriam Ticktin has written: “If humanitarianism is the primary language used to counter closed-border and antiimmigrant policies, the majority of migrants—children included—will be sent to detention centers or deported without due process. . . . [H]umanitarianism is inevitably accompanied by practices of policing; compassion

32  Contextualizing the Problem comes with repression.”46 Her statement is mirrored in the reflections of David Kennedy, who spent decades in international humanitarian law, working on what he calls “the dark side of virtue.” Kennedy’s experience with these institutions and practices led him to openly question their virtues.47 Kennedy explains his disenchantment with refugee protection in the form of legal humanitarian aid where he writes: I should say that the lawyers at the UNHCR were extremely dedicated and well informed about refugee law. . . . The problem was rather that their debates about what to do became increasingly preoccupied with worries about the right relationship between rule following and political flexibility or between fealty to law and savvy political strategy—to the exclusion of concern about what would work to resolve the humanitarian issue at hand. . . . The difficulty was that their careful analysis focused on everything but the causes and consequences of refugee flows and treated strengthening the UNHCR itself as the only significant long run effect worth consideration.48 The false conception of care and compassion internal to humanitarianism in the last several decades furthermore brought prominent scholars such as Talal Asad and Michael Agier to draw the following diagnosis, as summarized by von Bieberstein and Evren: Ideas and ideals such as benevolence, care, and protection . . . have almost always come to be expressed politically and philosophically in tandem with the murders and massacres that they try to prevent or whose effects they seek to mitigate. Moreover, in the case of refugees, [scholars such as Agier] argue that a sole emphasis on the care for the suffering of others works toward a depoliticization by masking the conditions of abandonment, carelessness and neglect that state policies produce.49 Ticktin additionally argues that humanitarianism establishes a dichotomy between innocence and guilt, “leaving no space for the experiences of life.”50 In light of these claims, I construct a new conception of care regarded internal to ethico-political frameworks and understanding, not outside them. I look to when the state fails to protect; the ethicopoliticization I argue for carries out contestation against such procedural failures. In addition to the binary of innocence and guilt, the false dichotomy of “good and evil” becomes reiterated on an international scale regardless of context and with an abstract reference to the value of life and humanity. Indeed, this setup has permeated the media images of refugees and forced migrants.51 We are well to remember Edward Said’s assertion that “the insidious form of binary oppositions” has “infected” the

Contextualizing the Problem 33 public domain.52 Specifically, the construction of good and evil serves the policing of bodies and identities, much to the repression or outright oppression of all bodies involved. For this reason, I reconsider Nietzsche’s critique of value fundamentalism rooted in histories of good against evil, for example, as captured in his writing On the Genealogy of Morality (in chapter 3). Nietzsche’s critique of moral and ethical structures in the Judeo-Christian tradition will be drawn upon as a source of motivation for my questions and analysis of the ethics involved in reconsidering and reconstructing the meaning of human care. His work has also been foundational for ethico-political theories of contestation.53 In my judgment, the insights of recent scholarship can become emboldened by returning, if briefly, to Nietzsche’s accomplishments in his takedown of staid ethical frameworks that in the end do more to repress than to liberate humanity. I thus take up the notion of care in the breadth and depth of its impact on and presence within our everyday lives as an attempt to offer solutions. I do not believe or argue that there can be a generalized solution to the constellation of refugee and forced migration crises with which the world is currently faced. Rather, I find that although each individual location of the current refugee and humanitarian situations requires its own individual and unique solution, there is a great deal to be learned from analyzing the images and mediatized tropes about care and compassion that have taken the forefront in the public discussions, analyses, and representations of the “crisis” over the past few years. My concept of care is distinguished from notions of caritas and existential discussions of Sorge, although these concepts may tangentially relate to certain contexts of my discussions.54 I also do not investigate psychological analyses of empathy; instead, I consider philosophical arguments for the normative force of empathy in ethico-political judgments, while holding a critical distance to superficial accounts of empathy, benevolence, and compassion in philosophical theories of morality and humanitarianism. My framework engages directly with and is intimately indebted to feminist care ethics, although my over-arching project is also in some respects removed from the more historical work in this area of study because of some limitations of provincialism and what I will call extreme sentimentalism. I countenance the roles that emotions (via the normative authority of empathy) and intersubjectivity (understood as the necessary interdependence of human actors) must play in any ethicopolitical framework, as the feminist care ethicists have resoundingly and overwhelmingly taught us. Building on the understandings of care as what women and domestic laborers have done historically for their families and community—gendered, raced, and class-oriented as these historical conceptions have been and continue to be—we can think also about care in the form of what human beings can do for their society through contestation of problematic norms that, instead of providing solidarity among fellow human beings, further oppress them. The two points are

34  Contextualizing the Problem interrelated: if we reconceive care as contestation, we gain the ability to alter the structures that have suppressed groups underrepresented in the public sphere. The terms used to designate both the people forced into these situations—“wasted lives,” for example55—and the temporary shelters and safe havens they have established—“the jungle,” to name just one56—make abundantly clear the racism, sexism, Orientalism, and other measures of xenophobic politics alive and forceful in today’s international community and national and regional politics. Indeed, the current refugee and humanitarian situation impacting the E.U. and U.S. has taken such a hold of contemporary political analysis that it has been weaponized in various troubling ways to expand the power of numerous extremist and xenophobic groups and government-affiliated programs and regimes. Take the example from October 2019 when Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan used the ploy of releasing the millions of refugees currently in Turkey to Europe as a threat against those criticizing his invasion of the Kurdish territory in Northern Syria. Turkey registered 3.6 million Syrian nationals in 2018 and an additional 40,000 refugees and asylum seekers of other nationalities, according to United Nations statistics.57 We are now all too familiar with the phrases refugee crisis, migrant crisis, and humanitarian crisis. However, the over-familiarity with these terms and their disturbing images has not produced adequate action in response to these so-called crises. On one hand, the word crisis means both an interruption in time, as a caesura or break that requires a new or different solution of approach, and on the other hand the term means “critique.” I employ one part of the etymological inheritance of the term, that of critique, to skeptically evaluate the use of the very word that calls for a break or interruption in time.58 This does not downplay the importance of the current situation, but rather emphasizes the ways in which the popular and political discourses about refugees, migration, and humanitarianism have led to an evasion of the situation. In many ways, my investigation addresses the following problematic outlined by David Ingram in his lengthy and impressive 2018 study, from which I quote at length for specific detail on the historical and contemporary development and limitations of international refugee law: The understanding that many irregular (undocumented) migrants are themselves victims of circumstances beyond their control and that “policies that criminalize cross-border movements” and subject migrants to detention should therefore be “reviewed” has been officially endorsed by 193 nations who signed the 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, which culminated the September 19, 2016 United Nations Summer on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants—the first of its kind in the

Contextualizing the Problem 35 seventy-one-year history of the UN. The Declaration declares “solidarity with, and support for, the millions of people in different parts of the world who, for reasons beyond their control, are forced to uproot themselves and their families from their home” [author’s emphasis]. The Declaration continues by acknowledging “a shared responsibility to manage large movements of refugees and migrants” for humanitarian reasons and to “address [their] root causes.” The Declaration also condemns anti-immigrant xenophobia, recommends special humanitarian consideration for unaccompanied minors, and urges increased financial expenditure and international cooperation in providing for the needs of migrants and the resettlement of refugees. It does not, however, recommend any changes beyond the status quo urging states to review their prevailing policies regarding their duties toward refugees and migrants. Official humanitarian law holds that governments in general have at most an unspecified duty to rescue selected persons fleeing political oppression by offering them temporary sanctuary, and says nothing about persons fleeing civil wars, economic insecurity, and environments devastated by pollution, coastal flooding, and catastrophic weatherrelated events. Fulfillment of such an unspecified duty to political rescue is left to the discretion of governments acting on the wishes of their citizens. This communitarian right to self-determination collides with the cosmopolitan duty to protect the human rights of all persons to migrate freely.59 Ingram aptly points out that, despite any advancements by the U.N. in attempting to protect the millions of people globally who “for reasons beyond their control are forced to uproot themselves and their families from their home,” and regardless of the stated acknowledgement of a “shared responsibility” of member states to “manage large movements of refugees and migrants” for humanitarian reasons, such statements have not been effective. Going back further in the history of the U.N. agreements on refugee protection, we can turn to Edward Newman’s 2003 scholarship where he questions the efficacy of the definition of refugee from the 1951 Convention Relation to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, which were “initially a temporary arrangement established in a Cold War context that centered on a Western concern to assist people seeking refuge from communist countries.” Newman elaborates, “Although the regime has displayed an admirable adaption to evolving demands, expanding its remit temporally and spatially, it operates under great practical, conceptual, and legal strain.”60 Therefore, the 1951 Convention has been regarded retroactively as a Cold War document that does not meet the needs of the times.61 It is important to recall Newman’s point that the initial 1951 definition of a refugee as a person who “owing to well-founded fear of

36  Contextualizing the Problem being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality [or of habitual residence], and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”62 does not include mass displacement caused by “generalized violence and conflict or civil war, or war-related conditions such as famine and homelessness,” as David Ingram also emphasizes in the rather stark limitations to the 2016 United Nations Summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants. Newman outlines the broader ramifications of the above problem with the 1951 definition as follows, echoed by Ingram in 2018: Economic migrants further blur the definitions; there are often not clear distinctions. The legal rights of refugees—as refugees and also as humans with human rights—are often demonstrably unfulfilled or violated. Other times these rights are unclear or not defined. There are significant discrepancies in terms of the granting of asylum, international protection, and assistance in different regions and in the conditions for refugees and displaced populations. Opportunities and assistance to refugees and displaced people are in large part a reflection of politics, geostrategic interests, and fickle international donor and media priorities. Because of the issue diagnosed by Newman, Ingram devises a new argument for an ethics of migration by granting equal consideration to communitarian and cosmopolitan frameworks. Ingram’s book is an important contribution to the philosophic discourse and argument to expand the human rights of refugees and forced migrants, addressing the problem of coercive measures that not only require refugees to seek safe haven outside their home territory, but also the questionable circumstances in which they are vetted through procedural processes biased against them in which the burden of proof lies on them and not on the states ethically obligated to protect them. Such a critique resonates with arguments on the international refugee situation in which the phraseology is critiqued for attributing the crisis to those fleeing instead of the institutions obliged to help.63 Others critique attribution of the crisis to the states with borders instead of the individuals who are at risk of death or long-term suffering. This leads to skepticism about the fiction of an equation between territory and belonging.64 On this note, citing Benedict Anderson’s work, Jacqueline Bhabha has recently reminded us that nations are “imagined communities”—“cultural products of individual human endeavor and collective organizing rather than facts about any inherent or permanent link between place and people. They are also recent inventions, as are the borders that define them.”65 In her 2018 answer to the question of whether we can solve the “migration

Contextualizing the Problem 37 crisis,” Bhabha presents a history of migration that advocates a more genealogical understanding of human movement that is distinct from border crossing. She explains that this history widely evidences previous causes of human mobility as surprisingly constant over time and place, over millennia even, and that this has been matched by a parallel consistency in reactions to this movement by asymmetrical forms of power and self-interest.66 Her position adds nuance to recent calls for open borders and the need to think beyond any necessary, natural, or a priori link between territory and belonging.67 Motivated by the significant points outlined above, my book moves in a different direction from those that remain within legal proceduralism. I highlight the states’ failure to protect those in need of asylum or means for humane flourishing as more the norm than the exception. Moreover, in step with scholarship reacting to Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of the refugee,68 I question the strict territorialization of membership and political belonging. The scope of my project is limited to those who have been forced in one way or another to cross a political territorial border, in contrast to the two-thirds of the world’s forced migrants who have been displaced internally. Informed by the resources on the fundamental constitution of movement in being and a vigorous questioning of the contemporary figure of the migrant as well as the veracity of political boundaries, for example, in the work of Thomas Nail,69 I investigate what moves us to care and formulate how we ought to carry out our care vis-à-vis the movement of distant others in the present. My focus is therefore on examining individual and group acts of contestation outside the formal purview of state rights and duties to protect.70 Internal to the crux of my argument, I advance a position that aims to extend human rights and regard transnational justice in this context. However, I want to understand the problem also from the perspective of individual acts of witnessing through aesthetic representation, ethicopolitical sources of dissensus and disagreement with oppressive sources of power, and what I call “religious care” as contestation and civil disobedience.71 I do not dispute the coercive practices at the state level that place the individual in a position of forestalled possibilities; on the contrary, such coercive practices serve as a foundation for my advocacy of the need also for individual and group action outside or beyond state institutions. Furthermore, I do not focus strictly on individual acts and categories of existence vis-à-vis the current humanitarian situation; I also look to collective movements that arise from individual acts of contestation in the three domains of human experience included in my project. I do so to counteract the very damaging collectivities that have been defined by false mentalities of “us against them.” From out of this context, my book comprises two main paths of orientation: thinking against and beyond the value fundamentalism of “good and evil” in an attempt to overcome it, and rethinking the

38  Contextualizing the Problem human capacity to care about and therefore act against the suffering of distant others through acts of contestation, which can lead to collective forms of social-political resistance and broad, societal transformation. These two areas of orientation are, of course, intertwined, and they recall the scholarship of Bernstein and Heller. In 2005, Bernstein published a book on The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion since 9/11. Let me quote at length from the Preface, as it directly and succinctly addresses the mentality I am critiquing in the present book: My book Radical Evil was an attempt to comprehend the horrendous evils experienced in the twentieth century. I wanted to see what we might learn about the meaning of evil from the modern philosophical tradition. . . . After 9/11, I considered whether I wanted to revise my book, but I decided to let it stand as I had written it. Since 9/11, evil has become a popular, “hot” topic. Politicians, conservatives, preachers, and the media are all speaking about evil. Frankly, I have been extremely distressed by the post-9/11 “evil talk.” I argue that the new discourse of good and evil, which divides the world according to this stark and simplistic dichotomy, is an abuse of evil. Traditionally, the discourse of evil in our religious, philosophical, and literary traditions has been intended to provoke thinking, questioning, and inquiry. But today, the appeal to evil is being used as a political tool to obscure complex issues, to block genuine thinking, and to stifle public discussion and debate.72 Bernstein elaborates powerfully that “what we are now confronting is a clash of mentalities, not a clash of civilizations, and simplistic dichotomies stand in contrast to a mentality that questions the appeal to absolutes in moral certitude with objective moral certainty, and that is skeptical of an uncritical rigid dichotomy between the forces of evil and the forces of good.” Bernstein has termed the latter mentality “pragmatic fallibilism,” drawing on his previous scholarship and teaching in the American pragmatist and Continental traditions of philosophy.73 Bernstein’s position of pragmatic fallibilism leads him to challenge also what he regards “to be the unjustified and outrageous claim that without an appeal to absolutes and fixed moral certainties we lack the grounds to act decisively in fighting our real enemies.” He claims further, “There is no incompatibility between fallibilism and a passionate commitment to oppose injustice and immorality” and thereby argues that “the post 9/11 abuse of evil corrupts both democratic politics and religion.” Bernstein makes clear that “There is no place for absolutes in democratic politics” and that “there are religious and nonreligious secularists whose beliefs, deeds, and emotions are informed by a robust fallibilism.” And he concludes poignantly: “The clash of mentalities cuts across the religious/secular divide. The

Contextualizing the Problem 39 stakes are high in this clash of mentalities in shaping how we think and act in the world today—and in the future.”74 Bernstein’s words emphatically ring true today, more than a decade after The Abuse of Evil was published. Tribalism is on the rise in the U.S., the E.U., and globally. Moreover, the increased tribalism has connected to stereotypical assessments of refugees and forced migrants along the lines of religious intolerance and gendered, raced, classed, and sexualized biases, among others. Luca Mavelli and Erin Wilson have addressed this constellation of problems and argue that: [the] entanglement of “refugee”, “violence/conflict/terror”, and “religion” is contributing to the production of narrow policy responses, exclusionary politics, and a growing trend towards “securitizing” forced migration, rather than treating the global refugee crisis primarily as a question of humanitarianism, or solidarity with fellow human beings.75 Miriam Ticktin argues further that regimes of humanitarianism themselves have become directly bound up with securitization.76 Ticktin’s position corroborates research from 2003 by Edward Newman where he writes: The image of economic migrants and “bogus asylum seekers” overwhelming Western societies is a regular characteristic of media reporting on refugee issues and political debate. The reality is that developing countries shoulder the social and economic strain of the vast majority of asylum seekers and people displaced through conflict and state failure. This imbalance must be recognized and acknowledged. In the developed and developing world alike, the reality is that violations of international refugee and human rights law occur on a vast scale. There has been a “shift from the protection of asylum seekers to protection from them.”77 We have unfortunately too much evidence for Newman’s last statement today, from images of migrants attempting to pass through Hungary to reach Germany and northern Europe only to be held back or detained by Viktor Orban’s extremist xenophobic policies (materially actualized through razor-wire fences on the border) to images of children pepper sprayed at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the separation of children from their families as a method of deterrence to entering the country seeking asylum, and more. My monograph therefore grapples with the following: value fundamentalism allows individuals and groups only to concern themselves with those to whom the absolutist value of “the good” has been attributed by them, and therefore they delimit their world only to those near

40  Contextualizing the Problem and dear at the great expense of transnational justice. Value fundamentalism problematically reduces the burden of caring about distant others and is frequently connected with fundamentalist religious conceptions, which, I will argue, do not bespeak the core values of religious existence. Value fundamentalism therefore is antireligious. This was also Bernstein’s claim in The Abuse of Evil. I will return to this argument and show my development of it in my concluding chapter. My specific critique of the fundamentalist mentality that ascribes to absolute values of good against evil intersects importantly with my analysis of the human capacity to care about the suffering of distant others as a form of “care of the world.” In her book on A Philosophy of Morals, published in 1990 and in her recent commentaries, interviews, public lectures, and online essays, Heller has sustained in an ever-present manner what she called in 1990 “the care of the world.”78 But her notion of care begins at the individual level. She does not refer to it as individual care, but rather as an “attitude” or value orientation. Although Heller and Bernstein have not agreed over the years on what brings a person to act ethically in the formation of a moral value orientation,79 in my judgment their respective positions cohere on several other points, the most important among them their joint emphasis on contingency, fallibilism, and historical context, all of which provide interpretive differences to our value orientations in the face of any false attempts at absolute determinations of “good and evil.” This is most emphatically influenced by Bernstein’s and Heller’s post-Auschwitz ethical orientations, which are practical and context-bound. Heller clarifies her position as follows: This modern way of passing on moral experiences has changed the status of the moral ideal. There is no lack of exemplary moral personalities in modern life, but they have no plasticity, at least not in the traditional sense of the term, because they do not embody the unity of the general, the particular and the individual. . . . Every exemplary modern moral individual has, so to speak, his or her own style, an unmistakably personal touch.80 In other words, we are left to our own, individual, pragmatically informed, and fallibilistic understanding of right action for any given situation. According to Heller, we may be moved or inspired by moral exemplars of “style” or “attitude,” as Heller terms it; but we may not have an absolute measure or “moral ideal” of action for our times. Although Heller has in mind personal attitude or style, I want to turn her theory toward a somewhat different direction. Let me explain through her example. The person Heller has in mind as an exemplar for her moral theory, whom she discusses in the Preface to her book, is her father, Pal Heller. Pal was murdered in Auschwitz along with other relatives and loved ones when Ágnes was a young girl. In her writing, she recounts some of his

Contextualizing the Problem 41 most memorable actions, primarily his refusal to convert to Christianity to avoid persecution. Pal Heller was an exemplary individual. Although he was not a man of faith, for him the action of converting to yet another faith of which he also was not a believer would have been a betrayal of his moral attitude. His refusal is the kind of act of contestation I have in mind for the ethical self-constitution of subjectivity at the heart of my argument for my analysis in the present monograph. Heller’s moral theory is motivated by her interpretation of Kierkegaard’s religious writings. Kierkegaard was an infamous “contester,” if I may coin that term, who agitated against the developments of what he called “Christendom” or Christian nationalism. I turn to Kierkegaard in my concluding chapter when I analyze the role of the individual and community vis-à-vis religious belief, which for Kierkegaard must stand against any form of political ideology or nationalism that is xenophobic by definition. The force of my argument thus lies in the recasting of individual human care as contestation as a foundation for “care for the world.” This may seem only provocative, but I will demonstrate that it is generative, sustainable, and dialogical in nature, meant to capture both the ethical self-constitution in the interdependency of human beings and to emphasize the concomitant need to prevent and reduce human suffering. In her Philosophy of Morals, Heller provided a compelling model of what she called the concerned citizen. She distinguished between being a good person (who has made an ethical commitment) and being a good citizen (who has made a political commitment). Heller does not have the notion of compassion as the source of motivation for her good citizen, but rather concern. Heller’s concerned citizen carries out her political commitment as a commitment to the broader world, opposed to nationalism and provincialism. In her Epilogue to A Theory of Feelings, a book originally published in 1979 and republished in 2007 because of its timely message, Heller tells us that we “need to convert suffering into pain—that we may feel it and be led to the dictum, ‘help yourself and help others’ ” because “without pain, suffering goes unattended” and “we must learn to feel” because “we are not unavoidably subjected to suffering.”81 Here she announces the stark reality that we must be reminded of the suffering of others. My book attempts to construct a reminder of what it feels like to care, and aims to answer the question of how and why we should act on our care.

Notes 1. See Katie Rogers, “Melania Trump Wore a Jacket Saying, ‘I Really Don’t Care. Do You?’ on Her Way to Texas Shelters,” New York Times, June 21, 2018: www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/politics/melania-trump-jacket.html, accessed 10/3/19. 2. See “Melania Reveals Meaning of Her ‘I Don’t Really Care’ Jacket,” CNN: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKFa4JW8Exc; and Gabrielle Bruney, “Melania

42  Contextualizing the Problem Trump Admitted That She Wore Her ‘I Really Don’t Care Jacket’ to Send a Message,” Esquire, October 13, 2018: www.esquire.com/news-politics/ a23760074/melania-trump-i-really-don-t-care-jacket/, accessed 10/3/19. PreTrump figures averaged 96,000 refugees annually. See Dara Lind, “Trump Slashed Refugee Levels This Year. For 2019, He’s Slashing Them Even Further,” Vox, September 18, 2018: www.vox.com/2018/9/17/17871874/refugeenews-record-history-asylum, accessed 10/3/19. 3. Michelle Hackman and Andrew Restuccia, “Trump Administration to Reduce Cap on Refugees Allowed into U.S. to Record-Low 18,000,” Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2019: www.wsj.com/articles/trumpadministration-to-reduce-cap-on-refugees-allowed-into-u-s-to-recordlow-18-000-11569533121, accessed 10/3/19. 4. See Immigrant Legal Resource Center: www.ilrc.org/daca; and Julián Aguilar, “Two Years After Trump Announced an End to DACA, Dreamers Look on with Hope and Anxiety,” The Texas Tribune, September 6, 2019: www. texastribune.org/2019/09/06/dreamers-filled-hope-anxiety-two-years-aftertrump-tried-end-daca/, accessed 10/3/19. 5. I borrow this phrase from Martha Nussbaum, who employs it in her 2013 monograph on political emotions. See Nussbaum, Political Emotions, ibid., p. 11. Nussbaum argues the opposite of what I argue in my book, namely, she argues that we are not capable of developing direct emotional attachments to those outside what she calls our “circle of concern.” She writes, “If distant people and abstract principles are to get a grip on our emotions, therefore, these emotions must somehow position them within our circle of concern, creating a sense of ‘our’ life in which these people and events matter as parts of our ‘us,’ our own flourishing. For this movement to take place, symbols and poetry are crucial.” I specifically critique this point of her argument in detail in chapter 5. 6. See Daniel Engster, “Care in the State of Nature: The Biological and Evolutionary Roots of the Disposition to Care in Human Beings,” in Engster and Hamington (eds.), Care Ethics and Political Theory, ibid., pp. 227–251. My argument does not diminish the necessary ethical, social, and political analyses of problems such as domestic violence, child and elder abuse, abuse of people with disabilities in the home, and more, but draws a contrast to those ethic theories that argue it is somehow “natural” or preferable only to care for those in one’s circle of concern. 7. Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works (New York: Random House, 2018), p. xix. 8. See United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: www.unocha.org/es/themes/internal-displacement, accessed 10/3/19. On this enduring and significant problem, see Serena Parekh, Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement (New York and London: Routledge, 2017); and Kelly Oliver, Carceral Humanitarianism: Logics of Refugee Detention (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). 9. See the scholarship of David Mosse, Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice (London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2005). 10. See, e.g., Roger Zetter, “Conceptualising Forced Migration,” in Alice Bloch and Giorgia Donà (eds.), Forced Migration: Current Issues and Debates (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 19–43. 11. Ibid., p. 28. 12. One of the first efforts to conceive a connection between feminist care ethics and agonistic politics was published by Kristin G. Cloyes in “Agonizing

Contextualizing the Problem 43 Care: Care Ethics, Agonistic Feminism, and a Political Theory of Care,” Nursing Inquiry, vol. 9, no. 3 (2002), pp. 203–214. While Cloyes discovers the fruitfulness of this connection, her research in this article is initiated within the literature on nursing theory and practice. She productively and insightfully “introduces the ideas of feminist theorists who resist dichotomizing care and the political, and situate care in the context of power and politics” (Cloyes, ibid., p. 203). The aim of her article is to clarify “the tensions between care feminism and agonistic feminism in order to explore the potential of theorizing both care and nursing in political terms” (ibid.). My approach is indebted to the feminist tradition of care ethics, especially to the seminal work of Eva Feder Kittay and Virginia Held, but I also seek to move beyond any essentialized conception of care and argue for a broader understanding of the intersection of care theory and ethical and political theories of contestation which, in my framework, connect to my theories of what I call “aesthetic care” and “religious care.” I limit my investigation to an understanding of the political as a capacity for contestation. For my previous scholarship on the latter understanding of the political as seen through the lens of aesthetic experience, see Marcia Morgan, “The Affect of Dissident Language: A Possible Dialogue Between Theodor W. Adorno and Julia Kristeva,” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, ed. Scott Davidson (University of Pittsburgh Press), vol. 24, no. 1 (2016), pp. 167–191; and Marcia Morgan, “Transgression, Plurality, and the Romance of Philosophy,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy, ed. John Stuhr (Penn State University Press), vol. 28, no. 4 (2014), pp. 537–551. For my previous scholarship connecting the aesthetic in a nascent manner to the political as a capacity for contestation, with the religious contestation against oppression implicit within aesthetic experience, see Morgan, “Reading Kierkegaard,” ibid. 13. Some recent noteworthy works in the social sciences that speak to the theme of contestation in migration and refugee studies include: Nicos Trimikliniotis, Migration and the Refugee Dissensus in Europe: Borders, Security, and Austerity (London and New York: Routledge, 2019); Natasha Saunders, International Political Theory and the Refugee Problem (London and New York: Routledge, 2019); Maurice Stierl, Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 2019); and Ilker Atac, Kim Rygiel, and Maurice Stierl (eds.), The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship from the Margins (London and New York: Routledge, 2019). 14. Paula Banerjee and Ranabir Samaddar, “Critical Forced Migration Studies,” in Bloch and Donà (eds.), Forced Migration: Current Issues and Debates, ibid., p. 57. 15. See Cloyes, ibid.; Daniel Engster, The Heart of Justice: Care Ethics and Political Theory (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Engster and Hamington (eds.), Care Ethics and Political Theory, ibid. 16. Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York and London: Routledge, 1993); Joan Tronto, Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice (New York and London: New York University Press, 2013). 17. Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Virginia Held, “Care and Justice, Still,” in Engster and Hamington (eds.), Care Ethics and Political Theory, ibid., pp. 19–36. 18. Michael Slote, “Care Ethics and Liberalism,” in Engster and Hamington (eds.), Care Ethics and Political Theory, p. 37.

44  Contextualizing the Problem 19. I focus mainly on Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017); and Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993) to form my argument. My main critique concerns Nussbaum’s Political Emotions, ibid. 20. Daniel Engster and Maurice Hamington, “Introduction,” in Engster and Hamington (eds.), Care Ethics and Political Theory, ibid., p. 3. 21. Maurice Hamington, “Empathy and Care Ethics,” in Heidi L. Maibom (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 264–272. 22. See Parvati Raghuram, “Migration and Feminist Care Ethics,” in Alex Sager (ed.), The Ethics and Politics of Immigration: Core Issues and Emerging Trends (London: Rowman & Littlefield, International, 2016), pp. 183–200; and Parvati Raghuram, “Locating Care Ethics Beyond the Global North,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, vol. 15, no. 3 (2016), pp. 511–533. 23. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “The Faith-Gender-Asylum Nexus: An Inter sectionalist Analysis of Representations of the ‘Refugee Crisis,’ ” in Luca Mavelli and Erin K. Wilson (eds.), The Refugee Crisis and Religion: Secularism, Security, and Hospitality in Question (London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), pp. 207–221; and Shakira Hussein, From Victims to Suspects: Muslim Women Since 9/11 (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2016). 24. Hamington, ibid., pp. 267–268. 25. Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global, p. 3. 26. See Alex Sager, “Ethics and Migration Crises,” in Cecilia Menjivar, Marie Ruiz, and Immanuel Ness (eds.), The Handbook of Migration Crises (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); and Alex Sager, “The Uses and Abuses of ‘Migrant Crisis,’ ” in Theodoros Fouskas (ed.), Immigrants and Refugees in Times of Crisis (European Public Law Organization, forthcoming). 27. Sager, “Ethics and Migration Crises,” ibid. 28. See, e.g., Tamara Caraus and Elena Paris (eds.), Migration, Protest Movements and the Politics of Resistance: A Radical Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (New York and London: Routledge, 2019). 29. On these themes my argument is informed by recent research from Blunt, Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak, Javier Hidalgo, José Jorge Mendoza, Alex Sager, and Thomas Nail. Gwilym David Blunt, “Illegal Immigration as Resistance to Global Poverty,” Raisons Politiques, vol. 69, no. 1 (2018). Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging (London, New York, and Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2007); and Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2016). Javier S. Hidalgo, Unjust Borders: Individuals and the Ethics of Immigration (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2019). José Jorge Mendoza, including The Moral and Political Philosophy of Immigration: Liberty, Security, and Equality (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2017). Sager, “Ethics and Migration Crises,” ibid.; Sager, “The Uses and Abuses of ‘Migrant Crisis,’ ” ibid.; and Alex Sager, Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Mobility: The Migrant’s Eye-View of the World (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Thomas Nail, The Figure of the Migrant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). 30. Stewart Motha, “The Redundant Refugee,” Law Critique, vol. 27 (2016), p. 19.

Contextualizing the Problem 45 31. I am sympathetic to those accounts which look to migrant protests and the politics of resistance favorably as efficacious forms of political agency through what Bonnie Honig has called the “dilemmatic space” of the political. I employ the descriptive term “non-radical” here, however, because I aim to show the straightforward and self-evidential need for human flourishing that comprises the movement of refugees and forced migrants and to deflate the problematic, value-fundamental tonality of “crisis” and its perceived radicality in this context. For a helpful collection of essays on migrant protest movements, see Caraus and Paris (eds.), Migration, Protest Movements, and the Politics of Resistance, ibid. I take up the theme of migrant protest and its connected form of political agency in chapters 4 and 6. 32. Welsh, The Return of History, ibid. 33. Ibid., pp. 3–4. 34. Ibid., p. 4. 35. As a response to this predicament, see John Davenport’s proposal for a “league of democracies” in John Davenport, A League of Democracies: Cosmopolitanism, Consolidation Arguments, and Global Public Goods (Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2019). 36. Ibid., p. 24. 37. Ibid., p. 25. 38. Stanley, How Fascism Works, ibid. 39. Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil, ibid., p. vii. 40. David Greene and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, “U.N. Official Says War Crimes Are Being Committed in Aleppo,” NPR, October 25, 2016: www. npr.org/2016/10/25/499262795/u-n-official-says-war-crimes-are-beingcommitted-in-aleppo, accessed 10/30/16. 41. See Ágnes Heller interview with Andrea Tarquini, La Repubblica, June 23, 2015: www.repubblica.it/esteri/2015/06/23/news/agne_s_heller_da_profughi_ a_nuovi_cittadini_l_europa_impari_dal_sogno_americano_-117508954/? ref=search, accessed 11/13/18. See an English translation of some of Heller’s statements in Barbie Latza Nadeau, “The New Refugee Ghettos of Rome,” Daily Beast, June 24, 2015: www.thedailybeast.com/the-new-refugee-ghet toes-of-rome, accessed 11/13/18. 42. See, e.g., A. R. Hochschild, “Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value,” in Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens (eds.), On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000); Caleb Young, “Caring Relationships and Family Migration Schemes,” in Sager (ed.), The Ethics and Politics of Immigration, ibid., pp. 61–84; Raghuram, “Migration and Feminist Care Ethics,” ibid., pp. 183–200. 43. One example of an interpretation of care ethics as prioritizing only a gendered analysis of care and power relations, and therefore a rejection of that position through an intersectional analysis, can be found in Olena Hankivsky’s article, “Rethinking Care Ethics: On the Promise and Potential of an Intersectional Analysis,” American Political Science Review, vol. 108, no. 2 (2014), pp. 252–264. 44. See Raghuram, “Locating Care Ethics Beyond the Global North,” ibid., cited and summarized by Ann E. Bartos in “The Uncomfortable Politics of Care and Conflict: Exploring Nontraditional Caring Agencies,” Geoforum, vol. 88 (January 2018), p. 66. 45. See Bob Pease, Anthea Vreugdenhil, and Sonya Stanford (eds.), Critical Ethics of Care in Social Work: Transforming the Politics and Practices of Caring (Oxon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2018); and Cloyes, ibid.

46  Contextualizing the Problem 46. Miriam Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” Social Research, vol. 83, no. 2 (Summer 2016), pp. 257–258. 47. David Kenney, The Dark Side of Virtue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. xiii. 48. Ibid., pp. 200–201. 49. Alice von Bieberstein and Erdem Evren, “From Aggressive Humanism to Improper Mourning: Burying the Victims of Europe’s Border Regime in Berlin,” Social Research, vol. 83, no. 2 (Summer 2016), p. 468; cited therein Talal Asad, “Reflections on Violence, Law, and Humanitarianism,” Presented at “A Public Seminar on Humanitarian Violence,” Critical Inquiry: http:// criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/reflections_on_violence_law_and_humanitarianism/; and Michael Agier, “Humanity as an Identity and Its Political Effects (A Notes on Camps and Humanitarian Government),” Humanity, vol. 1, no. 1 (2000), pp. 29–45. 50. Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” ibid., p. 257. See also Miriam Ticktin, “A World Without Innocence,” American Ethnologist, vol. 44, no. 4 (2017), pp. 577–590. 51. See Peter Mares, “Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: Media Images of Refugees and Asylum Seekers,” in Edward Newman and Joanne van Selm (eds.), Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability, and the State (Tokyo, New York, and Paris: United Nations University Press, 2003), pp. 330–349. 52. Ibid., p. 337; cited therein: Edward Said, “The Case for Intellectuals,” Alfred Deakin Lecture published in The Age, vol. 21, May 2001. 53. See Christa Davis Acampora, Contesting Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 54. For an argument on an ethics in Heidegger’s philosophy grounded on his notion of care as Sorge, see Babette Babich, “Solicitude: Toward a Heideggerian Care Ethics-of Assistance,” in Paul Fairfield and Saulias Geniusas (eds.), Relational Hermeneutics (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 9–28. Note that this is still within medical care ethics and not the kind of transnational political care I am working on. 55. Bauman, Wasted Lives, ibid. 56. See James McAuley, “Frances Buses 1,600 Migrants Out of Notorious ‘Jungle’ Camp in Calais,” Washington Post, October 24, 2016: www. washingtonpost.com/world/french-move-to-dismantle-notorious-junglerefugee-camp/2016/10/24/2acd2ed6-99ae-11e6-9980-50913d68eacb_story. html?utm_term=.7c887f761d1d, accessed 6/6/17. 57. Natasha Turak, “Turkey’s Erdogan Threatens to Release Millions of Refugees into Europe over Criticism of Syrian Offensive,” CNBC, October 10, 2019: www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/turkeys-erdogan-threatens-release-of-ref ugees-to-europe-over-syria-criticism.html, accessed 10/10/19. 58. For helpful analyses of the problematic manufacturing of ‘crisis’ in the context of the present theme and the renewed need for ethical-political thinking, see Sager, “The Uses and Abuses of ‘Migrant Crisis,’ ” ibid.; Sager, “Ethics and Migration Crises,” ibid; and Anna Carastathis, Aila Spathopoulou, and Myrto Tsilimpounidi, “Crisis, What Crisis? Immigrants, Refugees, and Invisible Struggles,” Refuge, vol. 34, no. 1 (2018), pp. 29–38. 59. Ingram, World Crisis and Underdevelopment, ibid. 60. Edward Newman, “Refugees, Security, and Vulnerability,” in Newman and van Selm (eds.), Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability, and the State, ibid., pp. 5–6.

Contextualizing the Problem 47 1. Ibid., p. 7. 6 62. 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Article 1(2), cited in ibid., p. 6. 63. See, for example, Daniel Loick, “We Refugees,” Public Seminar, May 23, 2016: www.publicseminar.org/2016/05/we-refugees/, accessed 2/27/19. 64. Giorgio Agamben, Means Without Ends: Notes on Politics (Politics Out of Bounds), trans. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Cesarino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 65. Jacqueline Bhabha, Can We Solve the Migration Crisis? (Global Futures) (Cambridge, UK and Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2018), p. 3; referenced therein: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1983). 66. Bhabha, Can We Solve the Migration Crisis? ibid., p. 3. 67. See Amy Reed-Sandoval, “The New Open Borders Debate,” in Sager (ed.), The Ethics and Politics of Immigration, ibid., pp. 13–28; Joseph Carens, The Ethics of Immigration (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); and those mentioned in footnote 29. 68. Arendt, “We Refugees,” ibid., pp. 264–274. 69. See Nail, The Figure of the Migrant, ibid.; Thomas Nail, Theory of the Border (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); and Thomas Nail, Being and Motion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 70. The research from Ali Emre Benli on “March of Refugees, Cosmopolitanism, and Avant-Garde Political Agency,” in Caraus and Paris (eds.), Migration, Protest Movements and the Politics of Resistance, ibid.; and Alex Sager, “Reclaiming Cosmopolitanism through Migrant Protests,” ibid.; has been incorporated into my argument in chapter 4. 71. On a related, yet different note, see Javier S. Hidalgo, Unjust Borders: Individuals and the Ethics of Immigration, ibid. Hidalgo contends that “most philosophical and political theorists have neglected to carefully examine the individual ethics of immigration. The individual ethics of immigration are about the moral decisions and questions that individual people, not governments as a whole, confront.” He furthermore claims: “Understanding how individuals ought to act can have more impact that understanding how governments act” (pp. 4–5). Hidalgo argues that people do not read political theory, but do listen to individual actors, especially when they resist governmental and international policies. I think we need both: politicalphilosophical analyses of governmental and institutional policies, as Ingram has provided, and analyses of individuals and groups outside the actions of the state, as Hidalgo and I undertake, although with different foundations for individual and group contestation. Hidalgo appropriates a liberal framework of autonomy and free will; I incorporate care ethics understood transnationally and connected to theories of self-care and freedom motivated by the scholarship of Michel Foucault and Ágnes Heller. However, I agree with Hidalgo’s position to resist and contest the unjust nature of borders that unethically keep out immigrants. 72. Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil, ibid., pp. vii–viii. 73. For a thorough discussion of Bernstein’s pragmatic fallibilism, see Megan Craig and Marcia Morgan (eds.), Richard J. Bernstein and the Expansion of American Philosophy: Thinking the Plural (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016). 74. Ibid., pp. viii–ix. 75. Mavelli and Wilson (eds.), The Refugee Crisis and Religion, ibid., p. 1.

48  Contextualizing the Problem 6. Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” ibid. 7 77. Newman, ibid., p. 7. Cited therein: Emek M. Ucarer, “Managing Asylum and European Integration: Expanding Spheres of Exclusion?” International Studies Perspectives, vol. 2, no. 3 (2001), p. 289. 78. Ágnes Heller, A Philosophy of Morals (New York: Blackwell Publisher, 1990). 79. See Richard J. Bernstein, “Heller’s Either/Or,” in Katie Terezakis (ed.), Engaging Agnes Heller (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), pp. 87–100. 80. Heller, A Philosophy of Morals, ibid., p. x. 81. Ágnes Heller, A Theory of Feelings (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/ Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), pp. 223–224.

2 Aesthetic Care Witnessing the Muteness of Human Suffering

“The true language of art is mute.” —Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory “The aesthetic itself is a quasi-moral project.” —Susan Sontag, “An Argument about Beauty” “[T]o possess reality as images—to see reality through the enactment provided by images—is at the same time to turn the tables on reality. What we thereby gain access to in reality is its unreality, not that it is not real, but that it ought not be.” —Michael Kelly, A Hunger for Aesthetics

On June 23, 2019, the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and Angie Valeria, a 25-year-old father and his 23-month-old daughter from El Salvador, washed ashore at the border of the Rio Grande River as they attempted to cross from Mexico to the United States. The photo of their deceased bodies shares a history with other similar tragic images of failed attempts at border crossings to reach safe haven. Óscar and his family intended to apply for asylum in the U.S. because of the extreme economic duress under which they were living, earning approximately only $300 per month, and the ever-present violence in their neighborhood.1 As recalled in the New York Times, Their fate, captured in a searing photograph of father and daughter lying face down in the muddy waters of the Rio Grande, her arm limply wrapped around him, has quickly become a focal point in the debate over the stream of migrants pushing toward the American border—and President Trump’s determination to stop it.2 The heart-wrenching photo sparked a movement of reaction against Trump’s policies, albeit a reaction not strong or momentous enough.

50  Aesthetic Care This chapter will analyze the assumed trajectory from aesthetic representation of distant human suffering to ethical and political action, exploring the twists and turns this complicated development can take and highlighting the frequent pitfalls of witnessing human suffering aesthetically while being bound to the necessity of the representation. In what follows, I examine the aesthetic impetus to care about the suffering of distant others. I explore aesthetic provocations that have the capacity to move individuals to respond or react, especially to the dire situations of those deprived of the means to flourish humanely. The aesthetic has the capacity to awaken and attune people to the suffering of others and to move individuals to care for that which lies far beyond the self. As it unfolds, my argument will show that although aesthetic representation manifests within itself the capacity to provoke care, the aesthetic is limited by its own self-contradictory constitution. By aesthetic I mean the definition provided by Michael Kelly in the epigram: to “gain access” to a “reality” in its “unreality,” to grasp “not that it is not real, but that it ought not be.”3 Yet, even those—or especially those—representations that move us to respond affectively to the suffering of distant others remain caught within their own sovereignty; they are forever circumscribed within their own, albeit limited, aesthetic autonomy. By this I mean that aesthetic representations cannot exist outside the boundaries of art even if artworks or images gesture toward extra-aesthetic concerns or demands.4 My argument rests on the claim that aesthetic representations and experience express human suffering in a nonlinguistic or non-discursive manner, but in a way that potentiates a capacity for communication as contestation against the wrong state of affairs.5 This predicament bespeaks the so-called muteness of the aesthetic about which some of the most compelling philosophers from the last century have written, including Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Rancière, whose works, among others, I will discuss within this chapter. The muteness of the aesthetic comprises the fact that the latter “speaks” what otherwise cannot be articulated or experienced; it makes manifest its content through visceral, sensuous experience only indirectly attached to language. At the same time, because of the power of aesthetic expression as a direct challenge to normative modes of communication, aesthetic representation remains silently enclosed within its own domain. If we require extraaesthetic goals of the aesthetic, such as direct legal or political action, we destroy its beneficial communicative potentialities and turn the aesthetic into propaganda. The representation is therefore self-enclosed within its own mute expression of suffering; this is precisely, ironically, its power. As recipients of aesthetic representation, we feel the suffering expressed ever more because of this muteness. The aesthetic bears an indirect relation to ethics, law, and politics, and as cited in the epigram from Susan Sontag is only “a quasi-moral project” (my emphasis). In contrast, Michael

Aesthetic Care 51 Feola claims that the aesthetic domain is always already (ethico-)political. In my argument to follow, I disagree with any direct politicization of the aesthetic, or any direct relationship of the aesthetic to the political. However, I agree with Feola that in the works of the three authors included in his study—Adorno, Foucault, and Rancière, all of whom also play a role in my analysis in this chapter or the next—the material conditions and potential inter-subjective connections that facilitate political agency can be gleaned in nascent form from aesthetic experience.6 I argue, however, that this takes place only indirectly because of the necessary self-limiting sphere of aesthetic experience, as I aim to make clear. My framework is based on the insight that what draws us in to react to distant suffering indicts us in the process through our position as distant spectators or “everyday humanitarians.” Our pity becomes unveiled as rerouted pleasure in the suffering of others.7 The mimetic entrapment of the aesthetic as “mute” makes us feel this more viscerally. We are therefore led through the initial aesthetic experience to the domain of the sublime in which pleasure becomes admixed with horror—at our own selves, at a “civilization” inept at preventing or ameliorating such suffering, or worse, at a society aiming to do such harm. This process moves only indirectly into ethico-political action. But the great value lies in the entrapment of muteness that mirrors the necessary critique to be unfolded in subsequent ethico-political evaluation of false pity and superficial benevolence and compassion. The ethico-political critique, in turn, leads to a more robust understanding of the emotive underpinnings of ethics. In my analysis of aesthetic care, I therefore examine the muteness of aesthetic representation and its quasi-moral character by turning to three of the most iconic images that represent the ongoing situation of those seeking safe haven and viable living conditions at the southern borders of the E.U. and U.S. Instead of perfunctorily dismissing the widely shared images, I take them seriously as philosophic objects of analysis because of their accessibility and far-reaching content. Let me be clear that I am not endorsing all the manner of ways in which the images have been interpreted, received, recast, or re-presented. Rather, I countenance them as objects in need of analysis and further consideration precisely because of the dialectic of their creation, reception, and ongoing interpretation, which refuses any final reconciliation or ultimate meaning. I defend the literality of the images in their muteness. This does not mean that I am reaffirming any silence of the victims or approving of the characteristics that led to these specific images gaining global visibility at the expense of many other images that remain relatively invisible. On the contrary, I analyze these specific images through the problematic space created by their positioning between the expectations demanded by them and the facts of what happens to meet these expectations, as in the amount and kind of actual humanitarian care provided. The deceased are not silent in the images; rather, their bodily comportment is mute in that it bespeaks

52  Aesthetic Care how others have attempted to render them silent as representatives of the so-called refugee or migrant “crisis” by those refusing or forestalling aid. What stands out in the representation of the deceased is the haunting sense of their bodily composure. These images induce witnesses and observers to respond affectively and to critique individual and collective presuppositions of who remains “guilty” versus who is “innocent,” who is “good” versus who is “evil.” In the present analysis, I therefore investigate what motivated the photojournalists and witnesses in the creation of these images, and what the production and media reception of them show us about the lack of response to humanitarian need under current Western political regimes of “good against evil.” The dialectical arguments of the aesthetic theorists included here facilitate a capacity to wrestle analytically, in an ongoing manner, with both the superficiality and complexity of our understandings of humanitarian need as expressed through the immediacy of the aesthetic. True to my motivation from both Adorno and Rancière, I concur that aesthetic experience and its subsequent reflection must be dialectical, however not in any positive or consoling manner if the experience is to gain relevance and prove transformative for the recipient of the aesthetic objects. This process of a to-and-fro movement between and among varying positions will not commence if the object of consideration comprises a truly significant aesthetic experience.8 An additional important influence stems from the scholarship of Michal Givoni in The Care of the Witness: A Contemporary History of Testimony in Crisis. Givoni takes special notice of what she calls the “meta-testimonial discourses” that come to fruition in examining and confronting the myriad problems in acts of witnessing humanitarian disaster, tragedy, and suffering.9 She describes these discourses as “the incisive preoccupations with the conditions of witnessing and testimony, their risks, and the keys to their effective performance.” Rather than dismissing such witnessing acts because of these conditions and risks and possible questions about “effective performance,” Givoni considers those investigations that have critically examined witnessing and testimony in order to uncover and illuminate the ethical and political potential of the “devices” of witnessing.10 Givoni reconceives “both the current dilemma of humanitarian witnessing . . . and the quandaries of bearing witness” such that “witnessing thereby emerges as a practice that is neither easily performed nor predestined to failure, a practice prone to discontents that do not block but reinvigorate action.”11 Similar to my approach of a never-ending dialectic of engagement with the aesthetic representation, Givoni describes the process of becoming a witness to humanitarian disaster and suffering as “a striving that should be endlessly renewed.”12 The goals of Givoni’s research resonate notably well with the aim of my argument on “aesthetic care,” as I am to trouble any straightforward understanding of the images I investigate aesthetically. The gap between

Aesthetic Care 53 the act of witnessing and the subsequent reflective experience of testimony provides the primary material for Givoni’s investigation. She points out that her book is a narrative of “the contemporary history of witnessing and testimony as the story of the success of failure.”13 There is indeed a gap between being present for the witnessing act—unwillfully “there” for unbearable suffering or loss of life—and the performance of testimony— as “first-person reports, ethnographic inquiry, historical research, artistic creation, and therapeutic dialogue.”14 This gap is precisely the “success of failure” Givoni recounts through contemporary and historical examples. I apply this method through the retelling of the image-making and subsequent testimony provided by the witnesses, as well as the politicization of the witnessing act and testimony in several directions. Where my project diverges from Givoni’s stands in my distancing of aesthetic representation from direct ethical and political action.15 Several of the most important studies of the ongoing refugee and forced migration situation begin their analysis by referring to the image of Aylan Kurdi or, sometimes, Omran Daqneesh, two Syrian toddlers whose images of death and bare survival, respectively, have come to represent the protracted refugee and humanitarian situation of the present. Other authors rely on these images at some important juncture as a representative component of their argument.16 However, none of the studies has engaged in any detailed or lengthy analysis of a philosophic-aesthetic theory of the image(s). This is not a critique of the monographs or articles cited; on the contrary, they are highly relevant and informative. Rather, I am acknowledging an omission in the philosophical literature that the present study aims to fill. This is not to say that there are not aesthetic and artistic writings that wrangle with the refugee “crisis”; there are numerous important artistic works that aim to represent the multitude of dilemmas.17 But there is no detailed and specifically philosophic-aesthetic inquiry into the images I have selected, and they appear to be the most familiar and accessible representations to date. The main point of my aesthetic position claims that the overly referenced images chosen for my analysis express the muteness and quasi-moral constitution of aesthetic experience and thereby make an important statement about the condition of humanitarianism at the southern borders of the E.U. and U.S.18 Let me now turn to my argument. One of the most significant moments in public reaction to the ongoing international humanitarian situation of African and Middle Eastern refugees and migrants arriving at the borders of the European Union took place in September 2015 with the publication of an image of Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian toddler whose body washed upon the shores of Bodrum in Turkey after he drowned while attempting to cross the Aegean Sea with his family.19 The location of Turkey as the location of the photograph is meaningful because Turkey lies at borders between Asia and Europe, ever on the verge of becoming accepted in the E.U. in the recent

54  Aesthetic Care past, but not so and thus not belonging to Europe per se.20 The photograph has been so popularly recognized that it was included in a 2016 book on Photos That Changed the World.21 In his editorial essay for the book, Peter Stepan illustrates the privilege of images and points to the distinctive feature of his work in collecting images that have not been produced by the victor.22 He claims, To be sure, we have an abundance of images from the “focal points” of the world—that is, those regions declared as such by headline writers and opinion makers—but the closer we get to regions that are socially, geographically, and ethnically “peripheral”, the quicker the flood of images dwindles to a trickle or dries up completely.23 Nonetheless, Stepan instructs us not countenance the images as reality. He calls us to ask “why a picture was taken, who distributed it, what their intention was” ever anew.24 The photo of Aylan Kurdi was caught on film by Nilüfer Demir, a journalist who has worked for the Dogan News Agency in Turkey, also known as D.H.A., since she was a teenager. She explained that when she saw his body on the beach, she wanted to express the “scream” of his “silent body.”25 Kurdi, from the Syrian town of Kobani, was only three years old when he died, and he was accompanied in death on the same boat by his five-year-old brother, Galip, who was found in the same area on the Turkish shore. A distance further down the beach, a third boy’s body was also found. None of the children found on the beach had life vests on their bodies. The mother of the Kurdi brothers, Rehan, was found dead at another Turkish beach almost 150 miles away.26 The photograph of Aylan Kurdi immediately gained worldwide attention—it went viral within moments—and provoked an outcry for greater and swifter action on the part of governments and non-governmental actors to aid and protect refugees. Immediately after the image went viral, a Twitter hashtag “KiyiyaVuranInsanlik,” or “humanity washed ashore,” began trending. What caused the image of Aylan Kurdi, in contrast to numerous previous images of refugees, to incite an outpouring of rage around the world and to challenge our notion of humanity, or better, to question whether there is any humanity any more, claiming it to have “washed ashore”? Why do certain images move witnesses and distant observers to care, and is their care worth anything? Almost one year after publication of the photo of Aylan Kurdi’s body on the Turkish shore, a similar moment occurred, in August 2016, when a photograph was published of Omran Daqneesh, another Syrian toddler who barely survived the bombing of his residence in Aleppo. This image again shuttered people around the world and led them to urge greater and swifter humanitarian action and international intervention against the suffering of civilians trapped by

Aesthetic Care 55 the war in Syria and forced to live an almost impossible life or else to die in the war zone. The image comes from a video of Daqneesh taken by a group of cameramen, including Mahmoud Raslan and Mustafa al-Sarut. Similar to the phenomenon of Aylan’s photograph, the video of Omran immediately went viral. A still image was used as a meme to criticize the international community and to call out national leaders either for their lack of response or for aiding the Syrian government. (In fact, it has recently been restaged with another toddler as an advertisement.) Three days later it was reported in the press that Omran’s brother, Ali, age ten, who had also been rescued from the rubble, had died.27 In response to the video and its images going viral, al-Sarut had the following to say: Honestly, to this day, I haven’t seen a look of shock on someone’s face as I saw with Omran. . . . He did not say a thing. He was traumatized from the shock. . . . He did not scream, he did not call anyone, he had an odd stare. . . . With his innocence, how he wiped the blood off with his hand. He was used to all this—the airstrikes, the blood—this is his daily life. . . . He is not like any other child in the world. . . . He doesn’t go out and play, he does not feel confused, or cries when he sees blood. Of course Omran sees this every day.28 In the interview with NBC news, Al-Sarut said if he could relay one message in regard to the photograph of Omran, it would be: “this is the Syrian reality, that this is everyday life for Syrians. . . . Maybe he delivered a greater message than I did. . . . With his looks, with his silence, he delivered a message to the whole world.”29 The juxtaposition of these two images—one of a boy who has died and one of a boy who has been saved, albeit barely, as Daqneesh appears more as a ghost of his own survival—as well as the inaction in the time elapsed between their publication (almost an entire year) and the inaction since that time, has been tragically followed up with numerous other images. As mentioned at the outset to the chapter, a powerful image in 2019 became that of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and Angie Valeria, a father and his 23-month-old daughter whose bodies washed ashore at the border of the Rio Grande River as they attempted to cross from Mexico to the United States.30 The photojournalist who captured the picture is Julia Le Duc. An article in the New York Times recounting the event bears the title “Photo of Drowned Migrant Captured Pathos of Those Who Risk It All.” Notice the title’s emphasis on the pathos of those who might “risk it all” just in order, ironically and justifiably, to survive, versus the pathos of those who work vigilantly and vehemently to keep migrants and refugees out of their “prized” political territory. The article describes the “haunting embrace” of father and daughter as they perished on their journey because, as the mother, Tania Vanessa Ávalos, later recounted, Óscar became too fatigued as he was swimming

56  Aesthetic Care to cross the border and was swept up into the river’s current. The young family came from El Salvador and was hoping to apply for asylum in the U.S. However, the international bridge was closed, according to officials, and the water seemed manageable at that time. The reporters recount, “The image represents a poignant distillation of the perilous journey migrants face on their passage north to the United States, and the tragic consequences that often go unseen in the loud and caustic debate over border policy.”31 The group of Times journalists who co-authored the article go on to criticize heavily Trump’s criminalization of border crossing. They also connect the reaction to this image to that of Omran Daqneesh’s photo. U.S. Representative Joaquin Casto called the photo of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and Angie Valeria “our version of the Syrian photograph—of the 3 year-old boy [Aylan Kurdi] on the beach, dead. That’s what it is.”32 Castro expressed hope that the image could make a difference with lawmakers debating approval of an emergency humanitarian aid bill for migrants at the southern border and with the American public more broadly. The popular reaction to the photos raises several important questions. What meaning do these images convey when we think about them in the most productively critical terms possible? How do we avoid ontologizing or justifying the existence of suffering and death in order to actualize our hope that humanity will become more effective in preventing future unnecessary harm and suffering? For whom do the photographs speak, and what do the photographs bespeak, if for anyone or anything? Has the selection of precisely these images, as three photographs that stood out the most among innumerable other images that remained relatively invisible, further exacerbated the false compassion and paralysis that pervade public discourses about the humanitarian crisis and lack of requisite action? In an article published in response to the video posting of Daqneesh, Anne Barnard has written that these images obscure what we do not see: the photos of the children brought in with no legs after a bombing, the photos of the children and families that have died gruesomely. She questions the fact that the two photos that did go viral, and which became memes on social media, were those of children seemingly intact and somehow “viewable” in contrast to the barrage of daily images of the dead toward which none of us, or most of us, can look with a lingering perspective because of the horror and gruesomeness involved.33 This relates importantly to Nadine El-Enany’s argument in her article on “Aylan Kurdi: The Human Refugee,” where she charges racism because of the fact that this specific image shows a child with light skin in contrast to the numerous images of dark-skinned refugees.34 So, the aesthetic—as that which somehow draws us in sensuously and moves us to an affective response—is implicated in a thorough consideration of these images. Therefore, to continue my line of questioning, we must ask whether the meaning of the images remains within the images themselves, because

Aesthetic Care 57 humanity has not changed or not changed adequately and perhaps never will change in response to the photos, as a mute form of expression? Or do the photos, in their muteness, convey ethico-political content that challenges polarizing assumptions about them and continues to urge us and haunt our neglectful attitudes in response to ongoing humanitarian needs? Let me begin by addressing the overarching frame of the final set of questions just posed—whether the meaning of the images remains within the images themselves, or whether the images generate ethico-political content. The first set of answers to this constellation of inquiries comes from the photographer of Aylan Kurdi’s body, Nilüfer Demir. In an interview with the Hürriyet Daily News, excerpts of which were later published in English in the Washington Post, Demir explained: “While witnessing the tragedy, suddenly we noticed the lying, lifeless bodies. . . . We recognized the bodies belonged to toddlers. We were shocked; we felt sorrow for them. . . . The best thing to do was to make this tragedy heard.”35 In an on-air live interview, Demir elaborated the following, “There was nothing to do except take his photograph . . . and that is exactly what I did. . . . I thought, ‘This is the only way I can express the scream of his silent body.’ ”36 In yet another interview with vice.com, Demir added: “I almost felt paralyzed when I saw the child’s corpse. Later, I learned that he was just three years old. At the same time, as a photographer I have a task that does not allow time for second-guessing, for freezing. So, I took the pictures.”37 In response to the interviewer’s question, “How do you feel about the picture having traveled around the world so quickly?” the photographer responded: On the one hand, I wish I hadn’t had to take that picture. I would have much preferred to have taken one of Aylan playing on the beach than photographing his corpse. What I saw has left a terrible impression that keeps me awake at night. Then again, I am happy that the world finally cares and is mourning the dead children. I hope that my picture can contribute to changing the way we look at immigration in Europe, and that no more people have to die on their way out of a war.38 And to the interviewer’s final question, “There’s been a lot of debate about whether those pictures should be published. What is your take on that?” Demir clarifies, “If the picture makes Europe change its attitudes toward refugees, then it was right to publish it. I have taken many photographs of the refugee drama and none had such an effect on the public consciousness. But I certainly don’t wish for more of those pictures.”39 What stands out in the dynamic of Demir’s response to the dead body of Aylan on the beach, and her immediate action as a photographer to make Aylan’s experience known to the world, is that for Demir there

58  Aesthetic Care is no doubt that what she did in her role as photographer was correct. Her respect for Aylan, both in her statements and in her photograph, are clear and undiminished by any critique from the alleged perspective of dignity. On the contrary, debunking the claims of her detractors, Demir’s photographs and interviews in response to them aim to restore the loss of dignity of those suffering from the humanitarian crisis. A second set of generative answers to the questions just posed can be located in writings of Susan Sontag, whose oeuvre has revealed the power of photographs from both of the contrasting perspectives outlined, both in a formalistic “art for itself” context and through a substantive moralpolitical lens. In her early book, On Photography, published in 1977, she advocated an “anti-aesthetic” position that rejects any assertion of photography’s moral-political context; and in her later book published in 2003, Regarding the Pain of Others, she rejected her former position and argued to the contrary. It is important to note that she has formulated her arguments about photography not only for the purposes of photography itself, but as a symbol of the power of all art. In response to Sontag’s change of position, I argue that it is reasonable to interpret the dialectic at play between Sontag’s polar opposite positions as an ongoing one. Rather than regarding the vacillation between her two positions as settled, the predicament of the present humanitarian situation and their various aesthetic representations, as well as the affective experiences they provoke, make manifest both the “anti-aesthetic” stance that art has little to no social relevance, and the opposite, that aesthetic representation might just be one of the last venues for human experience to viscerally awaken humanity to the pain of others and thereby prompt individuals to act. Rather than seeing this as a problem, I offer it as a possibility for a solution. The reasons why this is a solution we have learned from the aesthetic theory of Theodor W. Adorno, although he would not be in agreement with the objects of analysis I have selected for my discussion. Adorno famously taught us about this constitutive aesthetic predicament—namely, the continuous dialectic sustained in a negative tension between the poles of formalism, on one hand, and the morality and political efficacy of aesthetic representation, on the other—as the ineliminable aporia of art per se. Take the following passage from his 1970 Aesthetic Theory: The risk taken by artworks participates in their seriousness; it is the image of death in their own sphere. This seriousness is relativized, however, in that aesthetic autonomy remains external to suffering, of which the work is an image and from which the work draws its seriousness. The artwork is not only the echo of suffering, it diminishes it; form, the organon of its seriousness, is at the same time the organon of the neutralization of suffering. Art thereby falls into an unsolvable aporia.40

Aesthetic Care 59 For Adorno, the “risk character” of artworks is co-constitutive of their seriousness. Artworks are perennially in danger of their own demise. But the fact that artworks, by definition, exist in an autonomous sphere (take, as just one example, the legal safe havens for “artistic expression” versus the legal ramifications of literal speech) also serves to relativize or even “neutralize” their seriousness, as Adorno states, and hence the suffering they represent. In this “both/and” constitution, artworks fall into an unavoidable internal contradiction. While in other domains aporetic structures may be prohibitive and require resolution of the tragic conflict, in aesthetic representation they are productive. They open up arenas of investigation of social and political contexts and dilemmas not otherwise available. Aesthetic representations in this way provide experimental space with impunity for social and political analysis. Beyond the unavoidable, aporetic constitution of representation, Adorno further warns that if aesthetic representation might attempt to serve as consolation against suffering, it will be the death of the aesthetic. The aesthetic survives to the extent that it does not provide a “feel-good” effect in the face of the suffering of existing human conditions. Rather, Adorno emphasizes that successful aesthetic representation—worthy of the name and deserving of our attention—makes this suffering manifest as a visceral nonlinguistic experience that nonetheless shows the capacity for human expression and communication. All other creative expression is mere entertainment. Adorno writes: “To survive reality at its most extreme and grim, artworks that do not want to sell themselves as consolation must equate themselves with that reality. Radical art today is synonymous with dark art; its primary color is black.”41 Without art or aesthetic experience, for Adorno, there is no possibility of redemption, no promise of social and political transformation to the better of humanity, or at least no capacity to prevent humanity’s demise. The aporia of the aesthetic is then clear: in order for humanity to survive, representation must go on. In doing so, the aesthetic necessarily presents an image of the suffering in reality as a copy of that reality. In acting as the aesthetic in its self-legislative sphere, the form of the representation diminishes or even neutralizes suffering. What is the aesthetic to do? Or rather, what is humanity to do? For Adorno the answer is clearly to continue to work within the aporia, for there is no exit either to aesthetics, in its earnestness, or to the social and political exigencies of the day to which serious art is undoubtedly and irretrievably responding. Espen Hammer makes clear that, If, Adorno argues, modern art is at all slated for a higher and more dignified role than that of being a mere purveyor of solace or entertainment, then it must demonstrate an awareness of existing in a period of tremendous human suffering. Rejecting beauty, its “primary color”, he writes, is dark, and the ugliness of industrial landscapes

60  Aesthetic Care has become one of its constituent features. Art finds its raison d’être in responding to its surrounding negativity.42 How do we reconcile this fact with the “primary colors” of the images of Aylan Kurdi, Omran Daqneesh, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and Angie Valeria? For, returning to the critical perspective of Anne Barnard, the truly gruesome images, of which there is despairingly a barrage available every day, are not gaining worldwide attention. Further answers come from Sontag’s work, seen through the eyes of Adorno’s aporetic argument. I find this an illuminating approach to contemporary thought about image making, re-presentation, and interpretation, and the question of what moves us to care, and I argue that Sontag’s dialectic, much in the vein of Adorno’s claim to an unending paradox in aesthetic representation, is at play in today’s experience and understanding. In A Hunger for Aesthetics: Enacting the Demands of Art, Michael Kelly has presented a helpful and insightful overview of Sontag’s changing positions and the ambivalence captured by both of her stances. While Kelly claims that Sontag settled on her final position once and for all, in a kind of positive reconciliation, I read the body of her works differently, namely, as upholding the vacillation between the two extremes in a manner that sustains the ambivalence of the role of photography, and of aesthetic representation in the face of reality’s negativity. In this way, I interpret Sontag in a more negatively dialectical manner in the tradition of Adorno. To present my argument, let me recount here Kelly’s overview of Sontag’s positions and his interpretation of why these positions matter for aesthetic understanding today. In a chapter titled “The Sontag Effect,” Kelly asks: “What was the rationale for Sontag’s earlier view, why did she change it, and what is the relevance of her later view to the critique of the anti-aesthetic stance and, moreover, to the contemporary hunger for aesthetics?”43 What Kelly means by the “hunger for aesthetics” is elaborated in the following call for a rejuvenation of aesthetics as a “critical thinking about art”: Now, if aesthetics is understood as critical thinking about art, it is a form of critique and is also integral to contemporary artistic practices. To reject aesthetics by adopting the anti-aesthetic stance is to weaken or undermine art that aspires to be critical, which is clearly self-defeating as long as a major rationale for this stance is critique. As it turns out, the demand for art critique is a hunger for aesthetics. Aesthetics just is the art critique that often motivated the anti-aesthetic stance, which means a remaining role for this stance is a vigilance to ensure that art critique is indeed carried out effectively in—better, as—aesthetics. In short, to recognize that the antiaesthetic stance undermines the criticality of art is, in principle, to

Aesthetic Care 61 initiate the regeneration of aesthetics in the name of art critique. If we focus on moral-political art critique in particular, the hunger for aesthetics is even stronger, perhaps surprisingly so.44 Kelly has also taken his impetus for a contemporary hunger of aesthetics, with Sontag’s writings about photography as an exemplar, from Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory.45 Like Adorno, Sontag favors the critical capacity of art and opposes sentimentality in the vernacular sense of the term, dare it fall into entertainment and consolation, thus reducing or even eliminating the effectiveness of aesthetic representation. Sontag’s initial rejection of the possibility of aesthetics as a form of critical thinking about art stems from her early conviction that any moral impact by aesthetic representation will be “either impossible or else explainable only in sentimental terms.”46 When considering the impact of a photograph of a concentration camp, for example, we must ask how the photograph could ever meet the demands of representing the lived experience in the camps. Can the photograph only act as an injustice, both to those murdered there and to the survivors? This is precisely what disturbed Sontag and led her to grapple with the issue of aesthetic meaning over several decades. Kelly draws productively from Sontag’s reservoir of concern, not only in regard to photography, but also in the context of all art and aesthetics—because, as she stated, “all contemporary art aspires to the condition of photography” and simultaneously “photography aspires to be art.”47 In this sense, Kelly cites Sontag on the abundance of images in contemporary society and its possible anesthetizing effects, and weaves Sontag’s ambivalence into his assertion of the contemporary need for critical aesthetic reflection. As Sontag claims, the capacity of photographs to be present in our lives in a ubiquitous manner facilitates a tremendous impact on our moral sensibility. She writes, “By furnishing this already crowded world with a duplicate one of images, photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is.”48 In response to these statements, Kelly calls out several questions: By duplicating the world through photographs, which is a process of creating a semblance, we move away from the world. Yet in doing so, we seem to make that same world “more available,” more approachable. How does an aesthetic process of moving away from the world while seeming to make it more available have a moralpolitical effect on a world that is distanced as it is duplicated? In other words, in what sense does the world seem more available than it is, and how does photography’s semblance character, its ability to create a duplicate world, ensure rather than undermine its moralpolitical effect?49

62  Aesthetic Care Kelly aids us in this inquiry when he writes the following, again beginning with a quotation from Sontag’s On Photography: “To possess the world in the form of images is, precisely, to reexperience the unreality and remoteness of the real.”50 That is, to possess reality as images—to see reality through the enactment provided by images—is at the same time to turn the tables on reality. What we thereby gain access to in reality is its unreality, not that it is not real, but that it ought not be real [my emphasis]. Enter moralpolitical critique. Art exerts its critical power as an ability to say “no” to the very world of which it is now a part and thereby attains moral-political effect in the world through its semblance character.51 The images say “no” to the reality that is currently neglecting their reality. In this manner, the photography of their bodies is “quasi-moral,” quoting Sontag. The ambivalence of Sontag’s position will continue to be preserved instead of overcome, however, because the no-saying of the images is only a beginning, an invitation to moral action and not moral action itself. In fact, the history of the images of Aylan Kurdi and Omran Daqneesh speak for this phenomenon, as they present beautiful children ravished by war, one permanently in death, as if sleeping on the shores where humanity has “washed up,” and another, semi-permanently, in a ghostlike form of survival, with the loss of his brother and other members of his community. The edifice on which Daqneesh’s community was based has been destroyed. We can argue for the need to find contrasting images, but those which have been taken up since then, for example, the image of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and Angie Valeria, straightforwardly continue this trajectory. What stands out is their beauty, in sorrow, suffering and death, and they highlight the self-enclosure of any aesthetic representations that attempt to change social-political reality. They are trapped within their own form. In this way, they mirror human suffering. However, this fact underscores an additional danger of the aesthetic: that it remains only within its autonomous sphere and that it is taken as an adequate form of action itself. Both Sontag and Kelly emphasize this danger, and we can recall Sontag’s rejection of any compassion or sentimentality of photography which, as Kelly restates it, could be “considered to be at the expense of those experiencing the suffering, as if the largely anonymous suffering were merely an occasion to make the photographers (and their audience) feel better”—in the tradition of Adorno’s warning against any “consolation” by aesthetic representation.52 Can the images referenced be considered within the problematic of “anonymous suffering” photographed by individuals who want to “feel better”? I think it has become clear that the images have given names to the victims and have concretized the current

Aesthetic Care 63 social-historical context of war and suffering, and in doing so, initiated a great deal of discussion and quest—and some initial moves—for action. But this quest has fallen woefully short from fulfillment, and backlash has become more of a reality instead. Along these lines we must ask whether by selecting innocent toddlers as the images of death and suffering in the ongoing humanitarian situation, the media and its willing recipients have only reinscribed the alleged dichotomy between “innocent and guilty” and “good versus evil”? Are these images feeding a false compassion that is neither agential nor ethical, nor able to offer care in the form of concrete social-political transformation? The images have brought one world into multiple other worlds that are disinterested or hostile toward understanding or helping it. And yet, there is some sense that aesthetic provocation will lead to some action. In her 2016 book on The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First Century, Jennifer Welsh describes what she regards as the “huge impact” the photograph of Aylan had around the world.53 She details the family’s story as follows: According to a journalist and friend of the family, Alan and his family—father Abdullah, mother Rehanna, and older brother Ghalib—had fled the suburbs of Damascus in 2012, for the northern city of Kobani near the Turkish border. But bloody clashes between Kurdish forces and ISIS forced them to relocate again to Turkey, where they remained for three years, waiting to obtain visas to travel to Canada. Alan’s father—who was unable to work legally—was forced into exploitative jobs on the black market. At one point the family was reduced to sleeping in a factory washroom because they had nowhere to live.54 Meanwhile, the father’s sister was living in Vancouver and “for the past twenty-five years, was trying to sponsor the asylum claim of her other brother Mohammed and his family which would have paved the way for Abdullah’s family as well.”55 Because Turkey was deemed a “safe country” by the Canadian authorities, “Canadian law made it almost impossible for them to qualify for asylum.”56 So what happens from here? The Kurdi family tried instead to claim asylum in Europe via the Greek island of Kos, and the journey—which started out with calm waters—ended tragically for the family. As Welsh explains, as a result of the impact of the image of Aylan washed ashore, “Politicians in the West were pressured to consider more generous asylum policies for refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, who were fleeing war and persecution.”57 Welsh argues that that “the controversy surrounding Aylan’s death also helped shape the new Liberal government’s agenda” in Canada with the 2015 election. The number of Syrian refugees permitted into Canada was increased by Justin Trudeau at that time, and Canadian immigration

64  Aesthetic Care officials “reversed their earlier decision to reject seven of [Aylan Kurdi’s] relatives,” including Abdullah, the father, and thus permitted them to live with the relative in Vancouver. However, Abdullah “chose a different path: after being taken in by the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Abdullah began working to help refugees locally. He abandoned all thoughts of reaching Canada, but later stated: ‘Losing my family opened the door to many other families, and I’m not angry at the Canadian people.’ ”58 Despite the “huge impact” recalled by Welsh in 2016, it is also clear that measures have failed in other ways dramatically and that while progress can be recognized in some places at certain times, the public discourse has fervently deteriorated and led to numerous other situations of reactionary positions against the acceptance of refugees and forced migrants. The United States under the Trump administration has substantially decreased its permissible amount in 2018 and 2019, and this is just one example of unfortunately all too many.59 Mute aesthetics captures the multivalent constellation of problematics of the possible action and inaction explicated through an aporetic understanding of the aesthetic provocation to care, and it begins to provide a solution through its emphasis on affective or emotional transformation. Mute aesthetics works toward what Adorno called “a speaking that transcends writing by absorbing it,” captured in his phrase linguistic objectivity.60 He certainly did not intend the latter in the context of contemporary philosophy of language. For Adorno, linguistic objectivity is an aesthetic achievement with a strong relationship to the nondiscursive.61 But how can the aesthetic be linguistically objective if it is mute, and how do both terms relate to affect and aesthetic representation? On one hand, mute aesthetics mimics both the affective-emotive capacities of human beings as well as our repeated failures in acting humanely and actualizing humanitarian care. On the other hand, mute aesthetics manifests the speaking performed not by normative concepts of fairness, equality, justice, and the like, but by the utterances of the non-identical qualities of what it means to be human: the unequivocal expressions of pain and suffering that are, through their aesthetic representation, “linguistically objective.” To be sure, Adorno does not support any naturalistic definition of language;62 nonetheless, the expression of the feeling of suffering across multiple linguistic registers demonstrates something objective when offered aesthetically. What it means to care can then be translated into the question of what it means to experience the discomfiting presentation of an artwork, a photograph, a piece of music, a theatrical performance, a street art installation insofar as any of these presents a copy of human suffering in the present moment. What it means to care intends a speaking that, by way of aesthetic representation, transcends the dead language of public discourse and real-political debate about humanitarian crisis embodied by useless and seemingly lifeless forms of subjectivity.

Aesthetic Care 65 Motivated by the above considerations, I argue that aesthetics is always already ethico-political, but only indirectly in a distanced form and never immediately entailed or actualized by these other value categories. First, an opening is needed into the visceral feeling of what it means to care as a human being about the suffering of distant others. Aesthetic autonomy provides this entrance. Once we are moved into the experience of care, we are exposed to the domain of ethics, and concomitantly, politics. Most important among this trajectory, the aesthetic has the ability to open a window into the realm of non-domination, a central feature of ethical subjectivity. The way in which aesthetic experience agitates against domination and oppression is crucial to my analysis and to contemporary aesthetic theory per se. For additional insight on recent developments of these themes, we can turn to the scholarship of Jacques Rancière, where he writes pointedly about the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Although I am indebted to his critique in certain respects, as I will show, I do not agree with the seamless relationship between aesthetics and politics that he puts forth, and my disagreement with him is instructive for clarity on my position. Rancière does not hesitate to place the aesthetic within discussions of democracy, for example. He argues against what he calls the “policing” made manifest by currently existing politically oppressive forms, and he does so by critiquing what he calls “the distribution of the sensible.” For Rancière, the political is itself an aesthetic form of distribution. Consider the relationship between aesthetics and politics in Rancière’s review of the notion of democracy and its definition of equality at the heart of the political. This is best elucidated by Gabriel Rockhill, who presents the following summary in his introduction to Rancière’s The Politics of Aesthetics: “Democracy itself [for Rancière] is defined by . . . intermittent acts of political subjectivization that reconfigure the communal distribution of the sensible.”63 Such “intermittent acts” take place when “[t]hose who have no name, who remain invisible and inaudible, can only penetrate the police order via a mode of subjectivization that transforms the aesthetic coordinates of the community by implementing the universal presupposition of politics: we are all equal.”64 Rockhill concludes: However, just as equality is not a goal to be attained but a presupposition in need of constant verification, democracy is neither a form of government nor a style of social life. Democratic emancipation is a random process that redistributes the system of sensible coordinates without being able to guarantee the absolute elimination of the social inequalities inherent in the police order.65 Such a guarantee would itself serve as a form of policing. Rockhill explains that the concept of “police” in Rancière’s application “is defined

66  Aesthetic Care as an organizational system of coordinates that establishes a distribution of the sensible or a law that divides the community into groups, social positions, and functions,” highly related to the value fundamentalism I critique in chapter 1. Such policing creates boundaries of inclusion/ exclusion, visible/invisible, heard/muted, and more. Therefore, Rancière constructs a version of politics that “consists in interrupting the distribution of the sensible by supplementing it with those who have no part in the perceptual coordinates of the community, thereby modifying the very aesthetic-political field of possibility.”66 Can we regard the photographs considered above in this manner? Have they momentarily entered those who were invisible (and subsequently continue to be) into the frame of the visible? Or do they represent those who are already visible—those perceived as “innocent” in the current refugee situation in the E.U. and U.S.—whereas most others remain invisible because the images are too severe to be shared widely? Have the deceased made themselves heard with their mute aesthetic expressions, which received affective response around the world? What is at play is a to-and-fro movement between an aesthetic representation of what is invisible, inaudible, and inaccessible and one that is so much so that it has become reified into a kind of policing order of that which is available to experience. Aesthetic representation, in bringing something into the fray that had been excluded, creates anew. It is this rupture of the current order of inclusion/exclusion, to name just one of the dichotomies of policing, that Rancière considers “politics.” If the photographs of Aylan Kurdi, Omran Daqneesh, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and Angie Valeria provided even a momentary rupture of the visible/invisible order before they became reified into a kind of consoling experience of representations of innocence for Western and Global North viewers, they were successful aesthetic representations. Such ruptures have lingering emotional impacts. What can provide aesthetic rupture is regularly debated. I would defend the photographs and regard them as examples of what Rancière has meant by “image” in several of his analyses. Consider his essay on “The Future of the Image.”67 In it, he recapitulates the distinction between an “Image” and the “Visual.” Images refer to an Other; the Visual refers to the same, or “nothing but itself.”68 Rancière’s claims that the capacity of aesthetic representation to refer to Otherness is not constituted by the technical medium (which would be a throwback to the classicist aesthetic hierarchy of artistic media in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and to some extent in the early twentieth century, no less than by Adorno himself),69 but by the aesthetic properties of the images as we see them. Here Rancière emancipates what we see from the medium that facilitates us seeing it by recommending we regard the aesthetic properties internal to what we see in contrast to the medium that places it before

Aesthetic Care 67 us. Continuing this logic, we can certainly undergo powerful affectiveemotive responses to photojournalistic images, in the sense of an Image, in some cases while not in others. The relationship between aesthetic rupture and emotional affect is of utmost significance to my argument on mute aesthetics. Sara Ahmed considers the role of emotion in both creating a rupture and subsequently aligning the individual and the collective to imagine new political constellations that work to overcome oppression.70 Ahmed theorizes this through the provocations of aesthetics and affective response. She writes compellingly that “emotions do not come from either the inside (psyche) or the outside (collective), but allow for the very surfacing of bodies and collectives.”71 Ahmed draws on Julia Kristeva’s early work on Powers of Horror (1982) by etymologically evoking the literal connection among emotion, attachment, and being moved: “The word ‘emotion’ comes from the Latin emovere, suggesting ‘to be moved, to be moved out,’ ” and “[w]hat moves us, what makes us feel, is also that which holds us in place, or gives us a dwelling place.”72 We are reminded of Immanuel Kant’s description of aesthetic reflective judgment which manifests as a feeling that causes us to want to linger—although Kant means this in a non-emotional sense of subjective feeling—to “while away” in the midst of what has moved us, as Kant writes in the third Critique.73 Yet, for Kristeva this fixedness in place has inherent within it a contingency that yields a connection between the contact that emotions move us to make and the contingency of those points of contact. Ahmed reminds us that “the word ‘contingency’ has the same root in Latin as the word ‘contact’ (Latin: contingere: com-, tangere, to touch)” and she concludes from this word history that: Contingency is linked then to metonymy and proximity, to getting close enough to both touch another and be moved by another. So what attaches us, what connects us to this or that place, or to this or that other, such that we cannot stay removed from this other, is also what moves us, or what affects us such that we are no longer in the same place. Hence movement does not cut the body off from the “where” of its inhabitance, but connects bodies to other bodies— indeed, attachment takes place through movement, through being moved by the proximity of others. Emotions are bound up with how we inhabit the world “with” others. Since emotions are, in the phenomenological sense, always intentional, and are “directed” towards an object or other (however imaginary), then emotions are precisely about the intimacy of the “with.” . . . Such intensifications of feeling create the very effect of the distinction between inside and outside, or between the individual and the collective, which allows the “with” to be felt in the first place.74

68  Aesthetic Care Ahmed then theorizes the creation of the surface of the body and therefore the boundary of the self. But she is careful not to ontologize pain or suffering as the cause of the formation of the self: “Rather, it is through the flow of sensations and feelings that become conscious as pain and pleasure that different surfaces are established. . . [t]he transformation affected by recognizing a sensation as painful . . . also involves the reconstitution of bodily space.”75 Ahmed summarizes her argument on affect and the transformation of subjectivity into a contingent being with ever-developing borders open to questions by others and to questioning the dominance of self-alienation or “the stranger within,” using Kristeva’s phraseology. Ahmed writes: What this argument suggests is that feelings are not about the inside getting out or the outside getting in, but that they affect the very distinction between inside and outside in the first place. Clearly, to say that feelings are crucial to the forming of surfaces and borders is also to suggest that what makes those borders also unmakes them.76 Affect can “question the integrity of the subject” or become involved “in the very making of boundaries.”77 The affective-emotive release provoked by abject aesthetic representation brings about alternative constructions of subjectivity from aesthetic experience. The subject thereby created presents a different capacity of selfhood not constituted by means of ideologically “pure” rationalism, which denies the intelligence of emotions and aesthetic representation. Moreover, it is a capacity of the subject that had been rendered invisible by previous constructions of the relationship between reason and emotion. Kristeva, Rancière, and Adorno all want to render the invisible visible, albeit through different constructions in varying contexts. For all the aesthetic philosophers included in my investigation the newly transformed subjectivity must be encountered through aesthetic provocations so as not to reify pain and suffering, but to keep alive the memory of past harm so as to confront its possible futurity. In doing so, the aesthetic agitates against future actual harm through the dissent internal to its unique way of speaking and being heard, in a mute form of linguistic objectivity. This process resists the reification of overly commodified and fetishized bodies that leads to an anesthetization of feeling. Peter Uwe Hohendahl makes a similar point in his reconsideration of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. He combines Adorno’s recasting of natural beauty with the necessity of the sublime in twentieth-century aesthetics and emphasizes the role of ugliness in modern aesthetics. Certainly, the sublimity of the images of Aylan Kurdi, Omran Daqneesh, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and Angie Valeria must be regarded in this context. The images are naturally beautiful and simultaneously repugnant. They show the lack of humanness—as humaneness—of the international

Aesthetic Care 69 community, as well as what David Roberts recalled in his review of Hohendahl’s book as the “entwinement of enlightenment and myth as a dialectic of civilization, which calls conventional notions of progress into question.”78 The process of questioning conventional notions of progress was amplified to an extreme by Charlie Hebdo’s brutally ironic reappropriation of the image of Kurdi. The images on which I have drawn are not ugly but are sublime in what they capture of what humanity has lost; they reawaken the horror at the abjection of civilization from a multitude of angles. Luc Boltanski has argued forcefully that such a culmination into the domain of the sublime is precisely the outcome of aesthetic representation from a humanitarian perspective. He focuses on acts that witness human suffering from afar, such as watching humanitarian disaster on television, and investigates what happens to viewers when they are in a position in which they can do nothing and yet are captured by the representation of the suffering. Boltanski argues that the only possible moral reaction is for viewers to discuss what they have seen. This leads to three forms of expression, or what Boltanski calls “topics” of “discourse” that respond to humanitarian need when no direct action is possible: “denunciation,” “sentiment,” and the “aesthetic.”79 In Boltanski’s analysis, there is a necessary passage from denunciation to sentiment to aesthetic expression, whereby human pity becomes indicted in the process. Through a somewhat labyrinthine discussion, Boltanski shows that pity frequently, if not always, aims to direct itself back onto the original spectator or benefactor who attempts to aid the unfortunate in their suffering. In other words, pity, as the foundation of sentiment in Boltanski’s argument, is rooted in narcissistic pleasure.80 Spectators as distant observers develop a self-centered “addiction” to the spectacle of the images of suffering through which they may construe their own emotional response as pity, but Boltanski uncovers the mask of pity as a vehicle of self-serving interest. Lilie Chouliaraki furthers this line of argument but counters Boltanski’s point by claiming that instead of understanding witnessing of distant suffering through an analysis of pity, we should grasp it as a form of irony, given the late capitalist structures of consumerist cultures that profit from “everyday humanitarianism” from afar, such as benefit concerts and similar actions of solidarity.81 While there are certainly dimensions of this problematic structure of distant witnessing present at given times and in specific contexts, such an over-arching judgment is not possible given the testimony following the witnessing acts of the photojournalists and medical responders discussed previously. The points of Boltanski and Chouliaraki certainly resonate, but speak only to one facet of the aesthetic dilemma, and not for all observers and recipients of the images. Nonetheless, their arguments provide important material for subsequent connections to ethics, politics, and political action, as will be seen in later chapters.

70  Aesthetic Care The main structure of Boltanski’s broadly sketched argument on the culmination of sublimity for images of distant suffering can be drawn from the following passage: [S]ympathy is not redemptive, and if it sometimes promises compassion it is in order to shatter an expectation which is first aroused only in order to be deceived. Now the aesthetic topic rarely functions on its own. To produce its specific effect it must rapidly pass through other topics on which it briefly touches. Besides, the same could be said of any of the previous topics [denunciation and sentiment]. Authentic indignation, for example, must pass through a pity which must be checked so that attention can be concentrated entirely on the identification and denunciation of a persecutor. Likewise, sentiment touches on indignation and keeps hold of it at the moment it turns into accusation in order to turn it around in the direction of the benefactor.82 Following the trajectory here outlined, the aesthetic topic necessarily lands in the domain of the sublime, which is nothing less than the aesthetic representation of human horror and abjection, stimulating feelings of both pleasure and pain. The beauty of the representation draws us in, indicts all human spectators and benefactors in the process, releases some measure of aesthetic relief at the witnessing of the horror through the transformation of pain into (self-)pleasure, and, as will be developed in my subsequent chapters, possibly provokes human actors to political collectivity and action, albeit indirectly. Boltanski therefore describes the sublime as an aesthetic experience that has already superseded mere indignation at the injustice of the suffering as well as overcoming superficial sentiment that becomes mired in what is ultimately narcissistic pleasure. Connecting to Boltanski’s argument, Adorno’s turn to the sublime and Kristeva’s work on the powers of horror and the affects of the abject are highly relevant. Sara Ahmed writes pointedly in response to Kristeva’s position on these themes: “It is not that what is abject is what has got inside from the outside; the abject turns us inside out as well as outside in. Hence, Kristeva suggests that, in abjection, borders become transformed into objects.”83 Could we say, in light of the photos of the deceased, that the borders between the “civilized” world of progress and the “uncivilized” world of war, poverty, and extremism have been collapsed into the abyss of the photographic image? The image has then become an object that sensuously and affectively manifests human suffering through the social situation of the aesthetic representation. Thus, the abject dimensions of subjectivity become objectivized in the photographic images. The affectivity of the subject that has lost its “inner self”—as the pure domain of civilization and progress—reveals the

Aesthetic Care 71 primacy of the object of aesthetic experience as an important factum of sense experience and emotion. Affectivity turns the subject inside out, transforming negativity that can only grasp the margins of what it is not into a new object to be sensed and experienced in a concretely material way. This maneuver from Kristevan scholarship calls for the end of oppressive and “dead” subjectivity, a subject which is no longer able to feel empathy or to become intimate with others, and in turn, yields the primacy of objectivity, which enables thinking new constellations of collectivity capable of political action.84 Indeed, Boltanski also argues that a collectivity arises from out of the darkness of the spectatorship of human suffering. In the aesthetic topic in which the form of human suffering is expressed, Boltanski claims rightfully that “a crystallization takes place of a collectivity formed by the trace left in those who communicate in this way [the aesthetic way].”85 Yet Boltanski keeps the question alive at this juncture of his analysis whether aesthetic collectivity necessarily remains separate from politics. The question whether aesthetic representation is intrinsically and inherently political receives the following response from Rancière in a famously quoted passage from a lecture titled “The Politics of Aesthetics”: Art is not political owing to the messages and feelings that it conveys on the state of social and political issues. Nor is it political owing to the way it represents social structures, conflicts or identities. It is political by virtue of the very distance that it takes with respect to those functions. It is political insofar as it frames not only works or monuments, but also a specific space-time sensorium, as this sensorium defines ways of being together or being apart, of being inside or outside, in front of or in the middle of, etc. It is political as its own practices shape forms of visibility that reframe the way in which practices, manners of being and modes of feeling and saying are interwoven in a commonsense, which means a “sense of the common” embodied in a common sensorium.86 Offering a particularly minimal conception of the political through his aesthetic theory of redistributing the sensible, in this lecture from 2004, Rancière continues by claiming that “politics is not the exercise of power or struggle for power” but rather “a configuration of space as political, the framing of a specific sphere of experience, the setting of objects posed as ‘common’ and of subjects to whom the capacity is recognized to designate these objects and discuss about them.” Yet, as I have already demonstrated, and Boltanski has articulated as well, the discussion about the objects of aesthetic representation necessarily lead to the sublimity of the entrapment of aesthetic experience within its own sovereign domain. Discourse about the aesthetic objects moves from indignation or accusation, to sentiment or pity, through which aesthetic expression and recreation

72  Aesthetic Care become an accusation against the self’s desire for pleasure in the media spectacle. Any theory of care needs to begin with aesthetic experience. The aesthetic as described above moves us to care about the suffering of distant others through affective transformation. In our reawakening through aesthetic capacities to care affectively, we are brought to the domain of the ethical and political, but only indirectly, in that the aesthetic constitutes no direct or immediate ethico-political action. Therefore, the aestheticization of the images of Aylan Kurdi, Omran Daqneesh, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and Angie Valeria likewise shows the ethico-political inaction and therefore lack of care, the abjection of the self as spectator and of the abjection of “civilization.” My divergence from Rancière brings me to the necessary juncture with ethics and politics because, like Adorno, I circumscribe the aesthetic within its own realm more than aesthetic theories of politics allow. Therefore, I will turn in the next chapter to a discussion of ethics embedded in political understanding as it relates to human suffering.

Notes 1. Kirk Semple, “ ‘I Didn’t Want Them to Go’: Salvadoran Family Grieves for Father and Daughter Who Drowned,” New York Times, June 28, 2019: www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/world/americas/rio-grande-drowning-fatherdaughter.html, accessed 9/5/19. 2. Ibid. 3. Michael Kelly, A Hunger for Aesthetics: Enacting the Demands of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 57. 4. Because of this predicament, within the specific context of refugee and forced migration representation Jerome Phelps has diagnosed why there is so much “bad art” in response to the “refugee crisis.” See Jerome Phelps, “Why Is so Much Art About the ‘Refugee Crisis’ so Bad?” opendemocracy.net: www. opendemocracy.net/en/5050/refugee-crisis-art-weiwei/, accessed 3/8/19. Phelps’s solution is to turn to what he calls “not the work of an artist,” but rather a sketch map posted on Facebook by Gaith Abdul-Ahad, as one of the most moving images to date. Note also that the main reference point of Phelps’s analysis is the photojournalistic image of Aylan Kurdi. Because of this dilemma and others presented in the present chapter, scholars such as Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (whose research is discussed in chapter 4) and the group Refugee Hosts have advocated for a rehabilitated policy in which photographs and faces of refugees are not published. Instead, “landscapes of refuge” of refugees are represented. See the collection of publications on this and related themes at https://refugeehosts.org/representations-of-displace ment-series/, accessed 9/12/19. 5. On this point, I am indebted to the scholarship of Albrecht Wellmer on the non-linguistic yet potential cognitive-communicative capabilities of art, motivated by the aesthetic theory of Adorno. Albrecht Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and Postmodernism, trans. David Midgley (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991). 6. See Michael Feola, The Powers of Sensibility: Aesthetic Politics through Adorno, Foucault, and Rancière (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2018).

Aesthetic Care 73 7. Here I disagree with Ellen T. Armour who has argued for a spectatorial responsibility to come directly out of the spectating act. In contrast, I agree with Luc Boltanski’s analysis of the spectatorship of distant suffering such that the spectating act itself indicts the spectator instead of immediately, in any straightforward manner, upholding the spectating as itself already politically responsible and efficacious. See Ellen T. Armour, “Justice for Alan Kurdi? Philosophy, Photography, and the (Cosmo)Politics of Life and Death,” Philosophy Today Online First, August 7, 2019; see also Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics, trans. Graham Burchell (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). I discuss Boltanski’s book in detail later in this chapter. 8. See Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). 9. Michal Givoni, The Care of the Witness: A Contemporary History of Testimony in Crisis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 9. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., p. 37. For this motivation Givoni turns to Michel Foucault’s model of relentless critique. 13. Ibid., p. 5. 14. Ibid., p. 4. 15. I will take up her argument again in a later chapter as it provides an important connection to my argument on ethico-political care, as this may work retroactively with aesthetic representation after the fact of experience. 16. See, e.g., Parekh, Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement, ibid., p. 1; Welsh, The Return of History, ibid., p. 111; and Armour, ibid., to name just three examples. Several of the studies that include the relevance of the images, most of which are however outside of an aesthetic theory of representation of human suffering, are included in this and subsequent chapters of the present monograph. They have directly impacted my overall argument. Armour’s article addresses the role of photography and she also briefly considers Sontag’s work on this theme; however, Armour’s aesthetic consideration is brief and she moves quickly to a detailed theory of (cosmo)politics in to her analysis. My argument is different in that I retain the separation of the aesthetic and the political. 17. See Iain Chambers, “Art and the Refugee ‘Crisis’: Mediterranean Blues,” opendemocracy.net: www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/art-and-refugee-crisismediterranean-blues/, accessed 3/8/19. 18. I am not collapsing all humanitarian care into one “image” or representation. I rather understand, from David Mosse’s research for example, the need to disaggregate humanitarian care. See, e.g., Mosse, Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice, ibid. 19. Küpeli, “We Spoke to the Photographer Behind the Picture of the Drowned Syrian Boy,” ibid. 20. On this theme, see Stathis Kouvelakis, “Borderlands,” New Left Review (March/April 2018), pp. 5–34. 21. Stepan (ed.), Photos That Changed the World, ibid. 22. Ibid., p. 8. 23. Ibid., p. 9. 24. Ibid., p. 14. 25. www.cnn.com/2015/09/03/world/dead-migrant-boy-beach-photographernilufer-demir/, accessed 10/25/16. 26. Brandon Griggs, “Photographer Describes ‘Scream’ of Boy’s ‘Silent Body,’ ” CNN, September 3, 2015: www.cnn.com/2015/09/03/world/

74  Aesthetic Care dead-migrant-boy-beach-photographer-nilufer-demir/, http://time.com/416 2306/alan-kurdi-syria-drowned-boy-refugee-crisis/; Andrew Katz, “Photographer Who Found Syrian Toddler Dead on Turkish Beach: ‘I Was Petrified,’ ” Washington Post, September 3, 2015: www.washingtonpost.com/ news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/03/photographer-who-found-syrian-toddlerdead-on-turkish-beach-i-was-petrified/, www.reuters.com/article/us-europemigrants-turkey-idUSKCN0R20IJ20150902, both accessed 10/25/16. 27. Merrit Kennedy, “Brother of Omran Daqneesh, Bloodied Syrian Body in Viral Image, Has Died,” NPR, August 21, 2016: www.npr.org/sections/ thetwo-way/2016/08/21/490818153/brother-of-omran-daqneesh-bloodiedsyrian-boy-pictured-in-viral-photo-has-died, accessed 10/28/16. 28. Jaber et al., “Cameraman Who Filmed Omran Daqneesh’s Rescue in Aleppo Recounts Boy’s Silence,” ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Azam Ahmed and Kirk Semple, “Photo of Drowned Migrants Captures Pathos of Those Who Risk It All,” New York Times, June 25, 2019: www. nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/father-daughter-border-drowning-picturemexico.html, accessed 9/3/19. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Anne Barnard, “How Omran Daqneesh, 5, Became a Symbol of Aleppo’s Suffering,” New York Times, August 18, 2016: www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/ world/middleeast/omran-daqneesh-syria-aleppo.html?_r=0, accessed 10/28/16. 34. An important argument has been made by Nadine El-Enany in “Aylan Kurdi: The Human Refugee,” Law Critique, vol. 27 (2016), pp. 13–15. El-Enany demonstrates the racism involved in this particular image being taken up over others of children with darker skin. El-Enany makes clear the problem of misidentification, which I elaborate in detail in chapter 4, drawing also on the research of Elene Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Shakira Hussein. 35. Katz, ibid. 36. Griggs, ibid. 37. Küpeli, ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, ibid., p. 39. 41. Ibid. 42. Espen Hammer, Adorno’s Modernism: Art, Experience and Catastrophe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 18. 43. Kelly, ibid., p. 57. 44. Ibid., p. xix. 45. Ibid., p. xiii. Cited there is Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, ibid. 46. Kelly, ibid., p. 57, citing Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977), p. 24. 47. Kelly, ibid., p. 59. 48. Sontag, On Photography, p. 24, cited in Kelly, ibid., p. xi. 49. Kelly, ibid., p. 59. 50. Sontag, On Photography, cited in Kelly, ibid., p. 164. 51. Ibid., p. 63. 52. Kelly, ibid., p. 72. 53. Welsh, ibid., p. 111. 54. Ibid., pp. 109–110. 55. Ibid., p. 110. 56. Ibid.

Aesthetic Care 75 7. Ibid., p. 111. 5 58. Ibid., p. 112. 59. Hackman and Restuccia, “Trump Administration to Reduce Cap on Refugees Allowed into U.S. to Record-Low 18,000,” ibid. 60. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (London and New York: Verso, 1978), p. 102. 61. For a more involved discussion of non-discursivity in Adorno’s aesthetic theory, see Hammer, Adorno’s Modernism, ibid.; and Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and Postmodernism, ibid. 62. Yasemin Yildiz recapitulates Adorno’s argument that language is neither natural nor arbitrarily constructed as a relationship between signifier and signified. See Yasemin Yildiz, Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), pp. 67–108. See also my discussion of Yildiz’s work on Adorno in Morgan, “The Affect of Dissident Language,” ibid. 63. Gabriel Rockhill, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Jacques Rancière (ed.), The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. with an introduction by Gabriel Rockhill (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), p. 3. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. This was originally delivered as a talk in 2002 and published in Jacques Rancière, The Future of the Image, trans. Gregory Elliot (London and New York: Verso Books, 2007), pp. 1–31. 68. Ibid., p. 2. 69. One prime example of this is Hegel’s philosophy of art, and to some extent, this is present in Adorno’s aesthetic theory in his rejection of mass produced images and in his privileging of atonal and subsequently serial music. 70. The following paragraphs have been previously published in open access form in Morgan, “The Affect of Dissident Language,” ibid. 71. Sara Ahmed, “The Skin of the Community: Affect and Boundary Formation,” in Tina Chanter and Ewa P£onowska Ziarek (eds.), Revolt, Affect, Collectivity: The Unstable Boundaries of Kristeva’s Polis (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), p. 100. 72. Ibid. 73. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J.H. Bernard (New York and London: Hafner Press, 1951), First Book: Analytic of the Beautiful. 74. Ahmed, “The Skin of the Community,” ibid. 75. Ibid., p. 101. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid., pp. 101–102. 78. David Roberts, Review of Peter Uwe Hohendahl, “The Fleeting Promise of Art: Adorno’s ‘Aesthetic Theory’ Revisited,” Thesis Eleven, vol. 1, no. 132 (February 2016), p. 116. 79. Boltanski, ibid. 80. Ibid., pp. 115–116. 81. Lilie Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of PostHumanitarianism (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012). 82. Boltanski, ibid., p. 129. 83. Ahmed, “The Skin of the Community,” ibid., p. 102. 84. See, e.g., S.K. Keltner, Kristeva (Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011); Noelle McAfee, Julia Kristeva (New York and London:

76  Aesthetic Care Routledge, 2004); Cecilia Sjöholm, Kristeva and the Political (New York and London: Routledge, 2005); Kelly Oliver and S.K. Keltner (eds.), Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, and Politics in the Work of Kristeva (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009); Chanter and PŁonowska Ziarek (eds.), Revolt, Affect, Collectivity, ibid. 85. Boltanski, ibid., p. 117. 86. Jacques Rancière, “The Politics of Aesthetics,” Lecture at the Frankfurter Sommerakademie 2004, posted May 5, 2006: http://16beavergroup.org/arti cles/page/2/?s=ranciere&submit_x=0&submit_y=0, accessed 10/21/16.

3 From the Aesthetic to the Ethical Self-Care and Care of the Other as Contestation

“[T]he consolidation of the self into a law-abiding democratic citizen depends on the projection of the subject’s dissonant impulses onto a stable, exteriorized other. The other is then dehumanized, criminalized, or ostracized by an (otherwise inclusive) political community.” —Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics “If the state is what ‘binds’, it is also clearly what can and does unbind. And if the state binds in the name of the nation, conjuring a certain version of the nation forcibly, if not powerfully, then it also unbinds, releases, expels, banishes. If it does the latter, it is not always through emancipatory means, i.e. through ‘letting go’ or ‘setting free’; it expels precisely through an exercise of power that depends upon barriers and prisons and, so, in the mode of a certain containment.” —Judith Butler, in Butler and Gayatri Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-State? “[H]umanitarianism is inevitably accompanied by practices of policing; compassion comes with repression.” —Miriam Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders”

The aesthetic analysis in chapter 2 concluded with the need to turn to ethics. Aesthetics is caught in its own self-contradictory framework. While the aesthetic can be productive of affective transformation of subjectivity, a robust ethics cannot be provided in aesthetic experience, nor can politics. Ethics and politics can only be intimated and gestured toward asymptotically within the self-limitations of aesthetic representation. Aesthetic experience, as Michael Kelly has written, turns the tables on reality: it shows reality not in “its unreality, not that it is not real, but that it ought not be.”1 The aesthetic transformation of subjectivity thus has the capacity to provoke a possible move to an ethical framework. What does this mean? The aesthetic, internal to itself, cannot achieve ethical or political content; if it does, it verges on propaganda and leaves the

78  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical domain of aesthetic experience. But after aesthetic experience has potentially motivated the desire and search for ethical choice inherent to political action, ethico-political subjectivity may refer back to the aesthetic as an initial stimulus, and will continue to do so as neither ethics nor politics achieves static conclusions or permanent results. Herein lies the contestatory nature of the ethico-political domain. Ethics and politics, like aesthetics, remain interminably open to contestation and interpretation. There is therefore a continuous and dialectical relationship among the three domains. They need each other and push one another to further development, modification and revision, challenging the limitations of each and yielding a greater source of human understanding through the continuation of their mutually impactful, although delineated functions. Ethics in the present chapter is defined as self-care and care of the other via contestation as the self-constitution of subjectivity. How do we come to grasp and furthermore advocate such a form of ethical subjectivity as contestation? This undertaking is especially difficult because of the predicament of a double-edged empty notion of the subject in the present context of the ongoing humanitarian situation. In recent and compelling scholarship, the argument has been made of a rather useless, or even harmful conception of the subject that endeavors to help others and to hinder or eliminate the current harm against refugees and forced migrants. In addition to the allegation of the “empty” subjectivity of those who seek to help others, the lives of the individuals who occupy refugee status, displaced persons, and forced migrants have been classified as “the human waste” of globalization. I want to address this double sense of empty selfhood—of those who attempt to help and of those in need of help—by turning to important arguments from recent sociological and anthropological research on the refugee situation and its relation to globalization. In Wasted Lives, Zygmunt Bauman has written critically: “Refugees, the displaced, asylum seekers, migrants, the sans papiers, they are the waste of globalization.”2 He describes their “demonization” and notes their “purpose” for political governance. He argues: Stripped of a large part of their sovereign prerogatives and capacities by globalization forces which they are impotent to resist, let alone to control, governments have no choice but to “carefully select” targets which they can (conceivably) overpower and against which they can aim their rhetorical salvos and flex their muscles while being heard and seen doing so by their grateful subjects.3 In the continuation of his analysis, Bauman recounts statements from Stefan Czarnowski, who described immigrants, displaced persons, refugees and undocumented residents as “declasses individuals, possessing no defined social status, deemed redundant from the point of view of material and intellectual production and regarding themselves as such.”4

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 79 They are treated by “organized society” as “scroungers and intruders, charge[d] at best with unwarranted pretenses or indolence, often with all sorts of wickedness, like scheming, swindling, living a life hovering on the brink of criminality, but in each case while feeding parasitically on the social body.”5 Along these lines, in a 2001 publication Hauke Brunkhorst described “the production of superfluous bodies, which are no longer required for work, [as] a direct consequence of globalization.”6 Brunkhorst and Bauman characterize the “superfluous bodies”7 as excluded “from the realm of social communication.”8 Brunkhorst continues: “For those who fall outside the functional system, be it in India, Brazil or Africa, or even at present in many districts of New York or Paris, all others soon become inaccessible. Their voice will no longer be heard, often they are literally struck dumb.”9 Certainly this exclusion from the modes of social communication is an ongoing and worsening problem. Hence my analysis in chapter 2 of the “mute aesthetics” that attempt to make this social exclusion felt in a visceral manner for those who merely observe the exclusion from a distance or else live in a region or community that participates in the exclusion and furthers its logic. But, as stated, the “muteness” felt aesthetically as a reflection of social exclusion requires the potentiality of an ethical turn. To explain further what I mean by the emptying out of subjectivity and the need for an ethical turn as a new approach to think beyond the “good and evil” of humanitarian need as it has been represented aesthetically, consider recent scholarship on “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders” by Miriam Ticktin. Ticktin has written that “it seems the only subject position available to those who are not trying to build fences or walls is ‘humanitarian.’ ”10 Critique of humanitarian intervention, whether by governments or non-governmental actors in many social, political, and historical contexts has claimed that it is too soft. Two recent examples are the rejection of Angela Merkel’s governing party in Germany in recent state elections through gains by the Alternative für Deutschland party, among others, and the rebuke of Barack Obama on this theme reflected in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and debates. However, Ticktin argues that “humanitarianism is far from soft; indeed, it can often end up hurting those it intends to help.”11 She presents several reasons “why humanitarianism at the border is not good enough and can produce more harm than good” and states that her “underlying goal, however, is to make space for new affective and political grammars in response to suffering, injustice and death.”12 The main reason for her approach is that while humanitarianism is often understood as driven by emotions— compassion, empathy, benevolence, pity—in fact, it relies on a very narrow emotional constellation, and this in turn constrains our responses. Humanitarianism provides little room to feel and

80  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical recognize the value of particular lives (versus life in general), or to mourn particular deaths (versus suffering in general); and little impetus to animate political change. If we want to change the situation at the borders of Europe and the United States, we need another form of political care, one that reaches beyond care as welfare in nationstates, and beyond the benevolence of humanitarianism.13 Indeed, Ticktin strikes against one of the main targets of facile and ineffective humanitarianism: a narrow focus on benevolence, compassion, and pity. In seeming contrast to Ticktin’s position, Andrew A.G. Ross has argued compellingly that a “wide array of emotions [exists] in humanitarian politics, not just personal feelings” and has explained in this context the ways in which “affective phenomena and processes are both extraordinarily diverse and fundamentally interconnected.”14 He makes clear that emotions “exist within working memory as ‘occurrent beliefs’ ” and that they “serve as heuristic alarm bells pointing back to the moral sentiments that trigger them,” the moral sentiments being “akin to long-term memories or ‘standing beliefs.’ ”15 For these reasons, a narrowly construed understanding of the emotions imbricated in humanitarian politics constrains our thinking about genuine humanitarian change. In response to this predicament, Ross takes the following approach, “Rather than lament the scarcity or ‘precariousness’ of empathy, I propose to investigate the cultural machines of sensitivity that manufacture it according to specific historical conditions.”16 He claims rightfully, as will be shown in the present chapter and those that follow, that a “variety of mediating factors—geographic distance, cultural difference, or mitigating circumstances—might help to shape whether our moral sentiment, however strong it might be, precipitates an emotional response in a given instance.”17 In Ágnes Heller’s formulation, “Feelings and emotions . . . are social relations. They are involvements with ourselves and/or with others.”18 In the context of this important point from Heller, Ross focuses on the affective-symbolic value of genocide. As a result of these analyses, therefore, a new framework of political care is in need of development. I have argued that the starting point for moving beyond the “good and evil” of humanitarianism lies within the aesthetic domain. Indeed, Ross has maintained convincingly that “increasingly mediated spectacles of atrocity also sustain collective emotional responses.”19 The images examined in chapter 2 of individuals with their ontologically unique and specific life trajectories and contexts have given names and faces to the ongoing humanitarian situation of refugees and forced migrants. But they have also presented images of toddlers who can only be regarded as innocent in the ravages of the war and economic desolation that took their lives or life’s edifice. In regard to Ticktin’s call for a new “grammar” of affectivity, chapter 2 aimed to achieve this in

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 81 the form of an Adornian linguistic objectivity of human suffering that recognizes the uniqueness and singularity of the lives impacted by the humanitarian situation through singular aesthetic images. Ontologically unique aesthetic representations mirror or copy the ontologically unique life they attempt to capture and whose suffering they attempt to express. The aesthetic image accomplished this through a nearness that is also far, a simultaneous moving closer and pulling away. At this juncture, it is important to return to the theme of the problematic construction of “innocent versus guilty” discussed in chapter 2, now in an ethical context, to move beyond the notions of good and evil embedded in regimes of humanitarian care. On this theme we can return to Ticktin where she clarifies: [H]umanitarianism sets up a distinction between innocence and guilt, leaving no space for the experiences of life. The quintessential humanitarian victims bear no responsibility for their suffering. Their innocence is what qualifies them for humanitarian compassion . . . they are seemingly outside politics and certainly outside blame for their misfortune. Yet who are these perfect victims?20 The problem, she argues, is that the very faces of innocence that are held up as “these perfect victims” are, in fact, not protected. They provide helpful images to The International Rescue Committee or to Oxfam, but it is the “perfect victims” who are being left to die and washing ashore on the beaches of the Mediterranean. Ticktin writes: “And yet the migrant children who were at the heart of the 2014 crisis in the United States were not afforded the status of victims worthy of humanitarian aid.”21 Therefore, what draws us in, the images of innocent children’s suffering and devastation, immediately confronts us with an ethical dilemma. How do we recognize the agency of individuals embroiled in the humanitarian situation beyond the pernicious binary of good versus evil, and innocent versus guilty, that humanitarian discourse and governmental application reproduces? How do we attempt to eliminate the operational role this dichotomy plays in thinking about political care and its ethical constitution, since what is operationalized is destructive and prohibitive to actual care? Not only do the “perfect victims” go unaided, those construed as “guilty” in the refugee and migration regimes globally are policed and imprisoned through a criminalization of the immigration process, as argued by Czarnowski, Bauman, and Brunkhorst.22 Ticktin writes: “If humanitarianism is the primary language used to counter closed-border and anti-immigrant policies, the majority of migrants— children included—will be sent to detention centers or deported without due process. . . . [H]umanitarianism is inevitably accompanied by practices of policing; compassion comes with repression.”23 The predicament in which migrants are primarily sent to detention centers and detained

82  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical there at length, if not deported, is the specific subject of recent important developments in refugee studies.24 Ticktin’s claim that “compassion comes with repression” recalls not only the aesthetic argument of Boltanski reviewed in chapter 2, but also Friedrich Nietzsche’s ethical evaluations from two centuries ago. Through his highly literary philosophic inventions, Nietzsche viscerally depicted the lack of humaneness and rather abysmal picture of humanity exposed upon close examination of the genealogical development of the ethics in the Western tradition, based as it is on the notion of compassion and neighborly love. The tenuous basis of conceptions such as compassion and “neighbor love” (Nächstenliebe in German, literally, the love of what is next or near to one) comes under the philosophical hammer of Nietzsche’s genealogical reevaluation. A foundational argument in his moral philosophy can be seen in his groundbreaking work On the Genealogy of Morality, which addresses the problem of the ethical imperative of compassion by investigating the originary position of ressentiment within Western ethics.25 Ressentiment, or the deep, structural resentment realized through forms of hatred and spite formalized into new ethical codes, develops out of frustration with the hypocrisy of status quo ethical norms established to reinforce inequality instead of providing actual care to those in need. Ressentiment is a social-psychological reaction against the “noble” class or the elite who not only preside over the majority of wealth to the disadvantage of the “lowly” classes and minorities, but also claim themselves as placeholders of the moral high ground to serve their own self-interests. Nietzsche’s critique mirrors today’s political and cultural developments in the U.S. and E.U., in light of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, the rise of the extreme-right in Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and other racist and xenophobic movements and regimes currently gaining or consolidating power. Nietzsche’s writings on these themes shed light not only on the abysmal binary of “good versus evil” actualized by individual governmental regimes and their policies in a manner that serves their self-interests, but also ways in which contemporary liberal democracies are failing: they are too tarried to the elite, the “noble,” who hold themselves on the side of the “good” and make all too swift and specious a reference to the “evil” they oppose.26 The hypocritical stance of the elite class as the “good” and “moral” ones subsequently generates backlash by those who fear a loss of identity and exclusion.27 Therefore, the terms good and evil have not only diminished in meaning, but have been abused on all sides to serve state interests, those in the highest economic classes and the white identity struggling against the diminishment of its power by the changing demographics of liberal democracies. Nietzsche offers additional, helpful analysis when he writes: Now for me, it is obvious that the real breeding-ground for the concept “good” has been sought and located in the wrong place by

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 83 this theory: the judgment “good” does not emanate from those to whom goodness is shown! Instead it has been “the good” themselves, meaning the noble, the mighty, the high-placed and the high-minded, who saw and judged themselves and their actions as good. I mean first-rate, in contrast to everything lowly, low-minded, common and plebian. It was from this pathos of distance that they first claimed the right to create values and give these values name: usefulness was none of their concern!28 Nietzsche continues by relating the allocation of “good” ethically to the noble class, as described above, to the act of naming itself and the originary attribution of evil. Thus, the establishment of the dichotomy of good versus bad became exacerbated through an additional division of “good versus evil” in which the formerly bad name the formerly good “evil,” and the cycle of hatred and resentment continues with each iteration of false equality and false pity for those who have been oppressed and excluded by those determining what is “good” in the current socio-economic and political climate. Developing this theme, Nietzsche elaborates: The pathos of nobility and distance, as I said, the continuing and predominant feeling of complete and fundamental superiority of a higher ruling kind in relation to a lower kind, to those “below”— that is the origin of the antithesis “good” and “bad.” . . . It is because of this origin that from the outset the word “good” is absolutely not necessarily attached to “unegoistic” actions: as the superstition of these moral genealogists would have it.29 Nietzsche’s text advances a more intricate genealogy of these terms, and his argument evolves such that the ethical order of “good versus evil” is historically based in structural systems of resentment, spite, anger, and hatred of the other—the other class, the other people, the other individual far away, perceived only through a “pathos of distance.” For this reason, Nietzsche turns to the necessity of the aesthetic, as Adorno, Sontag, Rancière, and Kelly—the theorists discussed in chapter 2—have also done. The aesthetic experience, and the aporetic structure of artistic representation per se, put forth a first and necessary solution against the pathos of distance through affective transformation by re-presenting it aesthetically. The aesthetic entails within itself a necessary distance to the ethico-political realm. However, the necessity of aesthetic distance to that which it represents evinces a discomfiting experience of this distance, which may move an individual into the ethico-political domain of action, but not as a guarantee of the aesthetic; the sovereignty of the latter refuses such an obligation—hence the highly charged emotional and literary quality of Nietzsche’s writings. “Neighbor love,” ironically and problematically, is positioned historically via a pathos of distance.

84  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical Aesthetic representation transforms the self via the pathos of distance and thereby gives it new meaning. Aesthetic experience brings the pathos of distance close and opens the senses to the pathology of falsely constructed normative systems of ethics and politics. The pathos of distance actualizes a false form of pity; it is a compassion established to harness the alleged goodness of the elite. Pity and compassion do not touch or aid those near in times of suffering. This fact is evidenced through aesthetic experience. Aesthetic representation mirrors our own distance from that about which we ought to have feeling, about which we ought to intervene and take action through a form of care. But the aesthetic representation likewise scrutinizes our lack of ethical posture or comportment in the face of what is being revealed or made sensuously accessible. The aesthetic moves us to care, and if we can contingently connect our care to an ethical context, then we proceed to act in the form of ethico-political critique and contestation against injustices and harms to others, not as an escape or avoidance of acting. There is therefore a great need to understand the cyclical and reverberating effect of false notions of neighbor love that subsequently cause other ethical failures, as neighbor love and compassion are enmeshed in additional ethical notions of equality, fairness, justice, and the like. In attempts to be “fair” and “just” and to secure the best approach to guarantee the dignity of each human being, what might be accomplished is an avoidance of any action or the lack of ameliorating any suffering, or worse, the exclusion and criminalization of those who suffer. Bonnie Honig has captured Nietzsche’s critique of false order and the specious containment of difference through moral-political concepts such as fairness and justice, in a particularly poignant study from 1993. There Honig distinguishes between “virtue theorists” and “virtù theorists,” the latter of which relates to Nietzsche’s writings. She defines the virtue theory of politics as follows: Virtue theorists of politics assume that the world and the self are not resistant to, but only enabled and completed by, their favored conceptions of order and subjectivity. This assumption undergirds their belief that modern disenchantment, alienation, pain, and cruelty would be diminished if only we adopted their principles of right, established just institutions whose fairness is ascertainable from a particular (rational) perspective, or yielded to the truth of membership in a wider community of meaning and value.30 But, as Honig makes clear through her detailed examination, the virtue theorists’ aims and strivings in fact eliminate the resistance “from political orderings and the struggle from subjectivity, eliminating the excess that haunts the formation of the self into a subject and expelling the disruption from politics.”31 Drawing on these and similar themes, Maurice

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 85 Stierl has thematized the necessity of subjective (and group) excess and its fertile link to resistance and political action for migrant protest movements.32 Eliminating difference and the excess “that haunts the formation of the self into a subject” reduces or hinders the capacity for ethicopolitical contestation. Christa Acampora has furthermore illuminated in convincing detail the generative capacities in the connection between emotion and contestation as the space of generating new emancipatory social values.33 We should therefore heed Nietzsche’s pathos-laden arguments, as Honig and Acampora do, about the unfairness and lack of equality embedded in the attempt to apply these notions institutionally and politically. Honig calls our attention to Nietzsche’s sense of virtù, which stands at odds with normative, institutional conceptions of virtue that, in Honig’s conclusion, erase difference and continue the logic of exclusion.34 Honig clarifies that Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality and ethics in the Western Judeo-Christian tradition provides sustenance to virtù’s interruptions “by unmasking the extraordinary means by which these practices secure the would-be ordinariness of moral and political life.”35 This stands in stark contrast to the virtue theories of Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, and Michael Sandel—to name just three exemplars in the Western ethical tradition—in Honig’s estimation, for whom the consolidation of the self into a law-abiding democratic citizen depends on the projection of the subject’s dissonant impulses onto a stable, exteriorized other. The other is then dehumanized, criminalized, or ostracized by an (otherwise inclusive) political community. But virtue theories neither acknowledge nor theorize this dependency in their treatment of respect, responsibility, punishment, and friendship. . . . They depoliticize the remainders of their politics, disavowing their political genealogy, function or significance.36 As Honig further elaborates, “Kant’s reduction of politics to law and his treatment of politics as an instrument of his moral project led Arendt to reject his account and to look to his treatment of aesthetics and judgment to ground an alternative.”37 My argument has emphatically not engaged a Kantian aesthetic theory of reflected disinterestedness, but on the contrary, one motivated by Adorno and Rancière, which in turn, in my ethical argument becomes further instructed by Nietzsche’s antiKantian perspective. The Nietzschean critique of compassion and false understandings of equality recalls the concluding discussion on Rancière and the politics of aesthetics from chapter 2. Equality has been described by Rancière as a political disruption in the aesthetic realm, and in turn, an aesthetic disruption of the policing order of politics. Although I distance the aesthetic from immediate ethico-political action, there is a quasi-moral

86  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical constitution to the aesthetic that, upon further reflection, can take on political action. In Honig’s parlance, political disruption takes place as an interruption of the order that represses, not as a guarantee of order itself, which would render only a vapid construal of justice and equality. Rancière and Nietzsche call for a disruption through aesthetic provocation. Rancière advocates affective responses that redistribute the sensible, but also not in a way that guarantees equality. Similar to Adorno and Sontag, Rancière is seeking social and political transformation through aesthetic affective transformation. In my framework, we are potentially provoked to leave the aesthetic realm and turn to ethics, albeit turning back with continuous references to the aesthetic. We are never outside politics, as contingent bodies, but we have no politics without ethics. And we may receive an impetus to act ethically through aesthetic provocation. This was certainly also Boltanski’s argument in his review of Nietzsche’s critique of ressentiment and revenge wearing the veil of pity.38 For Nietzsche and Boltanski, the aesthetic can provide an affirmative response that may lead, in an indirect manner after the fact of the pathos of aesthetic distance, to an affirmative ethics and politics against human suffering. In light of the criticisms of false humanitarianism and the problematic ethics and politics that result from it, we can return to Ticktin’s argument urging us to move beyond humanitarian boundaries. Perhaps most prominent among Ticktin’s claims is that the victims of the failures of humanitarianism are placed outside politics; this, therefore, would position them outside the realm of ethical self-constitution. Such a position enables those in need of aid to be stripped of their agency and treated as objects at the borders of national identity and belonging, thus forestalling or entirely eliminating their ethical self-constitution. For this reason, names that have been given to individuals in these predicaments have included “undesirables” living in borderlands who need to be “managed” by systems of exclusion, signifiers that have been critically examined in Michel Agier’s publications, to take one example.39 These individuals and groups are the foreigners who signify the anxiety in and of democracy, as Bonnie Honig has powerfully argued.40 Their lives have been narrated as “cast away,” existing on the “edge of society” or at the “margins of the world,” their encampments labeled as a notorious “jungle.”41 They constitute “wasted lives” within a “liquid modernity” that does not stop to solidify or permit the development of robust dimensions of humanness, as Bauman has diagnosed.42 In her article Ticktin recalls the anthropological analysis of Liisa Malkki, who contended in 1996 that refugees, especially African refugees, are figured as “a ‘sea’ or ‘blur of humanity’ ”—as “a spectacle of a ‘raw,’ ‘bare humanity.’ ”43 Not only are the allegedly innocent and guilty both harmed by this dichotomy, but there is also no consideration of those who do not fall clearly into either category. Ticktin clarifies: “In this schema, there is no way to recognize

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 87 them, no law or language by which to give them space to live or die regular or mundane lives.”44 But we must vigorously question whether any individual human being, in the name of ethical subjectivity and the politics that attempt to manipulate them, is ever situated outside of politics. Such a claim does more harm than good. A very compelling deconstructive case has been made in a dialogue between Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak in which Butler argues that precisely the opposite more accurately reflects the current political, ethical, and humanitarian situation. This does not diminish the other claims by Ticktin, but rather adds an important corrective dimension to contemporary discussions of refugee, migration, and immigration ethics and politics. Consider Butler’s claims in Who Sings the Nation State? Language, Politics and Belonging where she sharply rejects any assertions of the possibility of “bare life,” a term that has gained a great deal of traction in the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben.45 Butler writes: If the state is what “binds,” it is also clearly what can and does unbind. And if the state binds in the name of the nation, conjuring a certain version of the nation forcibly, if not powerfully, then it also unbinds, releases, expels, banishes. If it does the latter, it is not always through emancipatory means, i.e. through “letting go” or “setting free”; it expels precisely through an exercise of power that depends upon barriers and prisons and, so, in the mode of a certain containment. We are not outside of politics when we are dispossessed in such ways [my emphasis]. Rather, we are deposited in a dense situation of military power in which juridical functions become the prerogative of the military. This is not bare life, but a particular formation of power and coercion that is designed to produce and maintain the condition, the state, of the dispossessed [my emphasis].46 Butler further inquires what it means “to be at once contained and dispossessed by the state? And what does it mean to be uncontained or discontinued from the state but given over to other forms of power that may or may not have state-like features?”47 She concludes preliminarily: “The point is to suggest that we cannot presume a movement from an established state to a state of metaphysical abandonment; these movements are more complex and require a different kind of description.”48 For Butler the danger lies in alleging a move to “metaphysical abandonment.” The image of ontological singularity discussed in chapter 2 resists such a move. Although Aylan Kurdi’s body was excluded from humanitarian care and thereby abandoned (it was not actively able to be saved by any rescue committee), his body nonetheless remains within political matrices of power, even as the media fights over the real meaning of his photographed corpse. Developments in Omran Daqneesh’s life reflect this as well. The ghost-like stillness of his bodily comportment

88  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical after having been saved by the White Helmets and photographed in the back of their emergency vehicle was ironically interpreted as a blank slate on which Western media could write a typical story of helpless individuals trapped in a conflict zone who remain completely innocent. A New York Times article from June 6, 2017 makes clear that Daqneesh’s family, at least as represented by statements articulated by his father, supports the Syrian government and in no way wants Omran’s image employed by oppositional or non-Syrian forces or organizations opposed to the Asad regime.49 The dilemma of the politicization of Omran’s photographed body recalls an important point made by Givoni in The Care of the Witness. She significantly characterizes the witnessing act and subsequent reflection on the testimony provided as taking on a “migratory quality” in that “it ceases to be the preserve of those unwillfully located in harm’s way and is adopted passionately by a host of professionals.”50 Yet, Givoni writes, “far from curbing the growth and expansion of witnessing and testimony, the sustained confrontation with their problematic performance has been integral to their consolidation as the tenacious trace of humanity in the political.”51 In my interpretation and application of Givoni’s position, the problem of the politicization of representation is more of an ethicalpolitical advantage, ironically, than a hindrance, because it generates an unsettled movement that calls for action. Recall Givoni’s description of witnessing, cited in chapter 2, as “a practice prone to discontents that do not block but reinvigorate action.”52 Hence I argue that the unsettling quality provoked by the aesthetic act of witnessing, experienced by recipients of the aesthetic as an aporia whereby one is affectively transformed into a state that desires to act, yet is prevented from doing so because of the necessary sovereignty of the aesthetic realm, serves as a heuristic parallel that can subsequently become actualized into ethical-political action in the public sphere. Returning to the critique of the possibility of metaphysical abandonment, Butler argues that “the populations we are trying to describe, those who have become effectively stateless, are still under the control of state power. In this way, they are without legal protection but in no way relegated to a ‘bare life’: this is a life steeped in power. And this reminds us, crucially, that power is not the same as law.”53 Butler distinguishes between “extreme forms of dispossession,” such as an “imposed and enforced sense of placelessness” as we saw with “arrested and deported populations from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” versus “the deliberate protocols that establish and patrol those barriers and cells of the extraterritorial prison, which are the permutations of state power as it acts outside the established territorial domain of its own sovereignty and, so, materializes sovereignty as Empire.”54 Like the aesthetic but moving effectively beyond it, a renewed ethical understanding of subjectivity should agitate and disrupt such abuses of

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 89 power in ways that rehumanize those stripped of their humanity, those “cast away” with the humanity that has “washed ashore.” The initial witnessing act and subsequent testimony provided the initial spark to challenge the problematic norms of humanitarian regimes. This relates again to Givoni’s argument where she links the witnessing act and reflection of the testimony to the formation of a self that can contest oppressive structures that have caused the harm to which one has served as witness. For Givoni witnessing and testimony deliver a performative disruption of ethical schemes that have become defunct, but also new conduits for moral existence. Diverging from morality in its strict, prescriptive sense, witnessing and testimony delimited a self-contained ethical universe in which moral conduct serves as its own ultimate foundation. . . . Witnessing thereby brought to life an ethics that dispensed with and transgressed the coercive confines of moral, juridical, or religious law. It generated a coherent and reflexive model for moral existence that was the haphazard product of individual initiatives to live a morally meaningful life. Born out of the desires, hesitations, and reflections of individuals who have tentatively sought to become witnesses, witnessing and testimony were and remain dependent upon their unruly creations.55 Givoni makes clear the disruptive and contestatory potentialities of witnessing and testimony, which for her are always already ethical. I separate the aesthetic act of witnessing from the immediate domain of ethico-political action; but I wholeheartedly agree with Givoni on the subsequent capacities of witnessing as a form of ethical disruption when the ethical retroactively collaborates with aesthetic experience. To develop further the modus operandi of contestation as the ethical grounding of the self, we can turn to what Michel Foucault has described as “counter-conducts” in the face of governmentality—the inception of self-individualization in the context of religious authority, which serves as a hermeneutical parallel to contemporary Empire in Butler’s analysis. Butler is addressing a specifically Christian identity combined with nationalism, as the culminating analysis in her discussion with Spivak draws on statements made by former U.S. President George W. Bush, who clearly leaned on a nationalist Christian identity in his political philosophy. In the example cited by Spivak and Butler, Bush speaks against the possibility of singing the United States national anthem in Spanish. Foucault’s critique of Christian subjectivity that I will now engage thus connects both to Nietzsche’s critique of false “neighbor love” in the tradition of Western ethics and to Butler and Spivak’s discussion. According to Foucault in Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978, the genealogical foundation of the roots of power lies in the element of sacrifice crucial to the development

90  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical of the Christian pastorate. The pastorate has its origins in Judaism— putatively, at first—but was taken over by Christianity, which alters it through new principles, the most important of which for the purposes of my analysis entails “a sacrificial reversal, in which the pastor must sacrifice himself for the flock and the flock for the shepherd.56 As Eduardo Mendieta has summarized: [T]hese principles lead to a very distinct form of the Christian pastorate in which there is a complete submission of one individual to another, of the sheep to the pastor. This thoroughly individualized relation of submission, however, does not have a telos external to it. . . . Here submission is its own goal. One submits in order to arrive at a state of obedience. Finally, under the Christian pastorate, education is a daily teaching that aims at the spiritual direction of one’s conscience. It is an education that leads to the discovery of an internal, secret, personal truth.57 According to this argument, the Christian pastorate therefore facilitated a new form of power that concludes with a process of individualization. But this individualizing process simultaneously gives birth to resistance against religious power, hence “counter-conducts directed themselves to the pastoral power of Christianity” and therefore “the history of the Christian pastorate, which is the history of Western individuation, is also the history of resistance to it.”58 If the history of Western individuation is linked to the history of counter-conducts as a history of resistance, this serves as a crux for a renewed understanding of ethical subjectivity. It is important not to conflate Western individuation with other forms of individuation not steeped in Western power. But if Butler is correct that there is no state beyond the state even when the state extends beyond its own territoriality in a state of exception; if she is correct about the usurping power of the extraterritorial maneuvers of the recent international, militarized actions of Empire, then the framework of counter-conducts as constitutive of individuation acting against the all-encompassing matrices of power in the West and Northern states is also correct as an ethical form of resistance in current times on an international scale, in other words, against a contemporary imputation of Christian Empire on the rest of the world. The situation of refugees and forced migration has been exacerbated by the political philosophies of governmental administrations and policies carried out, for example, in the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, and Bulgaria, among others, that claim their authority in the name of “Christian values” and “Christianity” at the exemption and exclusion of other human values founded on other perspectives and religions. Furthermore, such “Christian values” presume a rational grounding, ironically, in their presence and tolerance in secular states. These political stances have been

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 91 largely xenophobic and intolerant of religious pluralism under an alleged rubric of Christian values, which develops what I would call “xenophobic safe havens.” This point links to one of Richard J. Bernstein’s main arguments in The Abuse of Evil, as discussed in chapter 1. I will develop the argument against false Christian values that recapitulate problematic value fundamentalism and incorporate Bernstein’s insights on religious pluralism in democratic polities in my concluding chapter, culminating in what I analyze as “religious care.” If counter-conducts are the key to understanding individuation in the West, the act of contestation should be construed as necessary for the capacity to become a subject. This has also been Honig’s and Rancière’s point from within different arguments. This has also been admirably elaborated by Acampora on Nietzsche’s philosophy.59 Contestation, then, consequently links to ethical self-constitution in the face of oppressive regimes of power. Although we have seen authority, paradoxically, as generative of individuation in the analyses of Foucault, Nietzsche, and Butler—for there is no space impermeable by power—we have also been faced with the hateful and destructive turn this can take and has taken internationally and historically vis-à-vis humanitarian rights and regimes. (I return to this theme in more detail in chapter 4.) Contestation stands up against the “herd mentality,” in Nietzsche’s terms, and what Kierkegaard calls “the crowd,” who seek only to consolidate their power elitism out of weakness and inability to love the radical other.60 What is then achieved from the hybridization of the above philosophic frameworks is a rather different emphasis of ethical subjectivity than that provided by the humanitarianism critiqued by Ticktin. We arrive at a more productive and promising engagement with what it means to be a subject, and moreover, what it means to constitute oneself in an ethical purview, in contrast to “the perfect victims” who unwittingly inherit unequal, unfair, and harmful notions of equality, fairness, and compassion. What it means to contest authority grounds a freedom of the self to act according to one’s own life’s counter-conducts. My analysis at this juncture becomes important not to diminish the need for political care, but to advocate for a different kind of care, one based on notions of ethico-political subjectivity understood through acts of self-care that take place through contestation. Contestation is an expression of freedom.61 It is necessary now to develop a more nuanced conception of freedom in relation to the contestatory capacities of subjects. It is a natural starting point to turn to the notion of freedom in Foucault, because it is for his theory a form of concern of the self that can facilitate social emancipation only after its self-establishment on the individual level. Freedom for Foucault requires the initial step of individual self-care. This could be viewed as an important philosophical foundation for a new ethical approach to humanitarian need. In thinking about freedom in this way, we can come to see the individual acts taken by refugees

92  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical and forced migrants as ethical acts that contest the abusive, self-serving and oppressive authorities of the policies that exclude them and turn them into “wasted lives,” detaining them for years, decades, or indefinitely.62 My argument does not privilege those who have the means or ability to flee versus those who do not. Rather, I want to emphasize acts of contestation within the context of ethical self-constitution as I have discussed in chapter 1, drawing on Ágnes Heller’s exemplar of her father, Pal Heller, who refused to convert to Christianity to be spared his own persecution and death at the hands of the Nazis. To supplement Heller’s philosophy of morality, it is important to get clearer on what Foucault discusses of the care of the self and how this relates to freedom. If we are to understand the self-constitution of subjectivity as an act of contestation, this move requires a link to ethical subjectivity and a further elaboration of what constitutes care—of the self and of others. We must also disaggregate different notions of freedom that do not relate to ethical care; in fact, there are distinctive notions that lie in opposition to the kind of freedom I countenance for my analysis. In Security, Territory, Population, Foucault distinguishes perhaps the two most prominent versions, namely, the freedom of “the game of liberalism”—as laisser faire, passer et aller, as “one of the conditions of development of modern or, if you like, capitalist forms of the economy”—and the freedom as “both ideology and technique of government, [which] should be understood within the mutations and transformations of technologies of power. More precisely and particularly, freedom [in the latter notion] is nothing else but the correlative of the deployment of apparatuses of security.”63 Foucault claims that an apparatus of security requires the condition of freedom as “the possibility of movement, change of place, and processes of circulation of both people and things.”64 He concludes toward the end of this lecture: I think it is this freedom of circulation, in the broad sense of the term, it is in terms of this option of circulation, that we should understand the word freedom, and understand it as one of the facets, aspects, or dimensions of the deployment of apparatuses of security.65 The latter strikes a chord similar to the frameworks critiqued by Butler and Ticktin that contain individuals inextricably within the parameters of power and legal freedoms and protections that, in the context of humanitarian need, are utilized for their long-term dispossession. These are the “freedoms” of policing by the state. In contrast to freedom as restriction, we can look to Foucault’s definition of freedom as the “option of circulation.” The ethical freedom I want to analyze, then, is Foucault’s notion of the practices of the care of the self, which will affect the care of the other directly and all others indirectly, by providing what he calls the “option

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 93 of circulation.” I want to emphasize this version of freedom because it is crucial for a more productive notion of ethical care than what is usually prioritized in current understandings of humanitarianism. In Ticktin’s criticism of the failures of humanitarianism, she recalls Boltanski’s claim that “humanitarianism requires innocent sufferers to be represented in the passivity of their suffering, not in the action they take to confront and escape it.”66 Ticktin further argues that this dimension of humanitarianism establishes hierarchies of humanity. She writes: “[R]ather than having access to rights or laws, humanitarian solutions depend on individual sensibilities, which, in turn, are shaped by racialized and gendered ideas of who is a worthy subject of compassion.”67 Ticktin argues further, “[I]n its current, institutionalized forms humanitarianism actually maintains inequality, in that it separates out two populations: those who can feel and act on their compassion and those who must be the subjects (or objects) of it; those who have the power to protect and those who need protection.”68 Ticktin therefore recommends new forms of political action and collectivity that embrace political work as a shared act which involves rethinking what political action and justice mean for everyone, not just for those who are understood as needing help or care, or for those who want to migrate. We all must rethink what an equitable world would look like, as it will affect us all.69 I agree with her conclusion and will pursue this in more detail in chapter 4. There I will focus on new forms of political care based on new forms of collectivity motivated by new affective grammars and grasped as “dilemmatic spaces” (Bonnie Honig’s term), where identities and livelihoods can be negotiated productively through necessary acts of contestation.70 This will be the natural development of the move from the aesthetic to the ethico-political in my analysis and with the points of emphasis I have taken. But it is first necessary to reawaken an alternative conception of ethical care that reappropriates Foucault’s insights into the care of the self as a practice of freedom. Returning to Foucault’s position on freedom as “an option of circulation,” I want to elaborate how he connects this to self-care. In an interview about “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” conducted in 1984, six years after the lecture referenced above, Foucault asserts freedom as “the ontological condition of ethics.”71 Ethics does not exist without freedom. Foucault links freedom to the concern or care for the self. He is interested in reintroducing and emboldening a form of self-care that pre-existed the ethical traditions and religious authority dissected in his theory of counter-conducts. He is particularly committed to practices of the self that are “more autonomous” than those enabled under religious authority, or through pedagogical limitations or because of the medicalization of the mind.72 Yet it is important to grasp Foucault’s

94  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical concept of autonomy in opposition to what he calls the “games of liberalism.” Much different from liberal notions of sovereignty and autonomy, such as in the framework of Kant, Foucault takes the subjection of the individual to political-religious authority as the necessary pretext to the individuation of the self. The latter constitutes a form of autonomy that recognizes the unavoidable subjection to power as the stimulus for the ethical self-constitution that acts in defiance of that authority. The logic of Foucault’s argument is such that if more autonomous measures of self-care can be rediscovered and sustained through never-ending acts of critique and counter-conducts, a more authentic notion of individual freedom will flourish. Foucault aims to reestablish individual freedom before its demise. His method in doing so is to excavate certain practices of the self in relation to what he calls “games of truth.” For the later Foucault—as in this interview and in the lectures at the Collège de France—the “games of truth no longer involve a coercive practice as they did in his previous analyses, but a practice of self-formation of the subject.”73 He calls such self-formation “ascetic practice, taking asceticism in a very general sense, in other words, not in the sense of a morality of renunciation but as an exercise of the self on the self, by which one attempts to develop and transform oneself, and to attain a certain mode of being.”74 While this has been understood as a highly aestheticized formation, I focus on Foucault’s understanding of self-care and care of the other through contestation in an ethico-political context. Foucault is careful to distance his notion of freedom from liberation. He regards liberation as a very specific form of socio-politico-economic transformation that cannot be conflated with freedom. Liberation is specific and occurs to and within a society; freedom is general and takes place for the individual working with games of truth in an ascetic mode of “exercise of the self on the self,” as a process of self-transformation.75 The interviewer asks whether liberation is not in fact a subsection of freedom—if freedom can take place without liberation. Foucault answers that liberation can be necessary for freedom. He states that a slave is not free, that in states of domination where possibilities are blocked or frozen, freedom is minimized or eliminated. But I want to add some missing nuance and distinction to Foucault’s response. At this juncture, I recall again insights of Heller with specific consideration of her contemporary moral and political philosophy. Heller is a survivor of the Jewish ghetto in Budapest during the Holocaust. Her father and other loved ones were murdered in Auschwitz. Heller has argued that we may have freedom when we do not have liberty, but by this she is referring to an “internal freedom” that may be present when external freedom and liberation are not. In a 2015 interview with Deutsche Welle she declared, “You always have a choice.”76 She describes the claim that we may be free even under conditions of authoritarianism

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 95 and totalitarianism as an exaggeration. Of course, we are not free at such times, she clarifies; but we have the capacity nonetheless to make a choice. It may comprise something as small as which side of the street to walk on; but this possibility of choice can never be eliminated if we exist as ethical subjects. Yet Heller’s model of choice does not arise ex nihilo. It is not the classical liberal conception of choice in which we act of our own sovereignty and autonomy, as is the case in the Kantian paradigm of the self-giving legislative nature of ethical subjectivity. In contrast, if we listen attentively to Heller’s life description of choice, it is always one made both rationally and emotionally, and inseparably with and by others. Heller has guided her insights on the possibility of choice as inner freedom from her experiences with her mother during the Holocaust. Together they cared for each other; together they survived. The care ethics of Heller, if I can attribute that phrase to her thinking, links back to the maternal care she received to survive in the Budapest ghetto and eventually escape her potential captors, and the paternal care she received to inform contestation against any state-religious authority that demands an annihilation of one’s selfhood. The two forms of care presented here in the form of an impossible survival certainly demonstrate the outer limits of internal freedom in the face of the worst kind of elimination of external freedom and liberation; yet their combination is instructive for thinking about self-care under the worst of circumstances. I therefore reject Foucault’s broader assertion in his interview that there is no freedom per se under such conditions by turning to recent moves by refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and displaced persons. Against Foucault I claim that these groups’ self-determined efforts to move and to survive, to attempt to place themselves and their loved ones in viable and sustainable territory, are in fact ethical moves that declare their choice by virtue of their mobility and actualize the “option of circulation” as a form of counter-conduct. These individuals and groups are not liberated; nor are they externally free. But they have the internal freedom to make a choice when possible. They have frequently acted on their selfcare at great peril, possibly bringing about their own death or death of their families and children. I agree with Foucault on achieving greater autonomy through ascetic acts of exercise on the self by the self—not as self-deprivation, but as a form of self-sustenance through care as counterconducts with others—but I think it is crucial to define freedom in a more expansive way that can exist through internal freedom as a choice without liberation. My argument is not meant to valorize those acts that put individuals at such great risk of harm, but to underscore the internal freedom of choice in the form of the ethical self-constitution of counter-conduct to authority. Hence the ethical constitution of subjectivity actualized and developed by the care a person requires to facilitate humane living conditions. This point also returns us to Butler’s conversation with Spivak with

96  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical special regard to their joint analysis of the act of declaration. Freedom is not given, but declared. Both Butler and Spivak emphasize the need for the declaration that one is free in order to create freedom, even or especially when that declaration is made against permissible speech acts, when the declaration is illegal or unsanctioned. I regard such an act as that of a group of refugees declaring together with their bodily presence at the margins of the E.U. or U.S. as a form of transnational political assembly, challenging the borders and their concomitant notions of “citizen” and “foreigner,” as Ticktin has urged us to rethink. Here Butler’s recent book on a performative theory of assembly provides additional material for consideration: Since the emergence of mass numbers of people in Tahrir Square in the winter months of 2010, scholars and activists have taken a renewed interest in the form and effect of public assemblies. The issue is at once ancient and timely. Groups suddenly coming together in large numbers can be a source of hope as well as fear, and just as there are always good reasons to fear the dangers of mob action, there are good grounds for discerning political potential in unpredictable assemblies. In a way, democratic theories have always feared “the mob” even as they affirm the importance of expressions of the popular will, even in their unruly form.77 Motivated by Butler’s and Honig’s scholarship on the anxiety of democracy when it becomes forced to face large collectives of “others,” we can regard refugees traveling to reach the shores of the E.U. and the U.S.-Mexico border, among other such boundary regimes, as an act of international political assembly. Most of the literature on refugee rights, based within conversations with United Nations declarations, focuses on the political assembly of those who grant rights to refugees and the need for collective action on the part of those who can help the refugees. This is still a very necessary discussion and I do not diminish its value; however, it remains trapped in the bias of what Alex Sager has called “methodological nationalism” that thinks most of all, sometimes exclusively, about the obligations to those arriving instead of focusing on the ethical self-constitution and agency of the migrants themselves. Therefore, I want to turn the analysis to the acts of the refugees themselves as individual and collective forms political action. My aim in doing so is to emphasize the self-declared freedom on the part of the refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers in a manner that rehumanizes their individuality, moving away from “innocent versus guilty” and “helpers versus victims,” thus recognizing the ethical subjectivity of their actions. This constructs a more solid ethical relationship among all the actors involved, showing the strong relationality and responsibility of all, instead of only one side of the equation—the

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 97 humanitarian aid or governmental agencies who provide help as the actors—whereas the others would be passive, anonymous, non-agential subjects. My renewed interpretation of freedom as a form of self-care and care of the other through acts of contestation in this chapter proactively anticipates the need to recognize intersubjectivity and inter-relationality in ethics, even or especially in the formation of autonomy and ethical subjectivity, quite in contrast to the Kantian liberal tradition and very much indebted to the theories of the feminist care ethicists, to be discussed in chapter 4. Elaborating further on the problematic refusal of agency to refugees and migrants, Ticktin has written: “Of course, care is welcome; but what does it mean to be welcomed as a victim, passive, and unable to take care of oneself? In the face of such images, will these migrants be able to get a job once they are up and on their feet again? Will they be trusted as smart, capable, responsible?”78 I do not downplay the complexity of this argument when confronting factors such as traffickers and manipulative, violent, or oppressive forces that contribute to refugee movement and migration. Nonetheless, I defend my claim that the groups of refugees arriving en masse constitute their own form of transnational political assembly that must be addressed in a much more dynamical and robust manner than has been done until now by humanitarian orders and policies. I would like to add that understanding refugees and forced migrants in this way also returns us to affective transformation, now understood in an ethical sense. There is a sincere need to define freedom as “the capacity of choice through the movement of subjective transformation.” This point adds nuance to my claim at the beginning of this chapter that ethical care will retroactively collaborate with the aesthetic domain of experience, for it is the aesthetic that initiated the transformation. The ethical self-constitution can show internal freedom even when, in Foucault’s analysis, we are not free. The point of the aesthetic-initiated affective transformation, which can contingently instigate an ethics of the freedom of the self as a practice of self-care, also returns us one more time to Givoni’s scholarship on The Care of the Witness. Givoni interprets Foucault’s theory of freedom in a manner related to my reading and application, although she circumscribes it specifically within the aesthetic creation of witnessing and testimony. Givoni interprets witnessing as Foucault’s argument on “a conscious practice of freedom” of the self on the self. For Givoni, witnessing and testimony exemplify how ethical practices of the self, as Foucault described them in the literature cited above, “can be harnessed to political action.”79 She further accounts for witnessing as “a configuration of ethics, morality, and truth in which care of self, care of others, critique of government, and empirical knowledge are bound together in mutually reinforcing ways” and thus demonstrate that the predicament of the loss of ethical subjectivity diagnosed by Foucault mid-twentieth

98  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical century “has not been a conclusive and irrevocable historical process.”80 Rather, witnessing and testimony can deliver the never-ending critique advocated by Foucault.81 While a great deal can be learned from Foucault’s notion of ethics as the self-care of freedom, his conception has been evaluated as facing clear limitations. One common complaint describes Foucault’s ethical self-constitution as an exercise of the self on the self that ends with the self. Yet, the scholarship of Givoni and Michael Feola, to name just two recent and helpful examples, argue to the contrary. Givoni writes that Foucault’s seminars, cited above, provide evidence that he did not regard ethics as any form of “self-indulgence, egoism, and self-exhaltation” and that while his ethics focused on an individual’s relationship to self, he did not intend his ethics as “an utterly private or isolated activity.” In contrast to such a depiction, Foucault’s ethics learns “from others,” relies on “a pool of formalized techniques and cultural models,” and has been formulated “to provide individuals with the necessary preparation for acting morally and for governing others.”82 Feola likewise depicts Foucault’s ethical model as one of intersubjectivity.83 He explains that Foucault has been critiqued for carrying out a kind of “narcissistic ‘dandyism’ ” through his art of self-creation, which “erodes subjects’ ties to others and undercuts their ability to collaborate in forms of agonistic counter-power. Instead such agents turn inward to conduct private experiments with their wants and desires.”84 However, Feola argues convincingly that, when properly interpreting Foucault, at a minimum free acts of the self “represent a way to mitigate the effects of normalizing power for those whose needs and pleasures and desires do not fit tidily within what has been recognized (and enforced) as the norm.”85 While I again delimit my project from any direct politicization of the aesthetic, distinct from what Givoni and Feola have done, their respective constructive readings of Foucault’s model of subjectivity for the purposes of intersubjective ethics, particularly from Foucault’s late seminars, offer an important counter-reading of Foucault against accusations of isolated dandyism and self-aestheticization. In the next chapter I will engage a supplement to Foucault’s model through arguments from feminist care ethics, which in some of its most recent developments has formulated care via international justice. Through the addition of feminist care ethics and the care of justice to the Foucaultian care of the self, we can achieve an even more compelling and directly applicable framework of the intersubjectivity of ethical care, while not diminishing Foucault’s emphasis on the care of the self as a practice of freedom, as an exercise of self-movement and comportment in the usurpatory embeddedness of power. I now turn to important insights from feminist care ethics in this context and connect them to my further development of political care.

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 99

Notes 1. Kelly, A Hunger for Aesthetics: Enacting the Demands of Art, ibid., p. 63. 2. Bauman, Wasted Lives, ibid., p. 58. 3. Ibid., p. 56 4. Stefan Czarnowski, “Ludzie zbedni w stuzbie prezemocy” (Redundant People in the Service of Violence), Dziela, vol. 2, PWN 1956 (1935), pp. 186– 193. Cited in ibid., p. 40. 5. Ibid. 6. Hauke Brunkhorst, “Global Society as the Crisis of Democracy,” in Mikael Carlheden and Michael Hviid Jacobson (eds.), The Transformation of Modernity: Aspects of the Past, Present and Future of an Era (London: Ashgate, 2001), p. 233; cited in Bauman, p. 41. 7. Ibid. 8. Bauman, Wasted Lives, ibid., p. 41. 9. Brunkhorst, ibid. 10. Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” ibid., p. 255. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., p. 256. 14. Andrew A.G. Ross, “Beyond Empathy and Compassion: Genocide and the Emotional Complexities of Humanitarian Politics,” in Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang (eds.), Emotions and Mass Atrocity (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 191–192. 15. Ibid., p. 193. 16. Ibid., p. 191. 17. Ibid., p. 194. 18. Heller, A Theory of Feelings, ibid., p. 5. 19. Ross, ibid., p. 191. 20. Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” ibid., p. 257. 21. Ibid. 22. See, e.g., important recent scholarship on ‘crimmigration’ by José Jorge Mendoza, “The Contradiction of Crimmigration,” APA Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy, vol. 17, no. 2 (2018), pp. 6–9. 23. Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” ibid., pp. 257–258. 24. See Parekh, Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement, ibid.; and Oliver, Carceral Humanitarianism, ibid. 25. For a very helpful overview of Nietzsche’s development of his moral philosophy, as a “transvaluation of all values,” from the early work Daybreak to the culmination of his moral theory in Genealogy, which I here discuss, see the Introduction by Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter in Nietzsche, in Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter (eds.), Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. vii–xxxiv. 26. See Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil, ibid. 27. A recent Op-Ed by David Brooks titled “The Rise of the Haphazard Self: How Working-Class Men Detach from Work, Family, and Church,” in the New York Times makes this point all too relevant. Brooks crassly and erroneously characterizes “working-class men” in the U.S. as simply not having the necessary work ethic and moral constitution to uphold the social fabric needed to fight the monstrous developments of late monopoly capitalism. Brooks blames “a culture that takes the disruptive and dehumanizing aspects of capitalism” on the lack of working-men’s ability to thwart

100  From the Aesthetic to the Ethical its effects. www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/opinion/working-class-men.html? searchResultPosition=21, accessed 6/21/19. See also Guy Standing’s work on the new “global precariat,” e.g., “Who Are ‘the Precariat’ and Why Do They Threaten Our Society?” in www.euronews.com/2018/05/01/who-arethe-precariat-and-why-they-threaten-our-society-view, accessed 9/12/19; and Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London and New York: Bloomsburg, 2016). 28. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, ibid., p. 11. 29. Ibid. 30. Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, ibid., p. 3. 31. Ibid. 32. Stierl, Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe, ibid. Stierl provides a great deal of illumination on the necessity and productivity of migrant protest movements of numerous forms. I will return to his research in chapter 4. 33. Acampora, Contesting Nietzsche, ibid. 34. Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, ibid., p. 3. 35. Ibid., p. 4. 36. Ibid., pp. 4–5. 37. Ibid., p. 7. 38. See Boltanski, Distant Suffering, ibid., chapter 8. 39. See Michel Agier, Borderlands: Toward an Anthropology of the Cosmopolitan Condition (Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016); Michel Agier, Managing the Undesirables: Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Government (Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011); and Michel Agier, On the Margins of the World: The Refugee Experience Today (Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008). 40. Bonnie Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 41. See Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, Cast Away: True Stories of Survival from Europe’s Refugee Crisis (New York and London: The New Press, 2016). See McAuley, “Frances Buses 1,600 Migrants Out of Notorious ‘Jungle’ Camp in Calais,” ibid. 42. See Bauman, Wasted Lives, ibid.; Bauman, Strangers at Our Door (Cambridge, UK, Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016); and Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge, UK, Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2000). 43. Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” ibid., p. 259. Cited therein: Liisa Malkki, “Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization,” Cultural Anthropology, vol. 11, no. 3 (1996), p. 387. 44. Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” ibid. 45. See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 46. Butler and Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-State? ibid., pp. 4–5. 47. Ibid., p. 5. 48. Ibid., p. 8. 49. Megan Specia and Maher Samaan, “Syrian Boy Who Became Image of Syrian War Reappears,” New York Times, June 6, 2017: www.nytimes. com/2017/06/06/world/middleeast/omran-daqneesh-syria-aleppo.html?rref =collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmiddleeast&action=click&contentCo llection=middleeast®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest &contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=1, accessed 6/17/17. 50. Givoni, The Care of the Witness, ibid., p. 7. 51. Ibid., p. 5.

From the Aesthetic to the Ethical 101 2. Ibid., p. 10. 5 53. Butler and Spivak, ibid., pp. 8–9. 54. Ibid., pp. 9–10. 55. Givoni, ibid., pp. 210–211. 56. Eduardo Mendieta, “Spiritual Politics and Post-Secular Authenticity: Foucault and Habermas on Post-Metaphysical Religion,” in Philip Gorski, David Kyuman Kim, John Torpey, and Jonathan Antwerpen (eds.), The PostSecular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society (New York: Social Science Research Council and New York University Press, 2012), pp. 316– 317. See Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978, ed. Michel Senellart (New York: Picador/ Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 115–162. 57. Mendieta, ibid., p. 317. 58. Ibid., p. 318. 59. See Acampora, Contesting Nietzsche, ibid. 60. Nietzsche, ibid. On Kierkegaard’s notion of the crowd in this context, see Stephen Backhouse, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Christian Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 161–197. 61. In contrast to those readings of Foucault which allege no intentionality on the part of the individual experiencing or contesting power—a reading in which individuals are simply ‘played’ by power—see Kevin Jon Heller’s compelling argument in “Power, Subjectification, and Resistance in Foucault,” SubStance, vol. 25, no. 1, issue 79 (1996), pp. 78–110. 62. See Parekh, ibid.; and Oliver, Carceral Humanitarianism, ibid. 63. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, ibid., p. 48. 64. Ibid., pp. 48–49. 65. Ibid., p. 49. 66. Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” ibid., p. 259. 67. Ibid., p. 265. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid., p. 266. 70. See Bonnie Honig, “Difference, Dilemmas, and the Politics of Home,” Social Research, vol. 61, no. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 563–597. 71. Michel Foucault, Foucault Live: Michel Foucault Collected Interviews, 1961–1984, ed. Sylvère Lotringer (New York: Semiotext(e), 1989), p. 435. 72. Ibid., pp. 432–433. 73. Ibid., p. 433. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. See “You Always Have a Choice: Interview with Agnes Heller,” www. dw.com/en/agnes-heller-you-always-have-a-choice/av-18944103, accessed 10/23/18. See also Anna-Verena Nosthoff, “Agnes Heller and ‘Everyday Revolutions,’ ” Public Seminar online blog, December 14, 2015: www.pub licseminar.org/2015/12/agnes-heller-and-everyday-revolutions/, accessed 10/23/18; and Heller, A Philosophy of Morals, ibid. 77. Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, ibid., p. 1. 78. Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” ibid., p. 260. 79. Givoni, ibid., p. 37. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. Givoni, ibid., p. 32. 83. See Feola, The Powers of Sensibility, ibid. 84. Ibid., pp. 18–19. 85. Ibid., p. 19.

4 From Care Ethics to Political Care Dependency, Misidentification, and Justice

“At least since Hegel’s dialectical conception of subjectivity, philosophers have acknowledged, even insisted on, the subject’s dependence on others. The subject’s sense of itself as an agent, its very subjectivity or selfconsciousness, is dependent upon the subjectivity and agency of others.” —Kelly Oliver, “Subjectivity as Responsivity: The Ethical Implications of Dependency” “Refugees and asylum seekers who display [a] level of agency suddenly shed the veneer of innocence and become a threat to the order and security of the receiving state. They are transformed from passive objects of compassion into untrustworthy actors who provoke a sense of fear.” —Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “The Faith-Gender-Asylum Nexus: An Intersectionalist Analysis of Representations of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ ”

In 2015 hundreds of thousands of migrants made their way from Turkey to Greece and Macedonia, then further through the Balkans from Serbia to Hungary, striving to reach the border of Austria. Many originated in Africa, Syria, and Afghanistan and aimed for the final destinations of Germany, Sweden, or other western E.U. member states. What happened to the refugees and forcibly displaced persons during this large migration—borders became shut, migrants found themselves entrapped in very poor conditions, E.U. members acted desperately to keep the migrants out while the migrants sought ways to continue on their route in an equally desperate manner—emboldened the already contentious social and political divide on immigration in the E.U. Anti-immigrant positions became more entrenched and were extended into new, more penalizing public policies, accompanied by renewed emotional outcry and urgency for resistance against these policies. The theme of immigration has since become even more solidified as one of the most pressing social and political concerns of the times. What stands out in the Balkan migrant march of 2015 are the resistant acts undertaken by the refugees and forced migrants determined to reach

From Care Ethics to Political Care 103 western and northern Europe, as well as actions from civil society that recognized the migrant movement as agential and worthy of care (aesthetically, ethically, politically, and religiously) in the face of realpolitik or outright hostility from European governments, with few exceptions— notably Germany, at least at first. Large numbers of migrants had become informally detained in the Keleti train station in Budapest, only to continue their march as an act of defiance against all odds and state orders.1 This march is crucial for an understanding of care as contestation from many angles. First and foremost, the migrants demanded to be recognized through their physical movement as crucial actors who were communicating their message of resistance and were therefore seen as political agents against the wishes of numerous heads of state and xenophobic, fundamentalist social and political groups. Second, the migrants were aided by those who documented and thereby communicated their actions, needs, and concerns, providing aesthetic care through witnessing acts of the migrants’ movements of resistance. Third, the migrants were supported by the civil society who provided humane means for them to flourish, such as food, water, and temporary shelter, as they continued their march northwest, thus providing ethico-political care. As Ali Emre Benli argues, “rather than making moral appeals to the decision makers on behalf of asylum seekers, [the civil society in this example] acted to empower asylum seekers in carrying out the act.”2 I will return to the example of the Balkan migrant march later in this chapter as one possibility for grasping several important dimensions of migrant agency and necessary actions of civil society to demonstrate my argument on ethicopolitical care. I aim to highlight the political agency of migrants and points of support and recognition from the civil society who witnessed and responded to their agency. At the forefront of this vignette stand the actions of the migrants themselves. Before I move forward in establishing the trajectory from care ethics to political care, let me review my position leading up to the present chapter. Chapter 3 discussed the transition from the aesthetic domain to the ethical by critiquing current frameworks of humanitarianism and showing the need for self-care and care of the other as contestation in the face of oppression. While the aesthetic, by default and constituted through contingent constellations of experience and decision, can make a leap to the ethical realm if it is to accomplish social and political transformation for the better, the ethical cannot be inherited unthinkingly from contemporary, normative presuppositions in humanitarianism. For this reason, chapter 3 dealt at length with recent criticisms of humanitarian norms and the institutions that carry out these conventions, for example, in the scholarship of Miriam Ticktin and Zymunt Bauman. Chapter 3 showed the lineage between these authors’ writings against the “good versus evil” in some iterations of humanitarianism,3 on one hand, and the arguments of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault on the care of

104  From Care Ethics to Political Care the self as contestation vis-à-vis the collective political-religious order, on the other hand. The aim of chapter 3 was to provide a nuanced account of the historical significance and genealogy of my overarching argument. However, the ethical critiques of humanitarianism and its governmental forms of appropriation have been one-sidedly deconstructive so far in my analysis. It is now the task to establish a constructive response to the negative dismantling of the problematic ethical norms addressed previously. The present chapter therefore turns to a new conception of care ethics applied to political contexts of exclusionary policies and further considerations in transnational justice, with the aim of putting forth a new notion of political care vis-à-vis humanitarianism. My argument now moves to understanding ethico-political action in an upbuilding manner as a follow-up to the previous deconstructive critiques. To accomplish this, I offer a series of intersectional analyses from feminist care ethics and theories of ethical and political care as these carry over into problems of misidentification and attempts to achieve transnational justice. My focus on care is based on the feminist emphasis on dependency internal to ethically constituted subjectivity, which necessarily entails an interdependent and mutually constitutive relationship between self and other. However, I distance my framework from earlier care ethics that essentialize care work as feminine, or which hone a provincial understanding of the need to care for others that would limit care only to those close to us. As mentioned in chapter 1, the scholarship of Virginia Held has been formative for these developments. Her insights from a decade ago on the necessary move from personal care ethics to political care for global citizens cannot be underestimated.4 Furthermore, she critiques the tradition of virtues ethics, as we saw also in the work of Bonnie Honig in chapter 3 from within a different methodology. Held positions her critique within care ethics’ valuation of dependency. However, for the purposes of moving beyond the “good and evil” of “refugee crisis,” such an understanding of dependency requires additional, marked development away from the aforementioned liberal limitations and into political action as contestation in a transnational context. This can be best grasped through a newly conceived concept of political care that is nonetheless indebted to the early advancements of care ethics. I draw on friendly critiques of care ethics (those critiques which are sympathetic to the aims and methodology of the ethics of care) and scholarship in transnational feminism to do so. Let me clarify that I am not first constructing an ethical framework based on the previous chapters in order then to apply it politically. Rather, I construe the current ethical project of care as always already inherently political. That should have been clear in chapter 3, such that each ethical critique presented there carried within itself political contexts, applications, and repercussions. The theorists I selected for my investigation all clearly situate ethics internal to a political mode of thinking and acting.

From Care Ethics to Political Care 105 In my argument, there is not first an ethical deduction that then becomes taken up in the political domain. The ethical and political are intrinsically embedded within one another. On this point, I am in agreement with the early work of Joan Tronto’s in the field of care ethics. In her 1993 book on Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care, the first boundary she challenges is that between morality and politics whereby she argues that for morality to be taken in earnest it needs to be contextualized within politics.5 She acknowledges the problem that “we usually assume moral arguments will be corrupted by association with politics,” but defends her approach by reminding us of Aristotle’s philosophy in which “the same values inform both moral and political realms.” She continues, “A concept that can describe both a moral and political version of the good life can help us to escape from the dilemmas of seeing morality and politics as separate spheres. I argue that care can serve as both a moral value and as a basis for the political achievement of a good society.”6 Two additional boundaries shattered by Tronto’s political version of care ethics include that of moral reason versus “interest” (or emotion and feeling), and the divide between the public and private domains. Here Tronto stands in good company with theorists such as Andrew A.G. Ross, who has shown convincingly the interrelationship between moral reason, on one hand, and moral sentiment and emotion, on the other hand, while not privileging one over the other.7 Furthermore, Michael Slote has powerfully demonstrated the requisite attention that should be paid to historical insights from sentimentalism in both meta-ethical and normative contexts for contemporary ethics.8 By refusing to uphold these boundaries, feminist care ethics actively moved ethics into a broader understanding of political care. Tronto transformed positions from previous theories of “women’s morality,” faulted as they were for their essentialism, parochialism, or ambiguity, into relevant contemporary understanding of the needs and advantages of thinking about politics and morality together in the form of political care. I now aim to advance these combined successes into the specific niche of humanitarian ethics and politics, albeit with important differences from Tronto’s approach. I contend that care ethics should be reevaluated and reconceived within contemporary discussions of transnational justice and political care. Tronto’s more recent scholarship has initiated the general parameters of such a discussion. Her 2013 publication intersects care ethics with issues of economic justice. She emphasizes the need to reinvigorate citizens’ caring about their own democracy and seeks to connect care to democracy by “changing the subject of political life from an abstract set of concerns about ‘the economy’ to a way of coping with real people’s lives that is much closer to the way that people actually live.”9 In 2015, Tronto reiterated the need to “think differently about care and democracy, and how it entails global responsibility.”10 Tronto thus expands her initial four-part

106  From Care Ethics to Political Care breakdown of care (from the 1993 book) as taking care of something, caring about something, receiving care, and providing care into the international context of the reciprocal relationship between responsibility and care. While these highlights from Tronto’s work are highly impactful, my project is distanced from her liberal conceptions of equality as seen in my inclusion of Rancière’s aesthetics in chapter 2 and Honig’s political theory in chapter 3. Motivated by Rancière, I have turned to newfound conceptions of redistributing the sensible by seeing equality as a form of disruption. Influenced by Honig, I have advanced a position for politics as a site of interruption that understands the need to resist abusive power through contestation. Honig’s publications underscore the need to challenge Western conceptions of liberal virtue as they contain difference through moral-political concepts such as fairness and justice. But the challenge to equality that I have engaged in my analyses of Rancière and Honig is supplemented by the focus of feminist care ethics on dependency.11 In addition to Tronto’s work, Daniel Engster’s scholarship from 2007 has been groundbreaking for its recasting of political care through a care ethics perspective.12 Engster highlights claims from early care theory as they may conjoin with the goals of traditional Western justice theorists. My position diverges from Engster’s and Tronto’s in that I underscore the need to think about care by countenancing the contestatory and dilemmatic processes that constitute ethical subjectivity both with and against traditional Western justice theories, first by contesting the ways in which justice has not been actualized, and subsequently by expanding international human rights through acts of resistance and solidarity that aim to overcome the criminalization of immigration.13 This process extends our understanding of justice into a more transnational framework and can include, in my final chapter, an understanding of religious belief as an additional resource of disobedience against systemic oppression. Although I present a different conception of care, my argument resonates with important elements of Tronto’s and Engster’s political applications of care ethics mainly by emphasizing interdependency in global theories of justice. Thus, in contrast to Engster’s book, which takes a notion of care and a notion of justice and adds them together, I argue that one first needs a new notion of care as a politically embedded understanding of contestation internal to ethically constituted subjectivity before advancing to applications in transnational justice. On the point of creating a new care ethical conception for theories of justice, instead of trying to create a hybrid model of care ethics with traditional Western liberal conceptions of justice, I agree with Michael Slote, who contends that we need to ask “whether there is any way for the care ethicists to persuade people that we shouldn’t think of political rights and justice in traditions terms, but should reformulate or reconceptualize our

From Care Ethics to Political Care 107 thinking about rights in the less familiar coinage of empathic concern and sensitivity.”14 He points out that since the 1980s when it was first formulated, care ethics “has put great stress on connection with others, and the kind of liberalism we are focusing on here emphasizes autonomy (rights) in a way that insists on the moral separateness of individuals.”15 Slote’s own scholarship has been foundational to positioning empathy front and center in the care ethical debates as a contrast to liberal conceptions of autonomy and justice, and he has argued convincingly for its high value placement in a rehabilitation of ethics more broadly.16 For these reasons, I have already challenged such a form of autonomy, as the kind Slote critiques, in chapter 3, and begun my analysis of care through the aesthetic analysis of feeling for the suffering of distant others in chapter 2. I have replaced the empty, institutionalized notions of benevolence and compassion with a more complex form of individual transformation in aesthetic and ethico-political care. In contrast to previous care ethical models of autonomy, I have contextualized selfindividuation as a process that begins with the recognition of one’s own narcissism through acts of witnessing in aesthetic care, thereby aiming to overcome this problem through further reflection on the predicament of aesthetic representation. Furthermore, ethical self-individuation begins with subjection to state-religious authority, as I argued in chapter 3. My notion of autonomy is therefore a provisional one that overtly recognizes, at its inception, the entrapment of intersubjectivity with and for others and the unavoidable constitution of subjection to others as part of human individuality. This point becomes a productive one through my reading of Kelly Oliver’s theory of the necessary dependency of the self on others in feminist care ethics, elaborated below. In the continuation of my argument in chapter 5, I construct an example through my analysis of the needed transnational care of refugees and forced migrants that shows the empathic ground for action rooted in contestation of systemic injustice with the goal of expanding international human rights. Therefore, my argument does not fall prey to the “hybrid” approach Slote criticizes. I rather contextualize my example as one possible case of employing a care ethical ground of empathy to expand the foundation of human rights centered on a notion of “affective dignity,” as I will make clear in chapter 5. To be sure, I do not contend that we can conceive of justice and then apply it to ethics, nor can we conceive of ethics and then apply it to justice. My point is, rather, that it is necessary first to examine and develop an understanding of political care, which has inherent within it a grasp of ethical subjectivity as contestation against oppressive normative power structures. It is then possible to move to specific conceptions of care in what could be just societies. My book therefore shares some common ground with Vàzquez-Arroyo’s 2016 study on Political Responsibility: Responding to Predicaments of Power where he “challenges the notion

108  From Care Ethics to Political Care that contemporary predicaments of power need an ethical ground or supplement that is philosophically deduced, either in advance or outside the realm of political life.”17 He rejects theories that prioritize a normative ground instead of “the political field of power, and are symptomatic of the onset of a depoliticized politics that characterize the present in the North Atlantic world.”18 I am in agreement with Vàzquez-Arroyo in the larger sense that I have first analyzed the power dynamics that have overridden ethics of the security and well-being of individuals and groups in need, and which have created a false normative stance that serves an oppressive and over-reaching politics, the focus of chapter 3. I am in consensus with Vàzquez-Arroyo that the political lens must be the tool with which analysis begins and not ends. Where Vàzquez-Arroyo importantly hones the notion of political responsibility, a key feature also of feminist care ethics (particularly Tronto’s), I am keen to advance this notion more deeply into political care and find a necessary ethical constitution that contests political abuse of power. My advancement in care ethics is reinforced by the salient point that care exists as a practice of completion, moving from the idealized norm of responsibility to the application of following through with an action. As Parvati Raghuram has argued, “Care, unlike responsibility, is strongly based on practice; care as a norm is based on and requires care completion.”19 Care exists to the extent that it has been accomplished, not in any idealized sense of duty or obligation that may never become acted upon. It is crucial to emphasize at this juncture that care ethics’ primary emphases on dependency and inter-subjectivity do not minimize responsibility. On the contrary, care ethics achieves a heightened understanding of responsibility precisely through its dependency critique of ethics and politics and its focus on care being carried out. It is also noteworthy that while my project is inspired by crucial achievements in feminist and maternal notions of care ethics in the realms of child care, elder care, disability studies, and more—including positions such as Tronto’s that critique the feminization of care and counter the stereotyping of care as female with an all-gendered conception of care ethics—I formulate care in a manner also distanced from these specific discussions. I rely on perspectives that move the discussions of care outside the restrictions of domestic care in its biomedical orientation and into a political discussion of care as humanitarianism. I do not dispute the necessity of care ethics that focus on child care, elder care, or care of the ill and disabled. Rather, I agree with the rejection of the feminine essentializing of care. I want to expand the insights from the former discussions of care ethics into the political realm of humanitarian care with the goal of transnationalizing care into a broader understanding that includes non-Western and non-Northern perspectives. To begin my argument on political care, it is then important to review the predominant achievements in care ethics from the feminist scholars

From Care Ethics to Political Care 109 who have led these groundbreaking accomplishments. In my judgment, the most fundamental feature of care ethics is recognition of relationality and dependency within human subjectivity. Following Slote’s critique, it is crucial to emphasize mutual relationality and interdependency as a way to contest the liberal ethic of autonomy that has dominated even within previous care ethical theories. This feature can be grasped in more detail by turning to an essay by Kelly Oliver on “Subjectivity as Responsivity: The Ethical Implications of Dependency.”20 If care ethics attributes moral meaning to the primary components of human dependency relationships, it will be important to contextualize this within my critique of stereotypes of dependency and independence, imputed to those in need versus those deemed capable of providing aid. Oliver’s article offers the means to carry out such a task. She presents a discussion of dependency that highlights and develops the inter-subjective framework inherited from the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. She writes: Hegel’s famous metaphor of the onset of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the struggle between lord and bondsman, postulates the dependence of subjectivity upon the recognition of the other. “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.”21 The lord and bondsman each seek recognition of their own self-consciousness through the self-consciousness of the other—they each want the other qua independent subject to recognize their independent subjectivity, too.22 It is clear that the placeholder of power finds himself to be more dependent on the recognition of the bondsman, for the lord is no lord without a subject over whom to rule, whereas in the process of acknowledging the inherent human need for recognition the bondsman discovers possibilities within himself to develop further as a self-consciousness. Moreover, as Oliver explicates: [I]t is the bondsman who ultimately achieves self-conscious recognition by virtue of his willingness to risk his physical existence for the sake of his freedom and by virtue of his own work, his physical relationship to the environment. By risking his physical existence, he puts a stake in something beyond mere being and yet by that very move he also becomes conscious of his physical relationship to his environment. For Hegel, the bondman’s submission to the lord is crucial for his emerging self-consciousness.23 This explication recalls several points from my previous chapters. First, self-individuation initially occurs ethically, as evidenced in Foucault’s theory of the self, discussed in chapter 3, through the process of subjection

110  From Care Ethics to Political Care to authority. This subjection subsequently serves as the prerequisite to contestation. Additionally, the movement of risk of self-harm is understood in this Hegelian reading as the more independent act, by “put[ting] a stake in something beyond mere being” and yet serving at the same time an action on behalf of oneself for survival. This has immediate application to the discussions in the previous chapters about the actions on behalf of refugees and forced migrants and their ethical self-constitution, that is, their ethical subjectivity that in the Hegelian model is a form of independence. These two points then shift the discussion from mere dependency on the part of one individual or group and independence on the part of others. For it is part and parcel of the self-constitution of all individuals to be mutually dependent upon others and to derive out of this dependence, ironically, a newfound independence. Oliver connects her reiteration of the Hegelian dialectical structure of subjectivity to the ethical obligation at the heart of subjectivity by emphasizing the act of witnessing. She explains that, similar to the Hegelian bondsman who comes to recognize himself via his dependence on others who are independent (those who defy his possession), through the witnessing act the ethical subject recognizes her dependency on the one whom she is addressing. The addressee supersedes her capacity for possession, and the subject remains dependent thereupon for her own subjectivity. Oliver writes, “This acknowledgement is the moment of ethical self-consciousness for the witnessing subject. It is the moment in which the subject realizes that an ethical obligation to others is built into the conditions of possibility for subjectivity.”24 The argument of ascertaining the structure of witnessing as foundational to the very establishment of subjectivity is highly relevant to the discussion in chapter 2 on aesthetic representation and aesthetic care. In witnessing the deaths, the photojournalists and medical aids placed the burden of responding not only on the self but on the international community. Because of the self-enclosed representation of the aesthetic, ironically, the photographers have brought the “mute screams” of the deceased into an act of address by the images. The photographs set up a dialogue, after the fact of aesthetic representation and care, with others who have a responsibility to respond, retroactively grasped in an ethical light. Oliver expands her argument by demonstrating that the structure of the witnessing act establishes a sense of the self as a subject and agent. The witnessing experience facilitates the possibility of address and response dialectically and dialogically, although as we saw in chapter 2, only after the aesthetic experience has come to an end. Not only is relationality to and with others made feasible in a contingent manner through witnessing, but also a relationality to one’s self.25 The images presented through the kind of aesthetic care I analyzed therefore carry the potential to stimulate ethical self-reflection in contrast to viewing refugees and forced migrants as passive and dependent. For if dependency

From Care Ethics to Political Care 111 and subjection are key factors of ethical self-constitution, spectators are viewing their own constitution of subjectivity when they see the suffering of distant others, and are therefore viewing the mutuality of agency of self and other in the process. This is a preeminent lesson from feminist care ethics, deriving from Hegelian dialectics. Oliver’s point is implicit within Sontag’s aesthetic argument on representing the suffering of others. But Sontag, Adorno, Boltanski, and the other theorists included in my argument on aesthetic care stand defiantly against any nostalgia that may take place through the aesthetic provocation of images. In this context, we must consider that another of the most prominent critiques of care ethics, historically, has been that it engages in a dominant form of sentimentalism, if the latter is defined as promoting excessive feeling of emotion or nostalgia, as in the vernacular use of the term in which there is a pause or paralysis in action. Such a form of sentimentalism in the everyday sense of the word stands in contrast to crucial developments in care ethics that recuperate the importance of emotions for ethics, above all the emotion of empathy.26 Recall Hamington’s apt summary that empathy in care ethics facilitates the capacity to work beyond stereotyping, emboldens an alternative approach to moral ontology, serves as a basis for moral action, encourages moral progress, and serves as a foundation for expanding what I previously indicated as the problematically limited circle of concern.27 In my judgment, therefore, a political care framework is needed that underscores the insights from feminist care ethics vis-à-vis affective transformation, emotion, and reasoning from particulars without slipping into any position of nostalgia, parochialism, or ambiguity. The affective transformation induced through aesthetic care presents a crucial context for political care. But it does not reduce an understanding of care to extreme emotion, nostalgia, or melancholy. Rather, it instigates a search for a new framework that attempts to work beyond the bias of a purportedly pure rationality in theories in ethics and permits a more effective means of responding to the suffering of others. The emphasis on empathy in care ethics that I am employing does not eschew rationality and purpose; it critiques any allegedly pure notion of reason that does not conjoin with emotion, while simultaneously rejecting any argument that would diminish the necessity of rational grounding and application. Therefore, to moderate sentimentalism in the domain of politics, I reframe care ethics as contestation in a manner that includes both rationality and emotion. What moves us to act comprises an admixture of emotional-affective transformation and rational understanding. We must, then, return to feminist care ethics and inquire about the relationship between sentimentalism and the positive valuation of others only near and dear to us, at the expense of our ethical care for others far from our identities and geopolitical concerns. This was precisely one of the limitations of early feminist care ethics in the work of Nel Noddings,

112  From Care Ethics to Political Care one of the most influential of the initial theorists.28 In her book on A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education in 1982, Noddings argued controversially that because it is impossible to care for everyone, we therefore have less of a duty, if any, to care for distant others, as long as there is little optimism that the care can actually be accomplished. But this argument is a priori self-defeating because one of the main criteria for the ability to care is a memory of hands-on application in which a person has been cared for by others. Therefore, the criterion of optimism about accomplishing care is rendered impossible prior to the event of caring for distant others because there is no previous interaction or memory with such distant others. Such an approach, when applied to global care of refugees and forced migrants, would forestall or fallaciously excuse any individual or group from the duty to care. As Alex Sager has pointedly defined the ethical demands of states toward refugees and migrants, states have a duty “to avoid depriving people of their rights,” “to protect people from deprivation of rights caused by other people,” and “to aid the deprived.”29 I wholeheartedly agree with Sager’s call for a renewed ethics in migration studies to avoid or ameliorate such deprivation. Noddings later partially revised her position in a 2002 book on Starting at Home: Caring and Social Policy where she claims that a duty to care for distant others does indeed exist and that our caring about others near to us can serve as a proper motivation to bring about local and global justice.30 However, Noddings reaffirms her previous stance that we cannot care for all, and this has a specific impact on our decision not to care for those far away. The limitations of this position will be revisited and further engaged by the development of my argument in chapter 5, where I connect my critique of the initial shortcomings in feminist care ethics to a portion of Martha Nussbaum’s argument on political emotions. Nussbaum requires an aesthetic-ethical attachment to those within our circle of concern as the foundation for the capacity to care for those beyond. Drawing on my argument in chapter 2 on aesthetic care, I argue that one of the primary functions of aesthetic experience is precisely to connect us to people, objects, and experiences far beyond our circle of concern. We can see the problematic of an unethical privileging of only those near to us repeated when considering another important point in the analysis of aesthetic witness and care, namely, that when witnessing is taken outside its self-limiting domain of the aesthetic and becomes directly translated into a political statement (thus diminishing or deleting the necessarily “mute” language of the aesthetic), it can lead to problems of ideological misidentification—precisely the root of propaganda. Ideological misidentification was a major issue of contention in the continued analysis of the New York Times article in 2017 of the image of Omran Daqneesh,31 and it is furthered by recent scholarship by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, particularly in her intersectionalist analysis of

From Care Ethics to Political Care 113 representations of the “refugee crisis.”32 As we saw in Ticktin’s argument against facile conceptions of humanitarianism discussed in chapter 3, the dichotomy of “innocent versus guilty” used to categorize refugees only serves the oppression of all those seeking humane living conditions. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh adds proximity to the equation such that the “good” are the refugees “over there,” whereas the “bad” are the asylum seekers “over here,” namely, those who arrive at our borders asking for admission or help. Hence, we see the false privileging of those near only when those near meet specific identity expectations. Noddings’ qualification that it is (almost) impossible to help those far away becomes a moot point when applied to asylum seekers at our door. The evidence in Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s investigation shows that when those near are former distant others, their character becomes suddenly suspect. This point underscores my argument from chapter 3 that the agency of the refugees as ethical individuals is not only not countenanced; more problematically, it is in fact interpreted in a negative ethical light when an individual or group take action by seeking safe haven outside their home territory. This is not regularly stated in an open manner by regimes of humanitarianism (although at times it is transparently formulated as such, e.g., by Hungary’s ruling Fidezs party, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, Trumpists in the U.S., etc.); it is more frequently encoded in thinly veiled discussions of “good versus bad” people or groups, which becomes reappropriated and subsequently enshrined in the battle of “good against evil.” Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s scholarship builds importantly on previous work on the near-far distinction, including publications by Peter Mares33 and Terence Wright, to name just two examples.34 Mares argues that “in general terms, the level of concern and empathy expressed in the media for the plight of refugees and asylum seekers is in inverse relation to their proximity to the place where any given report appears.” He elaborates: Viewed from a distance, displaced people are often portrayed as helpless victims of circumstance, deserving of compassion and assistance. This imagery changes dramatically when refugees and asylum seekers make their way to the developed world to seek protection under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Refugees and asylum seekers who display this level of agency suddenly shed the veneer of innocence and become a threat to the order and security of the receiving state. They are transformed from passive objects of compassion into untrustworthy actors who provoke a sense of fear. Mares therefore places the fault on “at best, a lack of political courage among authority figures in developed nations, and at worst, cynical political expediency,” while he does not “absolve journalists and editors of responsibility.”

114  From Care Ethics to Political Care In Mares’s analysis, we see a clear application of value fundamentalism, drawing on metaphors of war and engaging in fear mongering, as a method to strip individuals and groups of their capacity to care for the suffering of distant others. Mares invokes Edward Said’s groundbreaking work on “the insidious form of binary oppositions” that has “infected” the public domain by establishing clear distinctions between citizen and non-citizen that can be weaponized at will by the relevant political regime.35 Terence Wright connects this and the larger problems of media representation of refugees and forced migrants to the increasingly negative public policies and public mood vis-à-vis migration, as of a 2012 report from the Hague Process on Refugees and Migration, compared to ten years prior.36 Indeed, as we close out the second decade of the twentyfirst century, it would be fair to describe the mood as following a more bipolar distribution than ever in our recent historical memory. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s scholarship further expands our understanding of the problems of representation by examining the historical representation of refugees “through both generic and iconic frames, including through the binary of the good (= bona fide = there) and bad (= bogus = here) refugee.”37 She explains that representations of refugees have been “both geographically and historically specific,” and that “certain groups of refugees have been discursively rewarded for ‘patiently’ waiting in refugee camps in the global South and abiding ‘by the bureaucratic mechanism of the queue’ to legitimately secure a resettlement place in the global North,” citing Binoy Kampmark’s research from 2006.38 She underscores the fact that “The patience and compliance of the latter are directly opposed to those ‘bad refugees’ who engage in proactive livelihood and survival strategies, both in refugee camps and when attempting to reach and secure asylum in the global North.”39 Those who are “real” and “good” refugees “wait” and “do not jump the line.”40 Fiddian-Qasmiyeh references David Cameron’s justification for resistant admission of refugees who were already present in Europe. Cameron fell back on the false moral distinction between those already present as not “worthy” of continued refuge, whereas he was willing to help those vulnerable women and children from the Middle East.41 This analysis provides yet another important angle to the witnessing act of the photojournalistic images discussed in chapter 2 and adds sustenance to the argument in chapters 1 and 3. It is clear why the specific images of Kurdi and Daqneesh became embraced by Western media: they fit exactly the image of the “good” and “vulnerable” refugee “over there.” These images, most of all, speak volumes to the inaction produced by value fundamentalism. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh advances her position by attesting to the transition in conceptualizations of “bad” refugees in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as having been lined up with geopolitical interests, but she also emphatically adds the factors of “gender, ethnicity, region, or country or origin and religious background” and concludes that

From Care Ethics to Political Care 115 “refugees’ agency has been welcomed in some instances when this agency has supported a series of specific political projects prioritized by Northern states.”42 She outlines the fact that refugees are deemed “good” if they articulate “the ‘right’ political opinion (i.e. anti-communist)” or are regarded as the “correct” ethnicity, namely, whiteness, whereas “other refugees and asylum seekers have been perceived to engage in. . . ‘tactics of identification’ ” (citing C.S. Gross’s research from 2004), which include a process of identifying with the expected parameters of the given trauma discourse.43 Accordingly, refugees need to make themselves “legible” to the decision-makers by appropriating such trauma discourses, and these schemas inevitably fall prey to essentializing notions of gender and religion. For example, the image of the ideal refugee as “the ‘perennial’ and ‘universalized’ representation of refugee women is one of apolitical, nonagentic innocents in need of protection,” thus “the omnipresent framing of the vulnerable ‘Madonna and Child’ in accounts of forced migration projected to the West resonates clearly with classical Christian iconography.”44 Fiddian-Qasmiyeh rightly contrasts this predicament from “a triptych in which gender, religion, and forced migration are portrayed (and . . . viewed) side by side.” Instead, “this nexus is complexly intersectional and mutually constitutive.”45 I will return to the theme of religion and further counter the problematic of “tactics of identification” in my concluding chapter, where I analyze the potential role of religion in a rehabilitated form of political care and construct a transnational notion of what I call “religious care.” But for now, it is important to concede that refugees are not only impacted by discursive parameters and policies that line up with “the global good governance frameworks,” but also that “refugees use their agency to negotiate complex geopolitical realities to maximize their social, political, and legal positions.”46 Because of the problem of misidentification, refugees and forced migrants have been placed into a restrictive valuation of assumed “good versus evil” to which they must respond in kind if they are to promote their own survival. For this reason, the overly politicized, dichotomous employment of determinations of “good versus evil” when evaluating a person’s or group’s ontological veracity as a refugee has produced serious inefficacy in systems of humanitarian care.47 In response to the matrix of misidentification that feeds what she calls the “grave dysfunction” in systems of humanitarian care, FiddianQasmiyeh’s scholarship therefore initiates new possibilities of witnessing that attribute robust ethical agency to asylum seekers. This move coheres with my argument from chapter 2 on the need to develop newly transformative affective grammars through aesthetic forms of representation and with Kelly Oliver’s emphasis on witnessing in care ethics in which the subjectivity of the other is recognized as a form of dependence and mutual ethical implication between self and other. One of the most powerful means to substantiate new possibilities of witnessing comprises

116  From Care Ethics to Political Care the recollection of counter-images that show men performing care work, most especially images of Muslim fathers with their children who have safely gained refuge, which directly counters the stereotypical criminalization of Muslim males seeking refuge opposed to the trope of the innocent and vulnerable “womenandchild.” Fiddian-Qasmiyeh references the contrast between Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body and the media representation of his father as a “smuggler” or trafficker. She writes: From the position of vulnerability and loss receiving overwhelming public sympathy, [Abdullah Kurdi, Aylan’s father] was promptly demonized by the media as a heartless and greedy smuggler who was reportedly responsible for this family’s death; in turn, only three months after the massive outpouring of solidarity for refugees prompted by the image of Aylan Kurdi, the widespread reporting of sexual assault against women in Cologne’s public spaces over New Year’s Eve led to a major shift in public perceptions of refugees.48 Moreover, Charlie Hebdo’s imagined satire of Aylan as a boy who has matured into a sexual predator speaks painfully to the political tropes of heteronormative masculine versus feminine refugee and fear of perceived assaults on “Western,” i.e., Christian, values.49 Add to this the racialization of religion in which “the refugee’s body becomes a site of contestation and target for discrimination when his or her physical characteristics are equated by observers with a particular religion; this is especially the case when that religion has been Othered, demonized and constituted as a barbaric threat through long-standing historical and political processes.”50 Furthermore, the problematic of helpless women juxtaposed to criminalized Muslim men feeds the false premise that secularism liberates against the repression of religion, most particularly, Islam. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh thus exposes the logic of humanitarian norms that repeat neo-Orientalist and heteronormative, patriarchal power structures. Hence my argument that political care needs to carry out its own acts of contestation against such politicized norms. Contestation becomes manifest as affective transformation that contingently moves individuals and groups to acts of political care. At this juncture, we can recall the account of the Balkan migrant protest march in 2015. We can examine the component of the march in which members of civil society aided the migrants by documenting their movements, demands, and concerns. This serves as a productive counterexample to the problems of misrepresentation diagnosed by the authors above. The civil society met the migrants and refugees where they were, both figuratively and literally in the place of their protest, and provided support through documenting their needs, concerns, and agential actions of marching against state orders. As Ali Emre Benli has recounted: [I]n addition to asylum seekers, there were a number of civil society actors who enabled the march to have a positive and durable

From Care Ethics to Political Care 117 outcome. Volunteer organizations, solidarity groups and ordinary citizens accompanied asylum seekers and provided for their basic needs. Others documented and disseminated information regarding the event and amplified the voice of the march across Europe.51 We can hold up such actions in addition to those highlighted by FiddianQasmiyeh as positive and constructive examples of care as contestation in the face of the problems outlined thus far. Returning to the trajectory of the “tactics of identification” and misidentification, the argument is emboldened by important insights from Shakira Hussein’s book From Victims to Suspects: Muslim Women Since 9/11.52 Hussein provides several contextualized accounts in which the image of vulnerability of women changed after 9/11, but she also narrates ways in which those traditionally perceived as vulnerable (women with their children) become “suspect” when on “home” territory. This is demonstrated openly in the combination of burqa, burqini, hijab, and niqab bans enacted or proposed across Europe and Canada.53 In interesting ways, the respective publications of Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Hussein reaffirm arguments that uncover the Christian foundation of “secularism” and, by extension, directly challenge the notion of secularism as the liberator opposed to the oppressor of Islamic faith.54 As Alia Al-Saji and Étienne Balibar have argued from within different perspectives, the battle of “universals” between secularism and religion is a battle that has inherited colonial-imperial historical remnants and which gets fought out on the gendered and sexualized bodies of women from regions and faiths outside the West.55 Focusing on vulnerability, then, can lead to questionable practices of individual and collective politicized attribution of worthiness to some groups at the expense of others, based on false premises motivated by individual sensibilities. My argument has therefore aimed to transvalue vulnerability and dependency into a renewed sense of agency via care as contestation. My aim has been to move emotion and affective transformation into contestatory acts of ethico-political transformation actualized rationally. As Miriam Ticktin has argued, “in its current, institutionalized forms, humanitarianism actually maintains inequality, in that it separates out two populations: those who can feel and act on their compassion and those who must be the subjects (or objects) of it; those who have the power to protect and those who need protection.” Ticktin further claims that “rather than having access to rights or laws, humanitarian solutions depend on individual sensibilities, which in turn, are shaped by racialized and gendered ideas of who is a worthy subject of comparison.”56 Ticktin therefore urges us to think beyond care “as a very partial array of moral sentiments and social arrangements.” In contrast, political work is necessitated as a shared act that requires a recasting of “what political action and justice mean for everyone.”57

118  From Care Ethics to Political Care For the above reasons, the notions of vulnerability internal to specific iterations of humanitarian discourse premised on false notions of compassion and benevolence require reevaluation. Scholars such as Martha Albertson Fineman advocate a modified approach to the human rights paradigm to include a more substantive application of vulnerability. As Jacqueline Bhaba explains: The problem with the rights paradigm, Fineman suggests, is that it is focused on individual injury and the moment of harm and not the development of resilience over the life course. Under a vulnerability analysis, [Fineman] argues, “the state has an obligation not to tolerate a system that unduly privileges any group of citizens over others.”58 Vulnerability is regarded in this theory as a counterpoint to identity-driven categories and limits of anti-discrimination law. Judith Butler argues that differently positioned bodies perform resistance through the mobilization of vulnerability and precarity.59 However, we are forced to examine whether a vulnerability framework inadvertently repeats the structures of misidentification that become reified, according to Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s and Hussein’s analyses. We must heed the compelling claims that directly challenge an emphasis on vulnerability and identification because they may overtly and covertly repeat oppressive power structures. Resulting from this analysis, the most important question remains how to work through a newfound conception of political care to address the actual and acute needs of refugees and forced migrants to bring about transnational justice. In review, not only have I provided a critique of the vulnerability model; I have also distanced my framework from those that uphold traditional liberal conceptions of justice, which merely reiterate universal notions of equality and fairness without taking into consideration the highly geopolitical and historical contexts of the construction and application of these concepts. We are well to remember Parvati Raghuram’s emphasis on concerns of “space and place as they relate to care ethics.” Raghuram reminds us that “as care is culturally sensitive and contextual, it is also contingent on place. Where care is played out will come to influence how care is understood.”60 Consideration of these critical points began in chapters 2 and 3 through aesthetic and ethical analyses of care that counter empty constructions of justice, equality, and fairness with a more expansive approach to understanding human care as acts of contestation in the effort to respect difference. The critique of previous “universal” notions of equality and fairness is indebted to crucial insights by feminist care theorists. Feminist care ethics has underscored interdependency in human ethical relationships and the constitutive existential dependency of all human beings. Yet, Raghuram has traced the contours of previous problems in care

From Care Ethics to Political Care 119 ethicists’ reliance on notions of care from the Global North serving as presuppositions about care in the Global South. She has written: In care ethics, caring is seen to be embedded in practice and locally contingent. However, despite a large and thriving literature on care practices as they vary across the globe, the implications of the different meanings and geohistories of care for the ethics of care have hardly been addressed. Rather, most theorisations of care ethics have implicitly conceptualized care as a universal practice or drawn on care as practiced in the global North.61 To combat these shortcomings in traditional care ethics, Raghuram emphasizes the need to regard care as both practice and completion that countenances differences in place and therefore advocates for an emplacement of care ethics. We can see the complex nature of an emplacement of care ethics through one example in Raghuram’s scholarship, namely, the increasing feminization of migration in which the numbers of single women migrating have increased in the recent past; these women take on paid roles as mobile labor, most especially in the sector of care work. Migrant carers not only have their professional work as caregivers, but also are engaged in distanciated care for those family members and loved ones left behind. So, issues in care ethics become particularly magnified as a method of analysis in this context where multiple assumptions, definitions, backgrounds, and trainings in care are at play on both professional and personal levels. For these reasons, care ethics as a vehicle to analyze migration can present both benefits and barriers. The main challenge Raghuram’s scholarship aims to address lies in the frequent erasure of difference in notions of care from the Global South as they become assimilated into or cancelled by conceptions of care in the Global North. As she outlines: In the public world of paid care, such as in the professions, attempts to ameliorate these differences in care involve training and accreditation. Institutional frameworks and organizational efforts attempt to erase the different understandings of care that migrants may bring with them by putting in place integration policies. However, in more privatized sectors such as the household, where more and more care is delivered, there is much less recognition of the different traditions of care. Or rather, these differences are seen as a lack, often as personal failures of the carer. These weaknesses are also then laden with the hierarchies of class and race so that condemnation of migrant carers becomes extant. They mark, indeed scar, the working lives of migrant carers globally. Thinking about the transfer of place-based caring skills is therefore an ethical challenge that migration scholars must take up.62

120  From Care Ethics to Political Care At the personal and professional levels, such expectations of assimilation or replacement of previous traditions of care as described by Raghuram can be devastating. Her example is illustrative in teasing out ways in which Global North expectations of care have dominated feminist care ethical frameworks historically, even when analyzing global concerns. She counters this problem with an argument centered on the interpersonal, embodied, and the affective in what she calls “care transfer,” and she prioritizes components of practice for ethical evaluation. She places noted emphasis on contingency and contextuality, and underscores previous feminist care ethical consolidation of care not as a normative ideal, but as a form of “care completion,” in other words, by examining the care that is actually provided. Raghuram aims for the application of care ethics that actively recognizes care as physical, emotional, and embodied forms of practice. In my argument, I have included specific examples of care as practices of completion via contestation, beginning with the act of witnessing constitutive of aesthetic care and which serves as a contingent foundation to ethical care. Nonetheless, I have critiqued some of the problematic narcissism at the heart of aesthetic witness through Boltanski’s critical evaluation and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s diagnosis of misidentification. Furthermore, Raghuram’s critical appraisal of Western and Global North presuppositions of care serving as ideals of care for actors from the Global South is mirrored in the indictment of narcissism by Boltanski. This overarching line of critique can be helpfully extended into additional ethical and political territory through recent developments in transnational feminism. Take the example of Serene Khader’s critical evaluation of previous forms of universalism in feminist theory in her latest monograph, Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic.63 Khader resists both poles of traditional Western feminism’s problems: imperialist and ethnocentric universalism, on one hand, and a completely relativist position on the other hand. She insists on a normative ground that can negotiate between these two extremes and identifies it in the medium of the refusal of oppression, whereby one group would be wrongfully disadvantaged in a systematic form in relation to others. The main target of her critique is located in “missionary feminism,” a movement that prioritizes the West over other regions, ascribes to an Enlightenment theory of progress, believes in the liberal individual as the universal moral unit for a code of ethics, commits to military interventions that are in fact nonurgent with the aim of “liberating” non-Western women as a universal priority, and omits recognition of local and regional politics affecting women’s lives and everyday choices in non-Western contexts. Following the trajectory of my argument thus far, the actions and practices of refugees and forced migrants should therefore be met where they are, relying on the normative grounding of Khader’s argument to work against oppression and Raghuram’s necessary emplacement of care

From Care Ethics to Political Care 121 ethics. A policy position that respects these calls for countenancing the specifics of place and the particular values of care from the refugees and forced migrants themselves can be located in Katy Long’s argument on “Rethinking Durable Solutions.” Long makes clear that the most sustainable policy solution is to positively recognize the movements of refugees and forced migrants whereby they locate their best possibility in a series of less-than-ideal options. She reiterates the three conventional accounts of durable solutions as repatriation or “return to the country of origin,” local integration or “permanent residency or naturalization in the first country of asylum,” and resettlement or “ordered migration to a third country.” She demonstrates that all three options encounter serious challenges.64 Although she initially retains the language of “restoring the ‘normal’ order of things after the disruption of sudden, traumatic displacement,”65 she recognizes the sedentarist bias that “shapes statecentered responses to migration” and contends that instead of thinking about migration as the problem, we should instead look to permissible migration across borders as the practical solution.66 In light of the above points, Long therefore advocates acceptance of refugee movement between places so that those forcibly displaced may construct their own solutions.67 The first option of repatriation is “not feasible because of prolonged conflict and lack of ‘home’ ” where home once existed, as is currently the case in Syria, for example.68 In regard to the second option of local integration, Long clarifies that states rarely, if ever, approve of this because they aim to sustain order.69 For the third option of resettlement, there is likewise little success. According to the UNHCR, only one percent of refugees benefit from resettlement. As James Milner has evidenced, more than two-thirds of refugees become entrapped in a long-term, state of limbo as a protracted situation of displacement.70 Long therefore concludes that the conventional solutions do not effectively relieve most refugees and internally displaced persons from protracted displacement.71 She argues therefore that the three traditional answers to asylum and forcible displacement are not efficacious because they wrongly fixate on “people in places.” Instead of continuing to employ such a fixation, we ought to think in terms of embracing the “fluidity” of displacement and migration. Accordingly, we should consider “how the international community can work to ensure the protection of freedom of movement.”72 Long contends convincingly that solutions are best grasped as meeting “realizable rights,” such as “providing the possibility of leading a dignified and autonomous life,” which includes “physical security, a livelihood, opportunity for education and development.” She pointedly states that the durable solution is “political inclusion” instead of “physical removal.”73 We are urged to think about ways in which migration and mobility might facilitate refugee movement freely among places through which individuals can construct their own durable solutions, and she concludes emphatically

122  From Care Ethics to Political Care that “individuals should be free to move.”74 Because of the complexity of identities and differing relations to host countries, we ought to permit refugees to develop their solutions, which would in turn ameliorate some of the trauma of displacement.75 We should realize that new “pathways” for migration to the West and the Global North should be made feasible, which could “complement existing human resettlement programmes” and “establish new channels for economic and social development.” These would in turn support networks in a transnational context.76 The aim of the argument I have constructed is to reinstate the agency of refugees and forced migrants in ethics and political theory. If we will substantively rethink political care in a manner to address the ever-increasing number and kind of refugees and forced migrants on a basis of transnational justice, we will act in a contestatory manner that actively recognizes the legitimacy of refugees and forced migrants to carry out acts of resistant movement in the face of an unjust international order that deprives them of the means to flourish humanely. I want to underscore a proviso made by Long, namely, that there are risks involved in advocating what I am calling “constestatory care” and what Long advances as opening the paths of migration and mobility to permit refugees to determine their own futures according to their respective identities and relations to host countries. Nonetheless, I agree with Long that we should not stop considering the possibilities, that we should “rethink not only solutions, but protection.”77 In other words, she explains that the restrictions currently in place, which aim for the protection of refugees directly or inadvertently “place those in need of protection at risk or harm” because “[m]any forced migrants . . . choose to ‘solve’ their displacement through illegal migration, increasing vulnerability to trafficking and other exploitation.” Therefore, I agree that we should stop deliberating endlessly over solutions and instead earmark mobility not as a final point for displacement, “but an integral component of international efforts to maximize refugees’ choices.”78 The advocating of freedom of movement against sedentarist presuppositions and what Alex Sager has pointedly theorized as the cognitive bias of “methodological nationalism” in most political theory79 is additionally reinforced by considering the phenomenon of migrant protest movement and the radical political philosophy of cosmopolitanism. As Alex Sager has written: Migrant voices and acts of citizenship help us overcome the cognitive bias of methodological nationalism and ground a robust, feasible cosmopolitanism. Through their presence and political action, they serve as a vanguard for more inclusive visions of community and reveal the porous nature of borders and boundaries.80 The voices of migrant protest movements provide the necessary civil disobedience against a “cosmopolitanism from above” that has become

From Care Ethics to Political Care 123 compatible with nationalism because, as Sager has exemplified, it does little or nothing to challenge the status quo through its normative moral applications. It bespeaks a lack of imagination, a theme I will address in chapter 5, because of its “failure to recognize that other possibilities exist.”81 The vagueness of moral cosmopolitanism leaves too much undetermined through a seeming moral imperative and therefore opens up space for nationalists and tribal localists “to insert their own more robust— and, on the surface, compelling—moral vision.”82 Therefore, Sager recommends the move to political cosmopolitanism “from below” by countering those cosmopolitanisms in which the framework “is reduced to a static set of (allegedly) cosmopolitan arrangements that graft the statist model of political authority onto a world state or a federation of nations.” Sager’s proposal is “radical,” in his words, in that he presses for the following two considerations: criticality and constructivism. A radical cosmopolitanism needs to be critical by continuing to entertain the possibility that although we may have good intentions, the ethical foundations and “moral discourse” in the field upholding institutions and policies should either be rehabilitated or eliminated. Sager rightfully pushes first for an undoing of institutional measures and policies, following the dictum that the world needs to be “unmade” before it can be rebuilt.83 For these reasons, I have advocated a model of care as contestation that seeks to upend the existing way of regarding refugees’ and forced migrants’ needs and to directly challenge the normative measures of certain iterations of humanitarianism that hinder effective care, or worse, that detain and harm those it alleges to help. A radical cosmopolitanism likewise requires a constructive approach, in Sager’s evaluation, in actively correcting the ongoing failure of moral cosmopolitanism and its liberal institutions with abstract principles of equality, freedom, and justice to recognize human agency.84 Sager pinpoints the figure of the migrant as a paradigm of the cosmopolitan actor from below who empirically moves against abstract utilitarian or Kantian-based figures of autonomy, which never see the actualization of their agency into constructively creating a new world based on cosmopolitan values. Sager’s notion of the migrant as the quintessential actor of radical cosmopolitanism connects importantly to Raghuram’s theory of care as a practice of completion that stands in stark contrast to any ideal theory of autonomy in cosmopolitan theory. The struggle between abstract ideals and actual change for the protection of refugees and forced migrants is impressively addressed by Ali Emre Benli’s argument on cosmopolitanism and avant-garde political agency. To close out this chapter, I want to consider Benli’s position in more detail as the culmination of my framework on care as a practice of completion through contestation. Benli employs the example of the 2015

124  From Care Ethics to Political Care Balkan migrant march to seek answers to the dilemma of how individuals might gain or actualize political agency when they are not formally recognized as members of a state and are seeking protection by that state. He provides abundant and nuanced detail on the ways in which E.U. institutions failed to produce a sufficient response to the humanitarian situation in 2015. Because refugees are subject to threat of violation of their basic human rights, and are unable to exercise or make claims about their rights due to their lack of political membership, a default position has been to turn to moral and institutional forms of cosmopolitanism— the cosmopolitanism “from above” critiqued by Sager—as a solution. However, similar to the problems powerfully called out in Katy Long’s policy analysis, the traditional remedies have been abundantly evidenced as ineffective in the recent past (as well as in a longer trajectory). As Benli argues, “The discrepancy between the ideals with which refugee-protecting institutions were erected and the reality asylum seekers faced in the summer of 2015 is telling of a crucial problem of enforcement within transnational bodies.”85 There was a massive lack of preparation to receive such numbers of people, for example, in Greece and Hungary. Infrastructure and resources were and still are woefully lacking or withheld from those in need of help, such that most refugees were detained in camps, in order to hinder their movement, with conditions “far below international standards.” This led to asylum seekers intentionally escaping official channels of registration, in turn feeding more disorder and additional vulnerabilities, including individuals and groups falling prey to human smugglers.86 Benli argues powerfully that refugee protection is a global public good that must be secured globally whereby states have to work together; he describes refugee protection as a global common “seen as a collective good that should be committed to an ideal of democratic global governance.”87 But what can be done in light of the marked failure of such governance measures to work transnationally? I agree with the model of avant-garde political agency put forth by the conclusion of Benli’s argument. On one hand, he concurs with a cosmopolitan framework that contends refugee protection “should be governed by democratic ideals.” He elaborates, “This is due to the rights of refugees at stake, the kind of remedy required for refugees to enjoy these rights, and the existing institutional structure in Europe.” In face of the inadequacies of the institutional frameworks mentioned previously, it is clear that the change agents are the “cosmopolitan avant-gardes who uphold progressive values, have the means to initiate change, and constitute a model for others to follow.”88 However, in response to some “friendly critiques” of cosmopolitanism from below, Benli concedes that “avantgarde acts of powerful states and civil society organizations undermine cosmopolitan values.” One example, according to Benli’s analysis, is the state action of Germany during the “refugee crisis” of 2015 and 2016.

From Care Ethics to Political Care 125 Therefore, we are left with “a specific kind of avant-garde” demonstrated by the asylum seekers themselves.89 The upshot of Benli’s investigation comprises a generative disaggregation of four kinds of avant-garde political actors to be reckoned with: “the powerful states that acted to advance cosmopolitan ideals; the part of civil society upholding some power that acted on behalf of refugees; the part of civil society upholding some power that acted to empower refugees; and finally, refugees with no formal status that nevertheless acted in democratizing ways.”90 Benli concurs with the “friendly critique” of radical cosmopolitanism that highlights the power disparity of state actors functioning in a rogue manner and which can potentially undermine cosmopolitan ideals by upholding power inequities in the long-term.91 But he also argues that While problems associated with power disparities are real and pressing, acts of those with power cannot be categorically left out. While conditions of political effectiveness and motivational sustainability are demanding, acts of non-citizens can still achieve a durable outcome, for each act with its particular circumstances and features offers a unique attempt to make right claims and advance cosmopolitan values.92 Benli’s position reinserts the political agency of the refugees and forced migrants, yet also places due responsibility on state actors and the civil society to support and recognize their agential political movements. By separating the actors from the features and context of the act, he provides a sustainable way to move forward—instantiating Katy Long’s policy recommendation—with avant-garde political agency in a radical cosmopolitan model from below that does not simply reiterate or exacerbate power inequities, a problem of radical cosmopolitics demonstrated in Ingram’s critique.93 Benli’s version of avant-garde cosmopolitan political agency unites with important elements of Sager’s radical cosmopolitanism on the need both to upend existing deficient institutional orders and yet still work within radical cosmopolitan goals. My model therefore brings Sager’s, Benli’s, and Raghuram’s positions together to advance my argument on care as a practice of completion through contestation. Such a form of care ethics transformed into political care is best understood through recent advancements in radical cosmopolitanism that provide the means to ascertain and recognize the movements of refugees and forced migrants as acts of political assembly (incorporating my argument in chapter 3) that work toward transnational justice through the forced exercise of human rights against regimes of refugee “protection” or hostile positions that do more harm than good in the context of the global public.

126  From Care Ethics to Political Care

Notes 1. “Migrant Crisis: Thousands Stranded at Balkan Borders,” BBC, October 19, 2015: www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34568499, accessed 9/21/19. 2. Benli, “March of Refugees, Cosmopolitanism, and Avant-Garde Political Agency,” ibid., p. 129. 3. I do not speak in my argument for all iterations of humanitarian care; it is beyond the scope of my book to engage such a broad analysis. I focus on those versions of human care that problematically rely on reified presuppositions of Christian benevolence and compassion, tied as they are to historical problems of resentment and socio-economic inequity, as diagnosed in chapter 3. One should refer to ethnographies that disaggregate humanitarian regimes, actors, and organizations, for example in the work of David Mosse. See Mosse, Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice, ibid. 4. Held, The Ethics of Care, ibid. 5. Tronto, Moral Boundaries, ibid., p. 3. 6. Ibid., p. 9. 7. Ross, “Beyond Compassion and Empathy,” ibid. His research was discussed in chapter 3. 8. Michael Slote, Moral Sentimentalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 9. Tronto, Caring Democracy, ibid., p. xiii. 10. Joan Tronto, “Democratic Caring and Global Responsibilities,” in Marian Barnes, Tula Brannelly, Lizzie Ward, and Nicki Ward (eds.), Ethics of Care: Critical Advances in International Perspectives (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2015), p. 21. 11. It is important to note in this preliminary context that Eva Feder Kittay was one of the first scholars of feminist care ethics to construct a “dependency critique” of the liberal ideal of equality. In a 1999 monograph, Kittay has written: “A conception of society viewed as an association of equals masks inequitable dependencies, those of infancy and childhood, old age, illness, and disability.” See Eva Feder Kittay, Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. x–xi. Kittay pushed for “a new theory of equality that embraces dependency” and claims that the “problem is with the formulation of the ideal of equality, not in the concept itself” and that “interdependence begins with dependence. Ibid., p. xii. 12. Engster, The Heart of Justice, ibid. 13. On this point, my position resonates with the scholarship of Stierl, Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe, ibid., who has elaborated three crucial components to migrant protest movements: resistance, excess, and solidarity. I discussed the element of excess in chapter 3, also in regard to Bonnie Honig’s theory. I will now expand the analysis of contestatory acts, relating further to Stierl’s important work. 14. Slote, “Care Ethics and Liberalism,” ibid., p. 38. 15. Ibid. 16. Michael Slote, The Ethics of Care and Empathy (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2007); Slote, Moral Sentimentalism, ibid.; Michael Slote, From Enlightenment to Receptivity: Rethinking Our Values (Oxford and New York: 2013). 17. Antonio Y. Vàzquez-Arroyo, Political Responsibility: Responding to Predicaments of Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), p. ix. 18. Ibid.

From Care Ethics to Political Care 127 19. Raghuram, “Locating Care Ethics Beyond the Global North,” ibid., p. 512. On the point of care completion, see Maureen Sander-Staudt, “The Unhappy Marriage of Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics,” Hypatia, vol. 21, no. 4 (2006), pp. 21–40. 20. Kelly Oliver, “Subjectivity as Responsivity: The Ethical Implications of Dependency,” in Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen K. Feder (eds.), The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), pp. 322–333. 21. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), p. 111, cited in ibid., p. 322. 22. Oliver, ibid., p. 322. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., p. 325. 25. Ibid. 26. Slote, The Ethics of Care and Empathy, ibid.; and Slote, Moral Sentimentalism, ibid. 27. Hamington, “Empathy and Care Ethics,” ibid., pp. 267–268. 28. See Nel Noddings, A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982). 29. Sager, “Ethics and Migration Crises,” ibid. 30. Nel Noddings, Starting at Home: Caring and Social Policy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002). 31. See again (discussed in chapter 3) Specia and Samaan, “Syrian Boy Who Became Image of Syrian War Reappears,” ibid. 32. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “The Faith-Gender-Asylum Nexus,” ibid. 33. Mares, “Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder,” ibid. 34. Terence Wright, “The Media and Representations of Refugees and Other Forced Migrants,” in E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, G. Loescher, K. Long, and N. Sigona (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 460–472. 35. Mares, ibid., p. 337; cited therein: Said, “The Case for Intellectuals,” ibid. 36. Wright, ibid., p. 463. 37. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, ibid. 38. Ibid., p. 210; cited therein: Binoy Kampmark, “ ‘Spying for Hitler’ and ‘Working for Bin Laden’: Comparative Australian Discourses on Refugees,” Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 19, no. 1 (2006), pp. 1–21. 39. Ibid.; cited therein: Barbara Harrell-Bond, “Can Humanitarian Work with Refugees Be Humane?” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 1 (2002), pp. 51–85. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid.; cited therein: Nicholas Watt and Jamie Grierson, “David Cameron to Unveil U.K. Response to Refugee Crisis Before Parliament,” The Guardian, September 7, 2015: www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/07/davidcameron-refugee-crisis-response-parliament, and www.gov.uk/government/ publications/syrian-vulnerable-person-resettlement-programme-fact-sheet, both accessed 9/25/18. 42. Ibid. On this point, see also Terence Wright’s chapter, which furthermore provides a helpful overview analysis of media representation of refugee images over the decades. Wright, “The Media and Representations of Refugees and Other Forced Migrants,” ibid. 43. Ibid., p. 211; cited therein: C.S. Gross, “Struggling with Imaginaries of Trauma and Trust: The Refugee Experience in Switzerland,” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, vol. 28, no. 2 (2004), pp. 151–167. See also Mares, ibid., the section of his chapter on “Good and Bad Refugees,” pp. 340–342.

128  From Care Ethics to Political Care 44. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, ibid. There is a great deal of literature on this theme and its presence in media representation of refugee images. For recent examples of such “Madonna and Child” representations, see Maria von Welser, No Refuge for Women: The Tragic Fate of Syrian Refugees (Vancouver and Berkeley: Greystone Books, 2017). Also relevant to my argument at large is Welser’s discussion of the image of Aylan Kurdi on pp. 92–93 in a section titled “Images We Will Never Forget.” 45. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, ibid. 46. Ibid., p. 209. 47. This point is substantiated by Alex Sager’s delineation of the problems with the terms employed about people involved in the variable “crises,” such as “refugee,” “migrant,” “illegal immigrant,” and so on. See Sager, “Ethics and Migration Crises,” ibid. 48. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, ibid., p. 213. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., p. 214. 51. Benli, ibid. 52. Hussein, From Victims to Suspects: Muslim Women Since 9/11, ibid. 53. “The Islamic Veil Across Europe,” BBC News: www.bbc.com/news/worldeurope-13038095, accessed 11/5/18. 54. See Alia Al-Saji, “Why We Should Stop Fixating on What Muslim Women Wear,” New Statesman America, February 4, 2019: www.newstatesman. com/politics/feminism/2019/02/why-we-should-stop-fixating-what-muslimwomen-wear, accessed 3/13/19. 55. See Balibar, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism, ibid. 56. Ticktin, “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders,” ibid., p. 265. 57. Ibid., pp. 266–267. 58. Jacqueline Bhaba, cited on p. ix in Wendy S. Hesford and Rachel A. Lewis, “Mobilizing Vulnerability: New Directions in Transnational Feminist Studies and Human Rights,” Feminist Formations, vol. 28, no. 1 (Spring 2016), pp. vii–xviii (Johns Hopkins University Press). 59. Butler and Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-State, ibid.; and Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, ibid. 60. Raghuram, “Migration and Feminist Care Ethics,” ibid., p. 184. 61. Raghuram, “Locating Care Ethics Beyond the Global North,” ibid., p. 511. 62. Raghuram, “Migration and Feminist Care Ethics,” ibid., p. 184. 63. Serene Khader, Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 64. Katy Long, “Rethinking Durable Solutions,” in Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, ibid., p. 475. 65. Ibid., p. 476. 66. Ibid., p. 474. 67. Ibid., p. 479. 68. Ibid., p. 476. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid.; See James Milner, “Protracted Refugee Situations,” Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, ibid., pp. 151–162. See also Parekh, Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement, ibid.; and Oliver, Carceral Humanitarianism, ibid. 71. Long, ibid., p. 447. 72. Ibid., p. 477. 73. Ibid., p. 478.

From Care Ethics to Political Care 129 4. Ibid., pp. 479–480. 7 75. Ibid., p. 482. 76. Ibid., p. 481. 77. Ibid., pp. 484–485. 78. Ibid., p. 485. 79. Sager, Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Mobility, ibid. 80. Alex Sager, “Reclaiming Cosmopolitanism Through Migrant Protests,” in Caraus and Paris (eds.), Migration, Protest Movements and the Politics of Resistance, ibid., p. 171. 81. Ibid., p. 173. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid., p. 174. 84. Ibid. 85. Benli, ibid., p. 119. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid., p. 126. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid., p. 130. 91. Ingram, World Crisis and Underdevelopment, ibid. 92. Benli, ibid., p. 130. 93. Ingram, World Crisis and Underdevelopment, ibid.

5 Affective Rejoinders Reconsidering the Role of Emotions and Imagination in Political Care

“Feelings and emotions . . . are social relations. They are involvements with ourselves and/or with others. The old solution about refraining from such involvements is not just impotent . . . it must remain impotent because it is also ludicrous and hypocritical.” —Ágnes Heller, A Theory of Feelings “[We] cannot simply [apply] familiar theories that limit grief to the private sphere, thus depoliticizing it, if we wish to understand how grief can be taken into consideration as a source, expression, and register of political sensitivity that does not come to a halt with the more or less narrow confines of our ‘own’ life.” —Burkhard Liebsch, “Grief as a Source, Expression, and Register of Political Sensitivity” “Failure to engage with what is strange and alien is a practical failure, a failure of imagination, and a failure to make an effort to understand what is different from us.” —Richard J. Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion Since 9/11

In previous chapters I have called attention to value fundamentalism and analyzed its pernicious effects on both our understanding of and reaction to the ongoing international refugee and forced migration situation. I now want to circle back to my questions from the beginning of the book, which ask why we should care and what kind of meaningful care should be provided, individually and collectively. I want to return to one specific dimension implicit within those questions, that which inquires what can motivate us to care in a manner that agitates against the oppressive tendencies and problematic pull of value fundamentalism. I do this by focusing on a prominent thread that has been interwoven throughout the previous chapters, namely, the role of emotions. In what

Affective Rejoinders 131 follows, I will analyze the role of emotions in more detail and further link the emotions to imagination with the aim of achieving more clarity in my overarching argument, setting the stage for the concluding chapter. I want to add that until now, for conceptions of subjectivity and ethical agency, I have included both the emotional and the rational dimensions of human existence. My focus in this chapter does not minimize rationality, but rather serves as an important supplement to it, as a rejoinder to any argument to dismiss the emotions as part of the rational self, community, and polity at large. On this point, I agree with Michael Slote, who has argued for the need to ask “whether there is any way for the care ethicists to persuade people that we shouldn’t think of political rights and justice in traditions terms, but should reformulate or reconceptualize our thinking about rights in the less familiar coinage of empathic concern and sensitivity.” He points out the problem that care ethics “from its inception in the 1980s has put great stress on connection with others, and the kind of liberalism we are focusing on here emphasizes autonomy (rights) in a way that insists on the moral separateness of individuals.”1 Thus, in chapter 4, and now developed further in the present chapter, I construct an example of the needed transnational care of refugees and forced migrants that shows the empathic ground for action rooted in contestation against systemic injustice with the goal of expanding international human rights. I do not see my example as falling prey to the “hybrid” approach Slote criticizes, whereby care ethicists’ concerns for the emotive, affective dimensions of human existence are merely added into liberal conceptions of autonomy and justice. I rather understand my example as one possible case of employing a care ethical ground of empathy as a foundation of human rights, centered on the notion of “affective dignity,” which I elaborate in my argument below. The argument presented in chapter 4, therefore, set the ground for an expansion of human rights not in the moral separateness of human individuals, but in their mutual dependency and interdependent reliance on achieving a more just transnational order. Until now, I have considered care in the form of contestation as initially stirred up by the emotions and subsequently applied in a rational manner. The question of what moves us to act served as a core element of the argument I developed over the last several chapters. I have diagnosed the emptiness and inefficacy of emotions made manifest in the most iconic images to have emerged from the “refugee crisis.” The sentimental and melancholy response in the West and Northern states to the images of Aylan Kurdi and Omran Daqneesh showed both the inadequacy of response and the way in which affective transformation stimulated by the aesthetic experience of such images can bring about some—even if initially minor and incremental—policy changes. I intentionally chose images that were all-too familiar, as opposed to

132  Affective Rejoinders aesthetic representations more abstracted from everyday experiences. This was my move to engage in aesthetics accessible to large groups of individuals. Nonetheless, it should be underscored that I analyzed the images dialectically in a manner that forestalls any static or permanent conclusion about their meaning. My analysis has aimed to demonstrate how the conspicuousness of the images in everyday experience relays a troubling statement about the current international humanitarian situation when grasped dialectically, despite the overused constitution of the images’ message. In my investigation, I sought to show that affective transformation can be potentiated (not exclusively, but accessibly and emphatically) by the aesthetic, which can in turn—contingently—lead to ethico-political action. In chapters 3 and 4, I further demonstrated that the ethico-political domain is dominated by interdependency; that is why I engaged in discussions of previous feminist theories of care ethics. My argument initiated the transition from the particularism or parochialism in the more extreme sentimentalism of previous care ethics to an understanding of care through consideration of transnational justice. As presented there, the limited range of emotion in humanitarian care—focusing on compassion and empathy—can constrict individuals in need receiving actual care and lead to policing measures that detain or harm refugees and forced migrants. In contrast, a substantive form of care as contestation can lead to acts of civil disobedience against systemic measures that, for all intents and purposes, imprison those most in need. What I have been discussing so far, as an overarching framework of the book, is an emotionally grounded form of care as contestation. But I now want to examine the role of emotions in contestation in more detail and ask whether there should be an emotional ground or impetus to ethico-political action in the first place. Emotions are slippery and can lead in all sorts of problematic directions. Nonetheless, I challenge the claim that it is either possible or advisable to eliminate emotions from politics. In what follows, I will first consider some analyses of problematic contexts and applications of emotion in politics, for example, as elucidated by Jason Stanley and Richard J. Bernstein, as well as arguments in favor of emotion in political understandings of citizenship and ethicopolitical obligation, for example, in the writings of Michael Hardt and Martha Nussbaum. Building on the arguments from these authors on the necessity of taking emotions seriously in politics, I will add important developments, both historical and contemporary, from moral theory and democratic theory that emphasize the link between the emotions and imagination in individuals and groups in a given polity. Let me begin with Hannah Arendt’s vigorously articulated position that love and hatred are so intertwined that they should be kept out of politics, that in politics they are disastrous. In a letter to James Baldwin

Affective Rejoinders 133 dated November 21, 1962, in response to an article he published in the New Yorker, Arendt wrote: What frightened me in your essay was the gospel of love which you begin to preach at the end. In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy. All the characteristics you stress in the Negro people: their beauty, their capacity for joy, their warmth, and their humanity, are well-known characteristics of all oppressed people. They grow out of suffering and they are the proudest possession of all pariahs. Unfortunately, they have never survived the hour of liberation by even five minutes. Hatred and love belong together, and they are both destructive; you can afford them only in the private and, as a people, only so long as you are not free.2 However, as Michael Hardt has countered in a recent response to Arendt’s banishment of love from politics and the public realm, “Trying to ban love from politics, however, is probably a futile endeavor and, perhaps more importantly, it risks depriving politics of one of its most powerful and transformational forces.”3 Thomas Brudholm and Johanes Lang stand in agreement with Hardt on this point, as reflected in their joint scholarship on emotions and mass atrocity. Brudholm and Lang draw upon the etymology and conceptual history of the term emotion and warn us that emotions “should not be reduced to merely private, subjective phenomena.”4 They explicate the root of the concept emotion from the Latin movere—“to move”; they note that in the French word, emotion “originally referred to movements of and among people rather than within them.”5 They advance their position with evidence that the term emotion “first appeared in the fifteenth century to describe social and political commotion, not internal states of mind. . . . In other words, the concept of emotion was from the very beginning associated with political upheaval and collective violence, with the struggles between the king and those who dared to oppose him.”6 They furthermore reject the mere subjectivization of emotions by drawing on theories that put forth a logic of historical social and political transformation: More than individual feeling-states, emotions are also powerful social and political forces that can be harnessed and shaped in the service of collective action. Emotion moves people, motivates them, and for this reason [Barbara] Rosenwein argues that emotions are “an inseparable part of the social process.” [William H.] Sewell writes that “high-pitched emotional excitement is a constituent ingredient of many transformative actions” and often “shapes the very course

134  Affective Rejoinders of events.” This implies that scholars cannot truly understand historical change—or the institutions, ideas, and actions of historically turbulent periods—without considering the role of emotions. . . . The history of mass atrocity is steeped in emotion, and we must take care not to domesticate those emotions.7 The conclusion drawn by Brudholm and Lang is most prescient: Emotions are not merely epiphenomena of larger social and political dynamics, as many structuralist and cognitivist accounts would have us believe; emotions also have a momentum and life of their own. Emotions can be manipulated, they can be detached from the original objects and sources and redirected for other purposes. We should take emotions very seriously, and see them as the powerful moral, political, and historical forces that they are. We can return to some of the examples provided by Hardt as evidence for these collective arguments. Hardt references recent examples of far-right, xenophobic movements, such as Marine Le Pen’s in France and Germany’s Identitarian Movement (Identitäre Bewegung), not to mention white supremacist tendencies in Donald Trump’s administration and Brexit’s reliance on anti-immigrant rhetoric. Hardt explains these movements’ self-description as one of love for the homeland. He furthermore cites Sara Ahmed’s research on hate groups that paradoxically characterize themselves as “love groups” because of love for their own identity,8 what Hardt captures through his description of “a vile, identitarian love.” The “love” for the German Identitarian Movement, for example, is the basis on which the group agitates against rescue vessels saving migrants at sea attempting to reach the European Union. Hardt warns us against dismissing such claims as political love because it prevents us from understanding the powers of attraction of these movements and grasping the experience and consciousness of participants. To admit that they act out of love does not justify or condone their actions but instead constitutes a first step toward understanding their worldview.9 He therefore disaggregates among modes of political love and shows that they are not equal. He describes the love of reactionary groups as “a love based on sameness: loving those who are like you, reinforcing an identity that is imagined to be pure,” and contrasts this with a revolutionary love that invents a new mode, “which is open outward to engage with differences, which constructs strong social bonds based on multiplicity, and which uses its power to set in motion a process of social liberation.”10

Affective Rejoinders 135 Hardt’s succinct insights provide the foundation of my argument in this and the concluding chapter. An understanding of how such “vile, identitarian love” can come about receives illumination from Jason Stanley’s decades of research on propaganda and the latter’s role in fascism. At the beginning of his latest monograph on How Fascism Works, Stanley foregrounds the historical fact that in fascist politics, the operation of “the mythic past” “is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology—authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity, and struggle.”11 He elaborates: “When it does not simply invent a past to weaponize the emotion of nostalgia, fascist politics cherry-picks the past, avoiding anything that would diminish unreflective adulation of the nation’s glory.”12 The role of the mythic past is therefore very active in recent iterations of fascist or nascent fascist movements, such as those referenced by Hardt in France, Germany, and certainly several features of Trump’s agenda. Stanley therefore implores the need for a “common basis of reality, including about our own past.” He argues that “History in a liberal democracy must be faithful to the norm of truth, yielding an accurate vision of the past, rather than a history provided for political reasons.”13 In this context, we can recall Jürgen Habermas’s debate with the historians in Germany, in the infamous Historikerstreit about the wrong-headed attempt of certain revisionist historians to recall only the successes in Germany’s past. Habermas stridently spoke out against such a problematic revisionism.14 The crux of Stanley’s argument rests on his targeting of the fascistic maneuver to recast the irrational as the rational. As he explains through an analysis of propaganda, “It is often noted, rightly, that fascism elevates the irrational over the rational, fanatical emotion over the intellect. It is less often remarked upon, however, that fascism performs this elevation indirectly, that is to say, propagandistically.”15 Citing Kenneth Burke’s scholarship, Stanley explains Hitler’s reliance on “a struggle of ‘reason’ and ‘reality’ against his ‘heart.’ ”16 That is to say, the fascist ideology transvalues the rational and emotional such that it is drawing on the emotional through rhetoric, stirring up fear and anger, all the while claiming itself as the more rational, more scientific and more natural position. What is to be done to counter such forces? The answers come from the realms of both reason and emotion, centering on the need for the “common basis” and “faith to norms of truth” that Stanley emphasizes in his text. A glaring red flag for the onset of propaganda is found where we are confronted with “simple explanations for otherwise irrational emotions, such as resentment or xenophobic fear in the face of perceived threats.”17 Fascist politics “deliberately take advantage of this emotion,” namely, the anger of white men over a perceived loss of power and the fear of the loss of a mythical, patriarchal past. Therefore, such politics create “a sense of aggrieved victimization among the majority

136  Affective Rejoinders population, directing it at a group that is not responsible for it and promising to alleviate the feeling of victimization by punishing that group.”18 Without referring to it as propaganda or fascism, in his monograph on The Abuse of Evil Richard J. Bernstein vigorously called attention to such maneuvers as Stanley outlines and makes very clear how disturbing and alarming he finds these developments in the recent past. The problem, following Bernstein’s insights, lies in the oversimplification of thinking through specious dichotomies and false pretense to victimization by outside “evil” forces. As Stanley points out, “Disagreement requires a shared set of presuppositions about the world. Even dueling requires agreement about the rules.”19 Martha Nussbaum joins the conversation with one of her recent monographs, Political Emotions, where she states at the outset that “All societies are full of emotions. Liberal democracies are no exception.”20 Resonating with Hardt’s position, she elaborates her stance as follows: Sometimes people suppose that only fascist or aggressive societies are intensely emotional and that only such societies need to focus on the cultivation of emotions. Those beliefs are both mistaken and dangerous. They are mistaken, because all societies need to think about the stability of their political culture over time and the security of cherished values in times of stress. All societies, then, need to think about compassion for loss, anger at injustice, the limiting of envy and disgust in favor of inclusive sympathy.21 In stark contrast to Arendt’s banishment of emotions of politics, Nussbaum claims: Ceding the terrain of emotion-shaping to antiliberal forces gives them a huge advantage in the people’s hearts and risks making people think of liberal values as tepid and boring. One reason Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru were such great political leaders for their liberal societies is that they understood the need to touch citizens’ hearts and to inspire, deliberately, strong emotions directed at the common work before them. All political principles, the good as well as the bad, need emotional support to ensure their stability over time, and all decent societies need to guard against division and hierarchy by cultivating appropriate sentiments of sympathy and love.22 Within her advocacy for political emotion, Nussbaum lists two tasks ahead for liberal democracies that strive for justice and equality for all: 1) “to engender and sustain strong commitment to worthy projects that require effort and sacrifice. . . . Emotions directed at the nation and its goals are frequently of great help in getting people to think larger

Affective Rejoinders 137 thoughts and re-commit themselves to a larger common good,” and 2) “to keep at bay forces that lurk in all societies and, ultimately, in all of us: tendencies to protect the fragile self by denigrating and subordinating others.”23 Some of Nussbaum’s key points strike the right chord and are extremely helpful. I agree that emotion cannot simply be eliminated from politics and allocated only to fascist developments. Such a move does indeed miss an important element of what motivates individuals and groups visà-vis political developments and a possible working toward a common good. However, the way in which Nussbaum proceeds with her argument I find somewhat problematic, and the examples on which she relies exacerbate the partially erroneous structure of her position. In light of what Stanley presented convincingly, Nussbaum’s argument falls short. Take her example of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. She writes: An important part of that education [toward seeing full and equal humanity in another person] is performed by the public political culture, which represents the nation and its people in a particular way. It can include or exclude, cement hierarchies or dismantle them—as Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, with its breathtaking fiction that the United States has always been dedicated to racial equality, so stirringly does.24 Nussbaum here provides an example of a mythic past; yet it is one that does not uphold a fiction of hierarchy and purity, but rather a fantasy that the U.S. “has always been dedicated to racial equality.” There are numerous substantive reasons to regard Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” favorably; but the point made by Nussbaum leads us astray, especially when we consider how she develops her position further. She assumes a position of liberal democracy that can locate its foundation on an assumed neutrality.25 She strives to achieve more “for stability and motivation . . . without becoming illiberal and dictatorial,” drawing on different figures in modern philosophical history. She acknowledges that emotions “are not just impulses,” but rather “contain appraisals that have an evaluative content,” much in the manner of Andrew A.G. Ross’s argument outlined and explicated in chapter 3. Recall that Ross described emotions as “exist[ing] within working memory as ‘occurrent beliefs’ ” and argued that they “serve as heuristic alarm bells pointing back to the moral sentiments that trigger them,” the moral sentiments being “akin to long-term memories or ‘standing beliefs.’ ”26 Nussbaum recognizes that her specific casting of political liberalism will present challenges for a defense of political emotional attachment. For this reason, she argues against a political emotional development internal to a liberal democracy that would attach itself in any way to a specific religious holiday, whereas she claims it “is not objectionable to

138  Affective Rejoinders celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a profoundly emotional public holiday that affirms principles of racial equality to which our nation has committed itself, and that rededicates the nation to the pursuit of that goal.”27 Nussbaum does not want members of a liberal democracy to feel emotion for King himself, but rather for the principles of equality he espoused and for which he fought with his life. She states that “it should be no more objectionable to ask people to feel attached to good political principles than it is to ask them to believe them.” But I am skeptical when she employs the language of love and devotion to abstract ideals. She envisions a liberal state that “asks citizens who have different overall conceptions of the meaning and purpose of life to overlap and agree in a shared political space, the space of fundamental principles and constitutional ideals,” which, if “efficacious” “must also encourage love and devotion to those ideals.”28 Nussbaum’s argument relates to certain problems with sentimentalism from which I distanced my argument in chapter 3. It may seem that unlike the parochial version of sentimentalism that negatively limited some early feminist care ethics, such that those closest to us were to be privileged over those distant in identity and geopolitics, Nussbaum compensates too far in the other direction in assuming a love and devotion for an absolute neutrality of ideals of equality and justice—a kind of limitation into pure abstraction. Although she describes what the attachment is felt for as not being neutral, in contrast to the “neutrality that a liberal state observes—and should observe—in matters of religion and comprehensive doctrine,” in the end she assumes a neutrality for these principles. I think that Nietzsche has shown very well, elaborated in Bonnie Honig’s highly nuanced study outlined in chapter 3, that such principles of abstract equality and justice only serve to further marginalize those on the extremities of the social-political body. I again cite Honig on Nietzsche in this context: As Nietzsche uses it, virtù is an ethical perspective that calls attention to the remainders of system, to the insistences, cruelties, deceits, and inconsistencies, of virtue as a system of values. That is why Nietzschean virtù “rouses enmity toward order”, because the efforts of political and moral orders to stabilize themselves as the systematic expressions of virtue, justice, or the telos of community drive them to conceal, deny, or subdue resistances to their regimes.29 The problem is furthermore compounded when Nussbaum allows for subversion and dissent internal to her model of liberalism only with the proviso that “the space for subversion and dissent should remain as large as is consistent with civic order and stability.”30 Nussbaum’s framework does not account for those virtues and principles that can undo order or stability to construct a new political community that does not include

Affective Rejoinders 139 such egregious harm to some of its members. Holding up a fictitious, mythic past of perfect justice and equality can do more harm to those to whom reparations are owed. There must be, rather, a new founding of a political community necessitated through care as contestation against oppression and suffering, as a more honest if at first less stable and ordered polity. This was the conclusion of the culmination of my arguments from the previous chapters, beginning with the aesthetic domain and spanning the ethico-political, and it will continue in the religious sphere as well, as I make clear in the concluding chapter. Nussbaum relies for at least a portion of her framework on John Rawls’s political philosophy. She describes the emotions that Rawls imagines in his liberal democracy as “directed at principles rather than at particulars: if society is to be stable for the right reasons, its basic principles must somehow be embraced with enthusiasm.”31 Nussbaum’s position is to accept Rawls’s belief that individuals can fall in love with and in devotion to abstract principles; but she also worries about the quirky and “particularistic” qualities of the human mind that, in her judgment, also require attachment to a particular “set of perceptions, memories, and symbols that have deep roots in the personality and in people’s sense of their own history.”32 Nussbaum portrays these as attachments of particularity, ultimately, although she is drawing on abstract universal principles such as equality and justice. Against the danger of particular memories leading astray, Nussbaum counters that “If the sources of memory are securely tethered to political ideals, however, such problems can be transcended, and the symbols may acquire a motivational power that bare abstractions could not possess.”33 At this juncture, we should heed Etienne Balibar’s warning against such a fiction of neutrality in secularism and particularism. He makes clear, through the example of the contrast between secularism and the “return of theology,” that the struggle is comprised as a battle of universals, which nonetheless plays out in the most immediate and concrete ways, mediated by secular policing on people’s racialized, sexualized, and gendered bodies.34 This has been previously analyzed and discussed in chapter 4 in regard to the work of Balibar and Alia Al-Saji, to name just two of the most powerful and recent examples.35 Nussbaum continues her position on political emotions by moving to focus on what she calls our “circle of concern,” based on the fact, in her judgment, that “we grieve for people we care about, not for total strangers. We fear damages that threaten ourselves and those we care about, not earthquakes on Mars.” She describes her position as “eudaimonistic,” following the Aristotelian tradition, and defines it in the following manner: Eudaimonism is not egoism: we may hold that other people have intrinsic value. But the ones who will stir deep emotions in us are the

140  Affective Rejoinders ones to whom we are somehow connected through our imagining of a valuable life, what I shall henceforth call our “circle of concern.” If distant people and abstract principles are to get a grip on our emotions, therefore, these emotions must somehow position them within our circle of concern, creating a sense of “our” life in which these people and events matter as parts of our “us,” our own flourishing. For this movement to take place, symbols and poetry are crucial.36 I disagree. I think we have examples of caring for distant others, grieving for their suffering and death, without knowing them in any regard or their existence having any direct impact or connection to our circle of concern. I think Aristotle is instructive on this point in the Poetics. It’s not that the person must somehow be imaginable within our circle of concern, related to those around us, but that we must be placed in a position to grasp, when experiencing the poetic representation of the tragedy, the fact that what befalls the tragic hero could happen to us as well.37 I believe this is a different point. We must be made to feel as if such an event or crisis could happen to us. I could have absolutely nothing in common with the person or group, but have the capacity to imagine that their misfortune could become mine. We can think through this constellation of points by Nussbaum with more nuance by turning to recent scholarship on the politics of mourning.38 In his 2016 article on “Grief as a Source, Expression, and Register of Political Sensitivity,” Burkhard Liebsch challenges the classical doctrine of grieving that presumes we only grieve for those we know. He writes: We—or at least some or many of us—grieve for this one stranger, a child who is left to starve and to die—one of millions all over the world, as we know, one of the few who affect us, perhaps just by chance, due to the media. We grieve in the face of what happens to the multitude of strangers on their flight to Europe at nonplaces, in legal gray areas and places of political worldlessness [citing Arendt] and due to the circumstances responsible for the fact that they are in danger of losing not only their relatives and their home but everything that constitutes them. It makes us sorry (but also angry) that this situation cannot be terminated but rather continues to claim more victims—a situation in which we ourselves are implicated.39 In contrast to Nussbaum’s position in which we grieve only for those we already know, according to Liebsch we also grieve for those completely unknown to us, but for whose tragedy our lives bear some responsibility. The emphasis on responsibility in this manner comprises part of the model of the “concerned person” articulated by Ágnes Heller, as I mentioned in chapter 1 and constitutes one of the foremost points of emphasis

Affective Rejoinders 141 in the tradition of feminist care ethics.40 Liebsch’s provocations also recall arguments from chapter 2 where the extent to which one media image can initiate affective transformation was elucidated. Liebsch provides a thoughtful and refined account of the way in which we are capable of grieving for strangers, and he connects this human capacity to a political and social responsibility that transcends national love and devotion, to which Nussbaum’s account is unfortunately limited. Liebsch posits a string of powerful questions that rightfully challenge the classical model of grieving whereby it is assumed that we grieve temporarily with the aim of not grieving in the future, in other words, according to the dictum that we grieve in order not to grieve.41 He provides a much more ethically-politically efficacious understanding of how some individual actors may grieve in a manner that constitutes a provocative and constructive exemplar for a renewed model of political care. He asks: How could it be possible not to grieve in view of the fact that the future will continue to claim victims? Should we not be willing and prepared to engage in proactive grief that does not merely lag behind what has already happened but rather anticipates what threatens others, strangers, in the future? Do we now have ample reason for grief for the violence of political situations that we ourselves reproduce and which already cast a shadow on the future? Has grief not long been a source, expression and register of political sensitivity without which no present-day politics can be conceived that makes a serious claim to face the global horizon of political coexistence, in which we are strangers to each other without being simply indifferent? Has not a concern for the fate of strangers long become manifest in worldwide grief, resulting in the political demand that in the future the same should not happen to others?42 Liebsch effectively calls attention to the ethical, social, and political questions of responsibility inherent within the ways different people grieve and adamantly stands against a mere reduction of grieving to tropes of sentimentality and private life. He argues along these lines: Is every other “affective” or . . . pathic struggling with causes of political grief something to be dismissed as mere sentimentality? But with what justification? Does not the incessant reactivation of such prejudices dogmatically presuppose an assumption that has long been subject to challenge, specifically that we always grieve only for what we ourselves have lost or shall lose so that from the very beginning grief seems limited to our losses? Liebsch powerfully insists on the political constitution of some forms of grieving that involve strangers, a broad phenomenon in his account that,

142  Affective Rejoinders in my judgment, speaks at least partially to the core constitution of a new political care much needed in present times. His model addresses, to some extent, the emptiness of emotions, including care and compassion, lamented by Ticktin and others as negative factors in the humanitarianism of the last several decades. Liebsch questions forcefully: “Is grief not political wherever it involves awareness of these circumstances [political circumstances responsible for death and other losses], wherever it rebels against the fact that these circumstances persist and continue to claim new victims and wherever it leads to the demand that action be taken against this violence?”43 He concludes the outline of his position by emphasizing that we “cannot simply [apply] familiar theories that limit grief to the private sphere, thus depoliticizing it, if we wish to understand how grief can be taken into consideration as a source, expression, and register of political sensitivity that does not come to a halt within the more or less narrow confines of our ‘own’ life.”44 In his efforts to contest the depoliticization of grief, Liebsch evokes the possibility of qualifying ongoing grief for strangers as a form of “mysterious hospitality on the part of the grievers who keep the loss within them like a carefully sheltered treasure” and who provide “an enduring place among the living in the grieving remembrance of the survivors.”45 Liebsch’s article returns us to major insights from chapter 2 on aesthetic care and the double constitution of witnessing acts vis-à-vis the muteness of human suffering. The iconic images of Aylan Kurdi and Omran Daqneesh were analyzed there as representations of what does not console us, in contrast to some surface-level although well-intended initial analyses of the images in the media. In my argument, I related the images to Adorno’s aesthetic theory, which rejects any reconciliation and agitates against any form of representation as consolation. Adorno was composing his aesthetic theory from out of the experience of “damaged life” after Auschwitz, as a Jewish-German émigré in the United States who wrote vigorously against the aesthetic as entertainment or propaganda; for Adorno, the latter two amount to the same.46 Adorno’s aesthetic theory is again relevant in the present discussion of grieving because Liebsch provides a visceral account of the manifold ways in which grieving, when it takes on social-political responsibility, does not—and should not—aim to console. In quoting Nelly Sachs, Liebsch writes: In contrast to a grief . . . which only seems to aim at overcoming the loss, grievers often seem to keep hold of their bereavement under all circumstances and will not let others talk them out of it on any grounds, not even with well-meaning comfort or the suggestion that the lost one will be recovered at the end of time. Comfort stabs someone who grieves in this way “in the heart” (as Nelly Sachs puts it in a poem) when the comfort suggests that the loss be considered surmountable. Someone who does this out of religious conviction still

Affective Rejoinders 143 has to recognize that in this case superior knowledge will not help. And as far as the phenomenon of inconsolable grief is concerned, the interesting point in our context is whether it is taken seriously as such or whether it is simply skipped over.47 Several key elements of grief are enumerated here, centered on the point that “knowledge will not help.” There is something to this kind of inconsolable grief that cannot be remediated by knowledge. This fact is paradoxically helpful, in the way Adorno’s theory of the unconsolability of effective aesthetic experiences is as well, because this point underscores the efficacy that emotions can take on ethically, socially, and politically. And yet Jason Stanley (among others) has demonstrated in no uncertain terms that emotions must be connected with reason if fascistic developments are to be prevented. How do we reconcile this conflict? On one hand, we need the power of emotions to induce ethical, social, political transformation for the better, for the alleviation of human suffering and despair. On the other hand, we need to restrict any power of emotions through reason, but the power comes precisely through its resistance to rationalization. I argue that we do care in an emotional manner about particulars—particular people and creatures, both known and unknown to us. But who determines who is suffering? Is not the danger of a false victimization precisely what Stanley diagnoses? To avoid the latter consequence, human care for the suffering of distant others, through acts of contestation, must be connected at each and every juncture with what Bernstein has called a fallibilistic pluralism, a method and manner of thinking that never permits a crude “us and them” mentality and that always embraces openness to the factual reality that we may have erred in our judgment. Such a position will never allow for the possibility of setting out one specific group or one specific people, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or religion as the cause of social harm; such a position will consistently and without fail require a robust investigation of its own normative claims and grasp a contingent constellation of causes and effects of the social-political pathology at any given moment in the history of the polity. We must still address the question, however, of what kind of normativity may connect to emotion, in order for emotions to be a viable part of the solution against oppression and suffering of distant others. A possible answer to this question begins by first challenging any assumed division between emotions and reason. A framework that places emotions as strictly separated from rationality is part of the current debacle when it comes to understanding how mass atrocities take place, according to Brudholm and Lang. They write, “The underlying dichotomy here— rationality versus emotion [in regard to a division in narratives about mass atrocity]—has a long history, and is part of what Barbara Rosenwein calls a ‘grand narrative’ about modernity.”48 Citing Rosenwein’s

144  Affective Rejoinders investigation in more detail, they express their clear-eyed cynicism about such a grand narrative: Over time, we are told, Western civilization learned, through effective self-discipline, control, and suppression, to master the supposedly irrational, emotional aspects of human nature. . . . And yet, while the dichotomy between rationality and emotion breaks down, there is another idea implicit in the “grand narrative” about modernity that should fascinate us. This is the idea that the emotional makeup of humanity has changed over time—in other words, that emotions are not simply timeless, biologically hardwired phenomena, but are also greatly shaped by history and culture. The grand narrative about modernity suggests that the emotional life of human beings and their societies has radically changed from pre-modern to modern times. Such a claim raises interesting questions for the study of mass atrocity, for if true it suggests that the emotional dynamics of the violence might have changed as well. Is this the case? And, if so, what is the nature of this shift? The essays collected in Emotions and Mass Atrocity edited by Brudholm and Lang aim to answer these questions. I draw upon their insights, as I have already done in chapter 3, where I included crucial points from Andrew A.G. Ross’s chapter on “Beyond Empathy and Compassion: Genocide and the Emotional Complexities of Humanitarian Politics.” There I highlighted—in contrast to, but also in sympathy with, Ticktin’s lamenting of a narrow focus only on benevolence, compassion, and pity in humanitarian politics—Ross’s claim that a “wide array of emotions [exists] in humanitarian politics, not just personal feelings,” and I provided some detail of his explanation of the ways in which “affective phenomena and processes are both extraordinarily diverse and fundamentally interconnected.”49 The crux of Ross’s argument rests on the following two major claims: first, “that humanitarian politics is not confined to compassion and other ostensibly ‘good’ emotions often emphasized in studies of international and cosmopolitan ethics,” and second, that “the various emotions that do accompany humanitarian politics serve as creative mechanisms with the potential to realign humanitarian sentiments with seemingly non-humanitarian projects,” for example, “evocative humanitarian justifications for war in Iraq, as well as the recent co-opting of anti-genocide rhetoric by American gun rights advocates.”50 In light of these arguments, then, how do we attach a normative dimension to the emotion of empathy in order to prevent “sideways” moves, as Ross calls them, which slide the emotion initially intended to align humanitarian goals into cooptation and manipulation against humanitarian ends? These moves vividly recall Stanley’s analysis of the manipulation of emotions internal to the development of propaganda.

Affective Rejoinders 145 We can seek some answers in Remy Debes’s scholarship on the authority of empathy as an attempt to “ground sentimentalism,” as Debes describes his project.51 I would like to add that in his effort to ground sentimentalism, Debes moves us clearly beyond any limitations in which it is assumed that we can only feel empathy or emotion such as grieving for those known to us and involved in our circle of concern. Thus, Debes’s position moves us beyond the limitations of the early feminist models of care ethics. If we accept his argument that empathy carries its own authoritative force, then we will furthermore have a foundation to prevent or at least to actively contest any cooptation of emotion for anti-humanitarian ends, i.e., anti-empathic states, as well as a capacity to reawaken the positive emotion of empathy for humanitarian purposes. Debes first defines empathy as follows: When observing or considering the emotions of other people, real or imagined, we sometimes come to feel the same emotions. Or if not exactly the same, close enough to satisfy us that our two emotions— theirs and ours—are ‘in accord’. Call this the fact of empathy.52 He makes clear that his aim is to “examine how the fact of empathy bears on a related fact of ethical discourse,” which he terms “empathic judgment.” Debes is following Adam Smith’s 1759 Theory of Moral Sentiments where “Smith observed that we routinely make judgments about the propriety of emotions on the basis of empathy, though he and his contemporaries called it ‘sympathy.’ ” The model on which Smith and, by extension, Debes rely is one of “imaginative simulation,” evidenced through: cases in which we imagine being in the situation of another person— cases where we imagine the “object” or conglomerate of objects, both social and environmental, to which the person’s emotion is a response. If by dint of such reflection we come to feel as the other does, then, Smith argued, the consequent empathic account prompts us to approve her emotion. And if our feelings diverge, or to the extent that they do, this lack of empathic accord prompts us to disapprove her emotion.53 What is interesting about this formulation is that it provides a direct relationship between the self and the other via “imaginative simulation,” regardless of whether the other is a near or distant other, in identity or in proximity. The connection to a distant other is not ruled out; rather, the labor of making the connection is placed on the imagination alone. This was also Bernstein’s point: “Failure to engage with what is strange and alien is a practical failure, a failure of imagination, and a failure to make an effort to understand what is different from us.”54

146  Affective Rejoinders The process described by Debes eliminates the need for our emotion to be necessarily filtered or attached to our circle of concern, as Nussbaum argued it must be. Instead, we require an active imagination that can facilitate a direct link between our self and our experiences and that of any other. The role of imagination in Smith’s theory, and in Debes’s application, does agree with Nussbaum’s argument for the need of an aesthetic device, be it symbols or poetry or another means of figurative representation. Debes takes it as given that “we do sometimes judge emotions on the basis of empathy” and questions whether these judgments are valid. He writes, “That is, do we understand what we mean when we make them? And can we justify them?”55 If we concur with Debes’s responses to these questions, which will be elaborated momentarily, then we can ascertain that an authority is present in the empathic judgments we make. Subsequently, it would be upon us to continually look for additional means to reinvigorate our empathy with distant others to avoid manipulation of our emotions against them. A reawakening and re-enlivening of empathy is precisely the goal of Stanley’s account of How Fascism Works. He writes: Fascism today might not look exactly as it did in the 1930s, but refugees are once again on the road everywhere. In multiple countries, their plight reinforces fascist propaganda that the nation is under siege, that aliens are a threat and danger both within and outside their borders. The suffering of strangers can solidify the structure of fascism. But it can also trigger empathy once another lens is clicked into place. If “the suffering of strangers” can “trigger empathy once another lens is clicked into place,” then we can understand this even more thoroughly by looking at the “authority” that empathy has on us and see a bit more clearly into how it functions. Debes is judicious in limiting his project; he informs the reader at the outset that “it is important not to confuse the kind of normativity empathic judgment involved, with the authority of that normativity.”56 He clarifies that “Empathic judgments involve a sanctioning kind of normativity” and that he does not argue “that the judgment somehow transforms into a new, stronger kind of approval. It will remain a kind of sanction.”57 So the content of the empathic judgment may remain on the weaker side, given the emotional ground of the judgment. What is more important, in Debes’s estimation, is that “the form of empathic judgments commits those who make them to a distinctive moral acknowledgment of those to whom they are made, namely, of the latter’s agential status.” He furthermore demonstrates that “this acknowledgement of status goes hand in hand with conceding to this other person the authority to make empathic judgments ‘in return’. That is, we constitutively

Affective Rejoinders 147 concede to whomever we judge empathically the normative authority to be our judge in turn.”58 And finally, “the form of this judgment reveals itself to be grounded on the fundamental status or ‘dignity’ we ascribe to ourselves as moral agents,” however, not (or not only) as rational, autonomous beings, but rather as what Debes calls “affective agents.”59 Therefore, while rational arguments that recognize individual autonomy are necessary and can be effective to convince others of the need to countenance and ameliorate or prevent the suffering of distant others, imaginative processes that create the possibility to experience distant others as affective agents can also be, or sometimes can be even more so, effective. Important in this construction is that, in contrast to some limitations in previous care ethics models and in some repeated elements of Nussbaum’s argument, the model here assembled can construct imaginative possibilities as direct connections to distant others. In addition to these advantages, there is a further significant gain from Debes’s position, namely, his emphasis on the need to connect the empathic judgment to a grasped intelligibility by an impartial empathy. While impartiality may seem an ideal too difficult to pin down, Debes qualifies that when we fail to bracket our biases or foibles, it is our failure and not that of the principle. He seeks to rule out the possibility of allowing his model to include an empathy that would be unintelligible to an impartial form of empathy, such as fascism, because the content of the empathic judgment leads to sanctioning behavior in a means of degrees and not kinds. Debes is also not speaking of “an a-perspectival stance or a “situation-less perspective.” Instead, “empathy is all about getting into the situation of the narrator. ‘Impartiality’ thus denotes a constraint on how we get into that situation” and recognizes the connection of emotion to rationality.60 Debes provides more detail in a less figurative light: Less metaphorically, my appeal to impartiality doesn’t rule out an end-point that would be isomorphic with the peculiar perspective of the narrator. It rules out getting to that point by relying on one’s own existing biases or foibles, or by adopting in brute fashion the biases or foibles of the narrator. The white racist cannot describe blacks as “contemptible,” full stop, and win “impartial” empathy.61 Debes’s development of his argument must face the worry, though, that an aesthetic depiction of just about anything can generate empathy, even for the worst dimensions of human existence. To respond to this concern, he underscores the importance of “emotional agency,” which is “a fundamental aspect of how we conceptualize ourselves as agents requires reference to our essentially emotional point of view on the world,” what he calls our “affective perspective.”62 Debes strongly acknowledges the rational autonomy at the core of human agency that accounts for the recognition-respect for human dignity; but

148  Affective Rejoinders he cautions that this does not go far enough because the emotional part of human nature must always also be considered internal to the model of dignity. In other words, “affectivity—being emotional—is itself a fundamental aspect of what it is to be a human agent. More exactly, part of what it means to be a human agent is to have an essentially emotion-laden perspective,” and each of these perspectives is peculiar and unique.63 Individuals have both rational and affective agency, and if the affective agency is built on peculiar and unique emotional perspectives, there is a right of each person to receive recognition-respect for her respective emotional positions. But, as Debes importantly develops his position, this requires the “implicit commitment to impartial empathy” such that a person would have the capacity, in the first place, to abstract from her own emotional perspective in order to recognize and respect that of the other: “For how else could we possibly expect to meet, reliably, a general demand to respect the affective dignity of others unless we were willing to bracket our own biases and peculiarities in an attempt to empathize as ‘anyone’?”64 Such an impartial position is implicit within the arguments of Bernstien and Stanley against the pernicious developments of our times. For, to adjudicate the “clash of mentalities” and rise above the “abuse of evil,” quoting Bernstein’s descriptive terms, such an impartial form of empathy is required. This does not mean that we eliminate our unique rational and emotional perspectives per se, but that we must bracket them to arrive at an understanding that can rise above and work beyond the clash of mentalities, or the clash of “universalities,” as Balibar has described them. As Bernstein’s, Balibar’s, and Stanley’s studies have convincingly presented, one way to reawaken empathy is through rational discourse about the oppression and suffering of others that exposes ways in which emotions may have been manipulated to suit anti-humanitarian ends. Yet, an additional way to reinvigorate empathy is through aesthetic representation that stirs up affective transformation. There are ever-present aesthetic dimensions to human understanding and creativity that, when kept alive through what Ticktin calls “new affective grammars,” may aid the project of rethinking care as contestation and may work as an emotional-affective partner with rational deliberation about the suffering of strangers. In contrast to the manifold of arguments just engaged, Nussbaum’s position seems to take us back to some of the shortcomings analyzed in early care ethics in chapters 3 and 4, in that Nussbaum advocates that care for the distant other be anchored in care for the close other, those near and dear. Debes has shown that such an anchoring is not only unnecessary, but it is moreover a hindrance to our capacity to reach the distant other through imagination. The “impartial empathy” implicit in the bracketing process of our unique and idiosyncratic perspectives and the previous histories of our sympathies serve as a foundation to

Affective Rejoinders 149 think beyond our limited understanding at any given moment, to operate beyond the value fundamentalisms of “us and them,” and to position ourselves in the place of the distant other. Nussbaum’s argument thereby reiterates some of the problems of early care ethics while also striving to reach beyond this limited nearness of care for the other through a consideration of symbols and poetry. Debes has shown us, following modern sentimentalism grounded in the authority of empathy, that we can directly imagine ourselves in the place of others through empathy without requiring an intermediary of those in our circle of concern. Nussbaum incorporates different artistic and symbolic media to help generate strong emotion toward distant others, however, always with the aim of arriving at love and devotion for the abstract principles of a liberal democracy. Nussbaum employs the kind of sentimentalism that Liebsch finds both unnecessary and inaccurate when examining larger and more nuanced patterns of caring. We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Nussbaum for her groundbreaking work over the decades on the immense impact of emotions on ethical and moral judgments. And she rightfully and incisively hones the argument that a skill of imagination and aesthetic interpretation is requisite to ethical understanding. However, if we are to construct a more substantive and critical model of caring about distant others in a manner that can break out of and move beyond entrenched value fundamentalism, then we must move stridently away from the limitations described. Interestingly, the goal of Nussbaum’s theory is love and devotion to neutral principled ideals of justice, fairness, and equality, anchored in our immediate circle of concern. In contrast, Debes argues that an “impartial empathy” is already implicit with the human capacity to care about distant others, and so it serves as the means and not the end. A robust emotional relationship directed at abstract principles is not convincing. We care about concrete people, including those far away or foreign to us whom we can imaginatively experience through aesthetic representation. Debes provides us a convincing prototype, and dignity is a generative link between human interests and human rights. In my culminating chapter, we can look to concrete applications of affective dignity through what I call “religious care.”

Notes 1. Slote, “Care Ethics and Liberalism,” ibid., p. 38. 2. Hannah Arendt, “The Meaning of Love in Politics: A Letter to James Baldwin,” November 21, 1962: www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/ view/95/156, accessed 2/4/19. 3. Michael Hardt, “Love and Hate Politics,” in Oxford University Press’s Academic Insights for the Thinking World (Oxford University Press Blog, September 22, 2017): https://blog.oup.com/2017/09/love-hate-politics-divide/, accessed 2/4/19.

150  Affective Rejoinders 4. Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang, “Introduction: Emotions and Mass Atrocity,” in Brudholm and Lang (eds.), Emotions and Mass Atrocity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 8. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. Cited therein: Barbara Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), p. 1; and William H. Sewell, Jr., Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 249. 8. Sara Ahmed, “In the Name of Love,” Borderlands e-Journal, vol. 2, no. 3 (2003): www.borderlands.net.au/vol2no3_2003/ahmed_love.htm, accessed 2/4/19. 9. Hardt, ibid. 10. Hardt, ibid. 11. Stanley, How Fascism Works, ibid., p. 5. 12. Ibid., p. 19. 13. Ibid. 14. Jürgen Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate, ed. and trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990). 15. Stanley, ibid., p. 35. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., pp. 65–66. 18. Ibid., p. 101. 19. Ibid., p. 69. 20. Nussbaum, Political Emotions, ibid., p. 1. 21. Ibid., p. 2. 22. Ibid., pp. 2–3. 23. Ibid., p. 3. 24. Ibid. 25. For a critique of Nussbaum’s Rawlsian liberalism and neutrality from a feminist perspective, see Lisa H. Schwartzman, “A Feminist Critique of Nussbaum’s Liberalism,” in Barbara Andrew, Lisa Schwarzman, and Jean Keller (eds.), Feminist Interventions in Ethics and Politics: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), pp. 213–232. 26. Andrew A.G. Ross, “Beyond Empathy and Compassion: Genocide and the Emotional Complexities of Humanitarian Politics,” in Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang (eds.), Emotions and Mass Atrocity (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 193. 27. Nussbaum, ibid., p. 6. 28. Ibid., p. 7. 29. Ibid., p. 3. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., p. 10. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. See Balibar, ibid. 35. See Al-Saji, ibid. 36. Nussbaum, ibid., p. 11. 37. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Anthony Kenny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 38. See Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London and New York: Verso, 2004).

Affective Rejoinders 151 39. Burkhard Liebsch, “Grief as a Source, Expression, and Register of Political Sensitivity,” Social Research, Special Issue on “Borders and the Politics of Mourning,” vol. 83, no. 2 (Summer 2016), p. 230. 40. Tronto, ibid. 41. See Liebsch’s explication on pp. 229–230. 42. Ibid., p. 231. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., p. 235. 46. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (London and New York, Verso: 2005). 47. Liebsch, ibid., p. 236; cited therein: Nelly Sachs, “Ein totes Kind spricht” [A Dead Child Speaks], in Das Leiden Israels. Eli. In den Wohnungen des Todes, Sternverdunkelung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), p. 75. 48. Brudholm and Lang, ibid., p. 10. 49. Ross, ibid., pp. 191–192. 50. Ibid., pp. 187–188. 51. Remy Debes, “The Authority of Empathy (Or, How to Ground Sentimentalism),” in Remy Debes and Karsten R. Stueber (eds.), Ethical Sentimentalism: New Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 171–191. 52. Ibid., p. 171. 53. Ibid., pp. 171–172. 54. Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil, ibid., p. 35. 55. Debes, ibid., p. 172. 56. Ibid., p. 182. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., pp. 182–183. 59. Ibid., p. 172. 60. Ibid., p. 184. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid., p. 185. 63. Ibid., p. 186. 64. Ibid., p. 187.

6 Contestatory Care as Love Toward an Understanding of Religious Care

“Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.” —Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The conceptions of humanitarian care investigated in the preceding chapters have been constituted by preordained notions of ethics influenced by the Christian tradition, which in several manifestations misidentifies those it claims to help. I now consider the context of religion in more detail for a renewed understanding of political care. In my argument, the dilemmatic spaces (Bonnie Honig’s term) of ethically constituted subjectivity entail wrestling with religious belief.1 This was already demonstrated in my analysis of Foucault’s position on the counter-conducts internal to self-individuation in the history of the Christian pastorate, elaborated in chapter 3. Foucault’s framework was further developed in the same chapter through Judith Butler’s argument on Christian Empire, which has negatively impacted ethico-political forms of recognition of others. As mentioned in chapter 1, my inclusion of the wrangling with religion, particularly the problems of Christian prejudice in the roots of humanitarianism of the Global North, is yet another way in which my project diverges from previous care ethical applications. For example, Virginia Held’s care theory is actively delimited from religious belief because she regards the latter as “divisive baggage.”2 I argue that we must regard what I am calling “religious care” in the context of political care, that we only have a substantive and ethically grounded notion of political care if we account for at least the potentialities of religious belief. Religious belief is certainly not a requirement for political care, but it also cannot be necessarily excluded. Most importantly, we must consider ways in which non-Christian religious frameworks ought to be attributed ethical agency in the same manner as Christian ethical subjectivity has been, namely through acts of contestation. I find these requirements present in the religious writings of Søren Kierkegaard, as I will argue below. If Foucault was correct on the ethical grounding constitution of the self through self-care as contestation, as I argue in chapter 3, then such a

Contestatory Care as Love 153 constitution ought to be attributed to all individuals. My argument does not impute a Christian doctrine onto other religions and frameworks; rather, I want to emphasize the point that if the Christian perspective is afforded the self-constitution of ethical agency as contestation in religiously formed subjectivity, as Foucault has demonstrated compellingly, such ethical self-constitution via religiously formed subjectivity ought to be vigorously attributed as a possibility for all others. In other words, if we are to permit religious belief to enter a framework of political care, it can only be in a manner that attributes such agency to all individuals. What kind of Christianity is it that only attributes ethical self-constitution to Christians, as remarkably apparent in the critiques of humanitarianism included in my previous chapters? The answer lies in what Kierkegaard pejoratively called “Christendom,” and it relates disturbingly to the Christian nationalism impacting humanitarian care today.3 As an antidote to the problem, Kierkegaard crafted a newly formed concept of Christian neighbor love that distinctively stands against the preferential love of the co-national. I will turn to this as the crux of my argument on a possibility of religious care, and I will connect Kierkegaardian neighbor love to a recent aesthetic intervention, culminating all three spheres of care analyzed in my monograph: aesthetic, ethico-political, and religious care. Before I do so, I want to outline a bit more of the background context and summary of the problem as it relates to the previous chapters. Some theorists have argued that only a secular framework ought to be maintained in Western conceptions of humanitarianism. However, recent compelling publications have made clear that there is no clear line between the secular and the religious, and that those societies that have claimed secular origins and prided their self-development on a break from religious dominance have relied in fact on religious foundations and interpretations of selfhood, ethical-political agency, and human dignity.4 This is not to say that religious tolerance and pluralism are not possible, whether within religion or between religion and secularism. On the contrary, I agree with Richard J. Bernstein in The Abuse of Evil, where he argues that the problem with what he calls the “clash of mentalities” is a problem that “cuts across the religious/secular divide.”5 Bernstein reminds us that There is no place for absolutes in democratic politics. And we violate what is most vital in the world religions when we uncritically assume that religious faith is a sufficient basis for knowing what is good and evil. There are religious and nonreligious fundamentalists and fanatics. And there are religious believers and nonreligious secularists whose beliefs, deeds, and emotions are informed by robust fallibilism.6 Bernstein elaborates the clash of mentalities as “cut[ting] across morality, politics, and religion. It manifests itself in all areas of human experience.

154  Contestatory Care as Love It is fashionable today to associate the quest for certainty and the craving for absolutes with religion.” Bernstein continues by criticizing George W. Bush in a manner that rings true also for many stakeholders in the current U.S. power regime and in the E.U.: When the president of the most powerful nation in the world appeals to the Almighty to justify controversial political and military decisions, and sees himself as the leader of the battle against Evil, when he adopts an apocalyptic rhetoric, it is not difficult to understand why his critics are so skeptical of these “religious” claims. And without underestimating the crucial differences, it is alarming to see parallels with those militants who appeal to God to justify a jihad—a holy war—against the evil infidels. But the problem is not religion. Rather, it is the mentality that prevails in religion. Within the great world religions, we find the same clash of mentalities. The mentality of pragmatic fallibilism is not anti-religious; it is anti-dogmatic and anti-ideological.7 Bernstein concludes his chapter on pragmatic fallibilism by highlighting that In the great religious traditions there have always been believers who have argued that a genuine religious faith is one that is open to questioning. We must not confuse religious faith with ideological fanaticism. And we must passionately oppose ideological fanaticism wherever it arises—regardless of whether it takes a religious or a non-religious form. We must passionately oppose the abuse of evil wherein we demonize the enemy, oversimplify a complex reality by imposing facile dichotomies, make specious claims of certainty, and denigrate critical thinking.8 The insights from Bernstein raise the question of what kind of religious model could become incorporated into what I have presented as political care. Is there a religious perspective that grants the ethical selfconstitution of all subjectivities and that prevents religious dogma from excluding the needs of distant others? Bernstein presses for the possibility of dialogue and openness as internal possibilities within world religions, including the revealed religions. We can find one kind of progressive answer to the predicament of religious fundamentalism in the writings of Kierkegaard. It is important to recall his incredibly prescient statements on how to move forward with a commitment to the seemingly impossible task of loving one’s neighbors— no matter how far away or different from one’s own experiences, identities, and understandings—as an active form of contestation against the nationalism, fundamentalism, and nascent fascism of the times. In what

Contestatory Care as Love 155 follows, I propose a return to thinking about Kierkegaard’s concept of love, which is intertwined with and rooted in his actions of disobedience against the Danish Church and his vociferous protest against any reifying and exclusionary beliefs and practices of Christian fundamentalism conjoined with nationalism. Kierkegaard understood perhaps more than most other philosophers of his time the efficacy of love when able to rise above the mere limitations of any overly personal, romanticized, and extremely sentimentalized (in the vernacular sense of the term) experiences of empathy, pity, and compassion, the latter emotions of which become practiced only via ambiguous and provincial “feeling.” Kierkegaard derided such an approach as an aestheticization of existence, a manner of living that becomes paralyzed by its own narcissistic and excessive emotion and which succeeds only in establishing a distance from the pressing ethical and religious needs of the times. Kierkegaard wrote essay after essay, and one journal entry after another, through numerous volumes of direct discourses and under multiple forms of pseudonymity, against such an aesthetic distanciation of human existence. He argued that such a form of existence only serves to distract and remove individuals from more substantive socio-political action by immersing the self in melancholy and despair brought on by narcissistic attachments. In other words, he criticizes not emotion per se, but that category of human feeling which only revolves around the self through its romanticized imputations of its own subjectivity onto others. Let me also state clearly that Kierkegaard is not rejecting art or the human endeavor of aesthetic witness and representation in the specialized sense depicted in chapter 2. Rather, he objects to a life lived in an aestheticized manner whereby the individual forestalls any direct relationality to others and instead preserves an aesthetic distance as a form of life—in contrast to the way in which Nietzsche spoke of “the pathos of distance” discussed in chapter 3. Kierkegaard’s critique of aesthetic distance from the existence of others recalls Luc Boltanski’s indictment of the narcissism at the heart of humanitarian spectatorship from afar, discussed at length in chapter 2. But there are other important elements of aesthetic witness that come into play through what I am constructing as Kierkegaardian “religious care.” This will be made clear later in the chapter. Kierkegaard’s concept of love has enjoyed a long history of provocative interpretation and application for a critical theory of society while still examining the problems of the individual, although like Nietzsche’s writings, his works have fallen prey to the abuse of far-right extremist manipulations in the early twentieth century. In the late twentieth century and in recent decades, the overwhelming majority of scholars have rendered such manipulations of Kierkegaard’s writings defunct thanks to their corrective and incisive readings of Kierkegaardian love as its own kind of social justice revolution. Yet, ahead of its time, the first historical example exists in the early work of Herbert Marcuse, who turned to

156  Contestatory Care as Love Kierkegaard as a major source for his philosophy of praxis and concrete action. In his 1929 essay “On Concrete Philosophy,” which emphasized Kierkegaard’s transition from his early life of isolation and dandyism to his commitment to a life of taking action “in the street,” Marcuse effectively described the role that Kierkegaard played for his early concrete philosophy as follows: [Kierkegaard] went, in the Socratic sense of this activity, into the street: wrote article after article in a daily newspaper, gave out pamphlets, pressed his entire struggle in the public domain . . . directed in all acuteness towards a concrete movement of contemporary man, aimed at a “true” change of existence, and his attacks and demands directed themselves steadily towards concrete ways and tasks of this existence, holding the possibilities of achievement of the moment in full view. Only when one conceives how much Kierkegaard, in the fulfillment of his concrete philosophizing came upon the urgent newness of a real decision, upon a true movement and transformation of contemporary existence, only then can one understand the sharpness of his attack, the agitational violence of his public performance, the sought clash with the representative personalities of the public, the revolutionary concretion of his demands.9 Marcuse thus provided us one of the earliest interpretations on the ways in which Kierkegaard actively moved to provoke societal transformation to the advantage of those most in need, most especially those with whom is shared little or no common identity. The contestatory nature of Kierkegaard’s writings and actions is felt viscerally through Marcuse’s account. Kierkegaard employed the written form as an aesthetic process of interruption—to employ Rancière’s language—to bring visibility to those concerns that had been excluded because of the onslaught of Christian nationalism during his lifetime. We can turn to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript for an immediate example of an attack on Christian nationalism or what Kierkegaard called “Christendom.” In that text, the pseudonymous author, Johannes Climacus writes: Now, if someone thinks that he is not quite right, that he is not a Christian, he is considered an eccentric. His wife says to him: “How can you not be a Christian? You are Danish aren’t you? Doesn’t the geography book say that the predominant religion in Denmark is Lutheran-Christian? . . . Don’t you tend to your work in the office as a good civil servant; aren’t you a good subject in a Christian nation, in a Lutheran Christian state? So of course you are a Christian.”10

Contestatory Care as Love 157 James Conant corrected previous problematic fundamentalist theological readings of the text by pointing out that the Postscript is a mockery of any philosophical attempt to ascertain what it means to be a Christian. Conant describes the Postscript as “ ‘an elaborate reductio ad abdurdum’ of the very idea that philosophical reflection could ‘advance our understanding of what it means to become a Christian.’ ”11 This speaks to Kierkegaard’s deep-seated conviction that religious belief cannot appear in any external details in one’s life; belief is not “proven” through any external properties of the self. But this does not yield a form of religious belief that escapes the immanent exigencies of this world. Kierkegaard has been very incorrectly accused of seeking refuge in the transcendent beyond.12 Recent scholarship on Kierkegaard’s concept of love and its efficacy for contemporary political theory substantiate Marcuse’s and Conant’s readings. Publications by Lee Barrett, David Lappano, and Jamie Aroosi have each elaborated from their respective positions in theology, philosophy, and political theory how Kierkegaard’s religious existence of love is intricately and intimately of this world and cannot reside in any transcendent beyond, as a clear rejection of any doctrinal Christianity or essentialization of what it means to be Christian metaphysically. There is no affirmation of religion for Kierkegaard in the sense of any coherent doctrine. At the conclusion of his article on Kierkegaard as theologian, Barrett writes: “For Kierkegaard, theology is not done through the development of a doctrinal system on paper, but through the assumption of interpretive responsibility (and consequently the assumption of moral and religious responsibility) in the living of one’s life.”13 This is first and foremost modeled on love in Kierkegaard’s writings. Aroosi has succinctly captured that Kierkegaard rarely affirms the content of Christian orthodoxy. In fact, he so rarely validates Christian dogma, and so clearly interprets much of it in a deeply metaphorical light, that it is legitimate to ask about the nature—and even the existence—of his Christianity. . . . And so, in Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard seems to dispense with the entirety of Christian dogma, arguing that its essential truth is nothing more than that “the god appeared in the humble form of a servant, lived and taught among us, and then died.”14 Aroosi concludes appropriately to the present discussion that “the challenge [for Kierkegaard] is not to permanently leave the world behind in favor of some otherworldly transcendence; the challenge is to return to it, so that we might learn to reconcile our transcendent love with the fact that we are also limited, and embodied creatures.”15 Several important elements come through this understanding of Kierkegaard’s religious philosophy that relate intricately to my argument

158  Contestatory Care as Love on care ethics and political care. Foremost among these is the fact that for Kierkegaard our actions are concrete and embodied, tied to the place and context of our specific situation and existence. Moreover, an affectiveemotional ground serves as a powerful force for Kierkegaard in motivating individuals to act in the image of God’s love. For Kierkegaard, we are acting out our Christian religious existence when we are capable of carrying out works or undertakings of love in a manner that rejects Christian nationalism. These points importantly relate back to Raghuram’s conception of care, discussed in chapter 4, as an emplaced practice of completion that does not attempt to impute one conception of care onto others through external identity relations. Such a Kierkegaardian position has been further elaborated in sophisticated and convincing detail by Lappano.16 In his description of Kierkegaard’s theology as one of “secular encounter,” Lappano writes: “We have seen that Kierkegaard challenges any notion of Church that positively claims to carry within its authority and its practices the eschatological promise of Christ on high,”17 and “Kierkegaard’s edifying and communicative praxis, ironically, seems more easily applicable to secular social developments than religious ones.”18 Thus, Kierkegaard sustains a dialectical relation between the immanent and the transcendent domains of Christian existence and belief in which neither resolves to the other. One of the most convincing proposals for reading Kierkegaard in this way, in a manner that upholds both a negative or apophatic and a positive or cataphatic theology, comes from Simon Podmore’s 2011 monograph. Referring to the negative and positive theological outcomes, Podmore writes: In one sense, Kierkegaard’s works could be read as developing an apophatic or negative theological anthropology in which the failure of self-knowledge is evoked in order to unveil a cataphatic, or positive, truth of selfhood that cannot be attained by merely natural means. It is only through the mystery of the self’s relation “before God” that the self can come to know itself. . . . And yet, in the endeavor to stand before God, the self is explicitly confronted by the fear and trembling of the infinite qualitative difference between humanity and divinity.19 The self stands in the position of an “infinite qualitative difference” before God; therefore, the transcendent domain is ever constitutive of faith. Yet, Podmore makes clear that there is no “substantive subjectivity” yielded from the writings of Kierkegaard in any manner that would deliver a purely immanent version of the self as a reified form or identity. The self is rather defined through its action in its positionality ever between the immanent finitude of the human and the transcendent perfection of God. Moreover, the self does not fall prey to any narcissistic fallacy when

Contestatory Care as Love 159 realizing and actualizing her existence in the infinite qualitative difference in the face of God. Podmore clarifies his rebuke of any attempt to ground the self otherwise: But [my] work does not seek to evade the charge that the search for the self is often a dubious, vain, or narcissistic enterprise, destined to suffer from its own futility and hubris. On the contrary, it is my contention that Kierkegaard’s writings contain some of the most valuable and insightful expressions of abortive attempts at self-knowledge in modern Western theology, philosophy, and literature.20 Kierkegaard’s writings demonstrate the failures of such attempts at any subjectivity that seeks to impute itself objectively to all others. His trenchant rejection of this kind of subjectivity strikes at the heart of vain political applications of any religious conviction and places the responsibility to uphold such a position on the actions that define an individual’s relationship to God. Kierkegaard’s key emphasis on the responsibility of how one acts when standing in the awkward yet necessary position in the infinite difference before God underscores both individual and collective responsibility to care for the suffering of others modeled on the corporeal and historically concrete suffering of Christ. Kierkegaard’s model rejects any rule-oriented philosophy of ethics or religion, as well as abstract and idealized conceptions, and is constituted rather through the concrete actions of individuals to prevent or ameliorate suffering of others in defiance of state orders or societal norms. Because Kierkegaard infuses his texts with a myriad of terminology from the Christian faith and traditional doctrinal topoi and thereby generates a cacophony of possible theological interpretations, as Lee Barrett has convincingly detailed, Podmore provides a powerful rendering in which the failure of modern substantive subjectivity is not only transcribed in Kierkegaard’s writings, but doubly fails as a transmutation of “primal anxiety into faithful religious selfhood as despair in its various guises.”21 And despair is overcome with the edifying kind of love that actively works against the narcissism of the self when left to its own identitarian devices. This moves Kierkegaardian love into active forms of disobedience against staunch individualist and nationalist identity. The overarching movement of Kierkegaard’s notion of love is therefore one of disobedience.22 In his scholarship on Kierkegaard’s text titled Works of Love, Darren Surman recounts the movement in Kierkegaard’s writings from anxiety, to critique, to action, culminating in disobedience.23 If Kierkegaard described love as a revolution in Works of Love, Surman makes abundantly clear the specific form of protest against suffering and injustice at the core of Kierkegaard’s critical philosophy. Surman writes: “When we proceed in this way, emanating out from a love of the self to a love of others [as an act of disobedience], we can see the extent to which

160  Contestatory Care as Love love is always already political.”24 Yet Kierkegaard achieves such a politically disobedient love as protest against suffering and as an acceptance of the other as the self in a manner that vehemently disavows local or global or metaphysically “real” identity relations. Such a model of love as protest, contestation, disobedience—and what Kierkegaard also called “an offense”—is instructive in the context of the numerous “false gods” of so-called Christianity in too many locations today, the kind of Christian political philosophy paraded by regimes in Hungary, Poland, the Alternative für Deutschland or the Identitäre Bewegung in Germany, and of course, the “evangelicals” who have aligned themselves with Trumpian xenophobia, racism, sexism, and ableism in the United States. Kierkegaard was one of the most outspoken authors to call out such extreme denigration of what it means to be Christian. We can further look to Kierkegaard’s writings on Christian love as a powerful response to the problems articulated and evidenced with any purportedly “pure” rationalistic framework of care that eschews the emotions and their “irrationality,” as critiqued in chapter 5. Kierkegaard is renowned as the alleged father of irrationally based critique of Western ethics and a proponent of a new understanding of what it means to be Christian. He famously and never-endingly mocked the Danish Hegelians who advocated Christian love as a form of ethics that perfectly unifies the nation and church, and repeatedly interpreted anew the Tertullian dictum that belief or commitment to something is, by definition, absurd. Hannah Arendt claimed that Kierkegaard only wanted “to assert the dignity of faith against reason and reasoning, not irrationalism or simplistic fideism.”25 In her estimation Kierkegaard did us a great service by demonstrating the inadequacy of human reason in fully explaining existence, and therefore asserted the paradoxical and absurd nature of faith. For Kierkegaard, any political representation of religion therefore reduces to caricature. Kierkegaard’s version of Christianity does not permit of any practical following in the sense of an identity movement because Kierkegaardian Christians “seek to become nothing in the world,” as stated in his autobiographical account titled The Point of View.26 What is meant there is a concept of individuality that exists through the actions of love, not a subject or individual understood as an object. This move comprises Kierkegaard’s staunch rejection of any form of substantive subjectivity that grasps itself through external attributes. Nonetheless, Kierkegaard’s neighbors can come together as a powerful community of heterodox individuals with their action directed against the “success oriented at politically grasping unlimited power and salvation of everyone,” which is equivalent in Kierkegaard’s analysis in Philosophical Fragments to “idolatrous claims that quantitative reason makes for itself.” The latter relates to Kierkegaard’s critique of the “crowd,” a group of individuals united only externally as a quantitative sum in agreement over a specious claim. It is in this specialized and nuanced

Contestatory Care as Love 161 manner that Kierkegaard’s emotional agitation against the equation of state and religion is irrational. He vehemently “challenges the thesis that identity formation is primarily a matter of participating in the social mores and expectations of the common” (drawing on the topos of suffering, for example, in Upbuilding Discourses of Various Spirits).27 Hence we can look to Kierkegaardian love as an active form of contestation against systems of hybrid nationalist-personal sentiment that not only resist responding to the suffering of others distant in identity relations but actively reject it and uphold their rejection as love. In contrast to this identitarian love, Kierkegaard regards “the suffering of the good man as the suffering of an alien and an exile,”28 and therefore grounds a paradoxical location of displacement at the heart of his ethics. For these reasons, I develop my theory of religious care modeled on the religious contestation in the writings of Kierkegaard. What is unique in his conception is the contrast between the problematic notion of preferential love, an exclusionary and isolationist emotion by nature that links to the patriot love of the co-national, and his newly formed understanding of neighbor, the latter in marked contrast to the rest of the Christian tradition that preceded Kierkegaard and which paralleled the target of Nietzsche’s critique of Western ethics. In chapter 3 I presented Nietzsche’s rejection of the false care exhibited through constructions of Christian “neighbor love.” What Nietzsche evaluates as the problematic Naechstenliebe at the heart of Western ethics is precisely the opposite of what Kierkegaard presents as neighbor love. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were therefore opposed to the same target, but Kierkegaard rehabilitates the concept of neighbor love whereas Nietzsche disavows it because of its historical failures. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard recasts neighbor love as a critique of false care, the latter of which he designates under the rubric of preferential, passionate, patriotic, and narcissistic love. To understand his reinvention of the notion, we need to turn to his understanding of neighbor. Stephen Backhouse’s 2011 monograph on Kierkegaard’s Critique of Christian Nationalism has provided a penetrating analysis of the concepts of neighbor and neighbor love in Kierkegaard’s writings. As Backhouse elaborates: Kierkegaard’s neighbor is the kind of person who lives in the multivalent, ever-shifting world envisioned by the loosened established order. . . . Paradoxically, the neighbor is a way to articulate undefined “others” insofar as Kierkegaard’s “neighbor” is a cipher for “the individual”: the “I” who is not oneself. Thus, one can discuss persons in a way that preserves individuality and avoids collapsing groups of individuals into a gormless herd. As individuals, neighbors are real (not abstract) but their reality includes the fact that their personhood cannot be defined solely by recourse to an exhaustive

162  Contestatory Care as Love inventory of cultural influences. They are in this sense objectively indefinable precisely because they are complex subjects—not simplified units defined primarily by their membership to certain groups such as nations.29 Through Kierkegaard’s conception of the neighbor, quite the contrary to the problems of stereotypical neighbor love diagnosed by Nietzsche, we have a portrait of a single individual who recognizes her interdependency with different others (those who challenge the identity of the self), who is emphatically not acknowledged as a unit of political belonging determined by cultural influences, and who understands the capacity to love others through radical experiences of self-dislocation. These neighbors are concrete individuals as units of action, not instantiations of an abstract universal that begets substantive subjectivity upheld in an attempt to substantiate meaningless notions of equality and justice. Although they are individual, they permeate one another. Neighbors recognize their responsibility to each other simply by the fact that the neighbor stands before us, instead of asking why the neighbor is in need. We are all neighbors and we all have neighbors, but in very concrete constellations of arrangements comprising a de facto responsibility to those who stand before us, spontaneously, contingently, and without any necessary connection to our circle of concern.30 The neighbor for Kierkegaard is the opposite of the co-national or compatriot. The neighbor therefore includes a dissident element because for Kierkegaard she can be present anywhere and thus belongs nowhere exclusively through the dictates of any metaphysical totalizing system. Yet, the neighbor “competes with—and subverts—the compatriot, in a way that it does not subvert the friend or spouse. This is because the friend and spouse as ‘neighbors’ are real and concrete in a way that a person identified primarily along ‘nationalist’ lines can never be.”31 Kierkegaard employs an ironic construction to show the failure of any presupposition of givenness or naturalization of national identity, something connected to the fiction of political territory and belonging, thus resonating with the critiques by Jacqueline Bhabha et al. discussed in chapter 1.32 Backhouse furthermore states pointedly that “[w]hile trying to create a concrete personal identity, ironically the nationalist abstracts persons from the very things whose variety makes them who they really are.”33 The neighbor in Kierkegaard critiques any national narrative as a fictional construct utilized to regulate belonging and decisions about who receives care. Kierkegaard’s construction of the neighbor helpfully opposes the sedantarist bias in notions of political belonging. The neighbor may be—and frequently is—one whom we do not know; she is our stranger. Yet neighbors appear to us as specific and materially present individuals in need of actual care in the moment. As Kierkegaard writes in The Point of View, “The neighbor is the absolutely true expression for human

Contestatory Care as Love 163 equality.”34 The state of being a contingent neighbor paradoxically constitutes an eternal state unified with God’s divine love. Kierkegaard’s religious perspective therefore provides a dramatically different understanding of equality than the one achieved through abstract, falsely universalized conceptions of justice. The neighbor is a concrete other who stands before us. Kierkegaard’s framework of equality, spanning his collected writings, grasps the necessity of engaging specifically existing and materially concrete individuals, familiar and foreign, known and strange, in a manner that countenances the affective dimension of human understanding, shuns the arch-rationalism in historical Western ethics and its contemporary actualization into what Nietzsche diagnosed as the “herd” morality which, ironically, through its rationalistic calculation rooted in ressentiment, as described in chapter 2, does not think for itself.35 From this discussion of the neighbor in Kierkegaard’s reconceived notion of love in Christian ethics, let us then turn in more detail to the two contrasting concepts of love from his writings, focusing mainly on Works of Love. I provide here a summary of the insightful outline of the two concepts from Backhouse. Neighbor love (Kjerlighed) is carried out in relation to the person randomly encountered; it is “that which embraces spontaneity” through “an immediate affective response” and is proactively not preferential because it “thrives in a situation of difference.”36 With Kjerlighed there is no question of loving for the sake of sameness, and it is “able to include many people.” This form of neighbor love contradicts the belief in ‘the one true love’ because it is “expansive, world-affirming, people-oriented” and “challenges both the political and ecclesiastical formulations of the social settlement.”37 Kjerlighed is made manifest when an individual is placed into a situation with a “cosmos of people,” and it is “contingent yet ever ongoing as a ‘duty’ (not Kantianbased, but rather ‘irrationally’ oriented through emotion).” It exists as “love between two beings eternally and independently determined” and “sacrifices belief qua rational mind, through transcendence of rational ascription.” Backhouse is careful to point out, however, that Kierkegaard’s philosophical reconception of neighbor love cannot be reduced only to intersubjective social relations; there is necessarily a relation to God in order for neighbor love to become actualized.38 Yet, the relation to God must experience a clash with the temporal domain. The “transcendence of rational ascription” does not leave this world, as pointed out earlier through the arguments of Podmore and Aroosi. Instead, the move to transcendence must ever return to the domain of immanence in the material presence of the moment in history in an act of committed love to the concrete conditions of existence. Therein lies the responsibility at the heart of Kierkegaard’s neighbor love. In opposition to the Christian neighbor love of Kjerlighed invariably described by Kierkegaard as redeeming the most radical forms of otherness, Elskov is the love of preference and nationalist sentiment that

164  Contestatory Care as Love links to the passionate love of common sense, thus constituting a highly problematic self-same love. As Backhouse describes it, “Elskov includes sexual relations, but also encompasses any love which exhibits ‘passionate preference.’ ”39 Elskov is the love that unites with one’s own position instead of challenging it. It represents the kind of love that generates the mentality of the crowd comprised of individuals who do not think independently but rather unite as a quantitative sum of mutually reinforcing opinions. This love is therefore the very opposite of the contestatory nature of authentic Christian neighbor love in Kierkegaard—contestatory in a manner that upholds the need to recognize others in their alterity and to love them for it. As Backhouse describes the preferential love analyzed by Kierkegaard, “such feelings easily turn into self-love when we desire the singular object of our admiration to admire us back for the very selfsame qualities that we admire in [them].”40 Elskov is therefore the “love of the nation, of co-nationals” and it follows the logic of “the more similar the lovers the more fervent the love.”41 Elskov regards love as “the one” or “true” love and “requires enormous self-willfulness and acts of deliberate exclusion” in contrast to the manifold that can and should be the recipient of Kjerlighed.42 As preferential love, Elskov exists through an “intoxication in the other ‘I’,” most dramatically captured in the two volumes of pseudonymously composed essays that make up Either/Or, including “The Diary of a Seducer,” Kierkegaard’s most infamous writing on the theme.43 This love facilitates a separate form of existence for the individual subject and stands as an abstraction from reality. Preferential love in Kierkegaard’s writings focuses on the what of need, considering whether the person or group in need relates well enough in a substantive manner—however superficially defined through external properties—to one’s own identity. In contrast, the Christian neighbor love of Kjerlighed reconceived by Kierkegaard highlights the fact of need, regardless of the circumstances or identity relation to the person. In this manner Kjerlighed embraces a radical acceptance of otherness in multitudinous forms that actualizes, above all, the fact of contingency beyond the control of any alleged autonomous subject that brings a person or group into a situation of need for care. Kjerlighed recognizes the role of the eternal God in calling out the duty to love one’s neighbor, a duty that is, however, affectively motivated and standing in defiance of any purely rationalistic ground. We can think at this juncture of the important conceptual devices in Kierkegaard’s writings, which have been highlighted in Backhouse’s powerful argument explicating Kierkegaard’s attack on Christian nationalism. These tools comprise “the moment” (Øieblikket) and “contemporaneity” (Samtidigheden) in Kierkegaard’s philosophic constructions. While they relate to theological topoi, they are not themselves necessarily bound to any specific version of Christian theology. This point was made in regard to Kierkegaard’s lack of univocal, coherent, or settled statement

Contestatory Care as Love 165 in his writings pertaining to the numerous Christian themes he employs in the playful twists and turns in the philosophical constellations in his writings. In what follows I focus on Kierkegaard’s thematization of “the moment” because it provides the most direct path for what I want to elucidate about the resources of religious experience for a rehabilitated understanding of political care. In the words of Backhouse, “Øieblikket is the idea of the relation between time and eternity that lies at the heart of what Kierkegaard writes about history, faith and identity. . . . The word Øieblikket is derived from Øiets Blik, or ‘glance of the eye.’ ”44 The literal breakdown of the word has led some interpreters to regard Kierkegaard’s concept of the moment incorrectly as a mere instant that is “a radically existential, isolating category where the individual somehow removes himself from time or sets himself against the flow of history and community.”45 Opposite this, as evidenced in my previous publications on Kierkegaard,46 I wholeheartedly agree with the assertion that the moment in Kierkegaard’s constructions functions against any isolation of the individual. Backhouse argues further: “Considered in its full context, Øieblikket does the opposite of removing the individual from his or her socio-historical context. Instead, Øieblikket grounds and promotes the integration of the subject within history, and describes the right relation between eternity and time that is necessary for religious and ethical authenticity.”47 Because the moment plays such a crucial role as a thread throughout all of Kierkegaard’s penned and pseudonymous works, Backhouse disaggregates the two main ways the concept functions in the oeuvre both philosophically and religiously. There is a technical sense of the moment and an existential one.48 The technical connotation “refers to the relation between temporality and eternity, and the creation of historical points in time.” It is “a reflection on the components of time and history that takes the form of an examination of what it is that makes eternity and necessity different from temporality and contingency.”49 In contrast as more of a nuance and less as an opposition, the existential sense of the moment comprises a way of being of the subject or “a way of seeing the world” that “does the work of describing the state of being that exists when a person inhabits a right relation to such anxiety-inducing phenomena as the unknown, the sublime and the divine.” Most important for my inclusion of the Kierkegaardian concept of the moment for a better, more ethical understanding of political care, which countenances both the aesthetic and religious domains of human experience, the moment “is not just descriptive or technical, for it also carries with it overtones of active freedom, referring to ever-present choice facing a person in his process of becoming religious.”50 Hence through the construction of the moment as a necessary and contingent clash of temporality with eternity through the responsibility of human freedom to act

166  Contestatory Care as Love in time in the face of God eternal, we come to see how and why Kierkegaard provides a constructive and open resource for the recognition of individual freedom in the context of historical—temporal, material, concrete—responsibility toward others in need. Kierkegaard recognizes the eternal command to “love your neighbor” in the moment as a direct manifestation of God in time as we stand before the radical other in this world. Backhouse clearly emphasizes the need for Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms to take the eternal seriously in time. Such a movement necessarily has inherent within it an aesthetic dimension. The command to love your neighbor for Kierkegaard is unavoidably and provocatively bound to the witnessing act of, with, and to the one who appears before us, randomly, contingently, yet meaningfully through the eternal demand of divine love. The bodies of Aylan Kurdi, Omran Daqneesh, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and Angie Valeria happened by chance to appear before the photojournalists and emergency medics, as analyzed in chapter 2. Contingently, though responsibly, these individuals served as witness to the deaths of Aylan Kurdi, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and Angie Valeria, and to the bare survival of Omran Daqneesh, providing names in public domains and a formalized moment for the world to recognize them and mourn their suffering. The witnessing act of the suffering of the other in the Kierkegaardian moment returns us to the aesthetic domain of human experience with which the present study began and, through Kierkegaard, culminates in the religious. For one of Kierkegaard’s major insights was never to let go of the sensuous and embodied provocation to care. Existence is bound to the finite sensuous realm of appearances, even if appearances are constitutively deceptive. For Kierkegaard as well as the aesthetic theorists analyzed in chapter 2, the constitutive deception of aesthetic experience presents the possibility for human redemption in this world, here and now.51 We can never eliminate the appearance and its deception no matter how hard we try. In this context, I would like now to consider an example of an intervention that took place at the heart of Europe, as a concrete manifestation of religious care of neighbor love on behalf of migrant protest, uniting all three forms of care described in my investigation. The example to which I now turn brings together the aesthetic, ethico-political, and religious domains of human experience and the element of contestation present in all three with a provocative event. In June 2015, the Center for Political Beauty, an arts-activist organization based in Germany, staged a week of events that culminated with the illegal burial of a 34-year-old Syrian woman who died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. The woman’s name has been withheld to protect her surviving family members who are seeking asylum in Germany. Her family members gave permission for her body to be exhumed from the makeshift grave in Sicily and transported to

Contestatory Care as Love 167 Germany for a proper burial in the heart of Berlin, directly in front of the Chancellery. The action was explicitly done in direct defiance of the German state authorities’ injunction against it.52 A couple thousand people responded to the social media call from the Center for Political Beauty to attend the funeral. Alice von Bieberstein and Erdem Evren, both present at the event, explain the conceptual development of the action, including the initial naming of the event, and relay details about its contestation of state orders: The initial name for the protest, “Marsch der Entschlossenen” (March of the Determined), had been playfully altered to “Marsch der (Un-) Entschlossenen” (March of the (Un-)Determined) two days earlier in the face of threats and warnings issued by local politicians and concrete conditions put into place by the police: coffins and shovels, as well as the transport of any dead bodies, were officially banned on the grounds that the site of the Chancellery was not part of a legally designated burial area.53 This specific burial comprised the concluding event of a week of Aktionskunst (action art) orchestrated by the Center for Political Beauty titled “Die Toten Kommen” (“The Dead Are Coming”), a moniker meant to blur any perceived boundary between the living and the dead in the context of refugees and forced migrants’ material experiences and their lingering significance for German, and more broadly European, society. This action art served as a motivation for others in Germany and Austria to set up additional graves to provide “proper” burials for those who had been previously denied this religious rite. As von Bieberstein and Evren state powerfully, “Their unknown makers thereby took part in the [Center for Political Beauty’s] ethico-political mobilization to mourn the deaths of nameless refugees and to problematize the very absence of a public sphere where such expressions of grief could take place.”54 The crux of the arts action was therefore to establish a public space where those bodies could be mourned properly, humanely, by being reunited with their families and loved ones and in respect of their collective wishes for religious rites to be performed as they would for any others. The Center describes on its website the rationale behind the operation as follows: Every day, hundreds of migrants die at Europe’s aggressively sealedoff borders. These borders are the world’s deadliest. Year after year, thousands of people die trying to cross them. The victims of this cordon sanitaire are buried in masses in the hinterland of Southern European states. They have no names. No-one looks for their relatives. No-one brings them flowers.

168  Contestatory Care as Love The Center for Political Beauty took these dead immigrants from the EU’s external borders right to the heart of Europe’s mechanism of defense: to the German capital. Those who died of thirst or hunger at our borders on their way to a new life, were thus able to reach the destination of their dreams beyond their death. Together with the victims’ relatives, we opened inhumane graves, identified and exhumed the bodies and brought them to Germany.55 What is a burial but an act of reverence for the living as a way to honor their deceased? It is a form of bringing the recognition of an individual life, or a group of lives, to fruition, providing a means for recognition for future generations, most importantly connecting a name to a body and to a community of those who care. The care being performed through this action or operation is, of course, not only for the dead, but also for the living families of all those seeking refuge and humane living conditions, offering a provocative message of recognition to individuals and groups seeking a viable future in Europe. Through their indeterminacy, bodies with no names and names with no bodies ironically define one of the most disturbing consequences of the border regimes that forestall care and cause suffering and death. Through the action of “The Dead are Coming,” the individuals who have paid the ultimate price are reconciled with their names and biological identities, united through the burial process. The families and loved ones of the deceased are given the opportunity for witness—whether nearby or far away—as the bodies of their loved ones are cared for through this aesthetic, ethico-political, and religious act of contestation, which in turn, recognizes the contestatory nature of the attempts to secure their own lives in a manner in which they could flourish. It is helpful to turn again to the witnessing statements of von Bieberstein and Evren, who have provided further details about the burial scene they observed: Before the beginning of the first burial ceremony at the outskirts of Berlin, journalists gathered around Stefan Pelzer, the [Center for Political Beauty’s] official “escalation commissioner” (Eskalationsbeauftrager). He explained that the Syrian woman about to be buried had died while fleeing the war, in an attempt to assert her legal right to asylum in Europe. She had drowned in the Mediterranean together with her two year-old daughter, whose body was never found and whose coffin that day was thus symbolic. The woman’s husband and two sons had survived and now lived as refugees in Germany. Yet they were unable to attend the burial because the Germany authorities had refused to exempt them from the general rule of compulsory residence imposed on asylum seekers. The woman herself had been

Contestatory Care as Love 169 buried as “unknown number 2” in Sicily before her identification and recovery by the [Center for Political Beauty].56 To my judgment this intervention does not constitute an aesthetic creation or artwork per se because it is already overtly politicized. As I have made clear in chapter 2, the aesthetic cannot take on direct political action, lest it become propaganda. For similar reasons, I also do not regard the intervention merely as political theatre or artistic revolt because it has a serious, sacrosanct, solemn, religious constitution. The intervention is rather a religious ceremony performed by a priest or imam that entails aesthetic and ethico-political dimensions. What is a burial in this instance but an act of contestation that strikes aesthetic, ethico-political, and religious registers? “The Dead are Coming” recalls a poignant metaphor from Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy of the refugee in which he calls for a necessary “perforation” of the fiction that is the space of national territory as the site of belonging.57 Although I do not agree with his argument in toto, I find this particular metaphor to call out an important challenge to the current paradigm in contemporary ethics and political philosophy that, whether intentionally or not, upholds a static conception of political belonging. Such a position employs a sedantarist bias against the movement of individuals and peoples that comes to define who belongs and who is “alien” or “foreign” in a state of refuge. It is important to quote Agamben at length where he imagines a state of mutual extraterritoriality for political communities in which: the guiding concept would no longer be the ius (right) of the citizen but rather the refugium (refuge) of the singular. In an analogous way, we could conceive of Europe not as an impossible “Europe of the nations”, whose catastrophe one can already see in the short run, but rather as an aterritorial or extraterritorial space in which all the (citizen and noncitizen) residents of the European states would be in a position of exodus or refuge; that status of European would then mean the being-in-exodus of the citizen (a condition that obviously could also be one of immobility). European space would thus mark an irreducible difference between birth [nascia] and nation in which the old concept of people (which, as is well known, is always a minority) could again find a political meaning, thus decidedly opposing itself to the concept of nation (which has so far unduly usurped it). This space would coincide neither with any of the homogenous national territories nor with their topographical sum, but would rather act on them by articulating and perforating them topologically as in the Klein bottle or Möbius strip, where exterior and interior in-determine each other. . . . Only in a world in which the spaces of

170  Contestatory Care as Love states have thus perforated and topologically deformed and in which the citizen has been able to recognize the refugee that he or she is— only in such a world is the political survival of humankind today thinkable.58 While Agamben’s proposal of an aterritorial or extraterritorial space in which all citizens exist in a state of “being-in-refuge” could be an overdramatization for effect, I agree with his privileging of the state of beingin-refuge over rights as an act of contestation against the current lack of recognition of human rights for refugees and forced migrants. Agamben’s mindset is correct even if his extension of the argument appears unrealistic or hyperbolic. Agamben’s urging for a puncturing of the rigid measures of belonging are most suited to the crucial need to rethink what political care means. The ongoing operation of “The Dead Are Coming” realizes Agamben’s metaphor of perforation or punctuation of the space of political belonging in a quite literal manner. Through their artsactivist performance against the border regime of Europe, broadly, and Germany, specifically, this collective has vigorously and unforgettably demonstrated the fluidity of human agency through counter-conducts to political-religious authority. As I close out my investigation, I want to end with one additional, more recent example of religious care that further actualizes what I have modeled on a Kierkegaardian conception of neighbor love. In December 2018, a large protest action was assembled at the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization founded in 1917 that, according to their self-description, “promotes lasting peace with justice, as a practical expression of faith in action.”59 The protest included more than 400 demonstrators and led to the arrest of 32 religious leaders and activists. The group included religious activists from churches, mosques, synagogues, and indigenous communities all of whom manifest a Kierkegaardian interpretation of neighbor love. As individuals from varying faiths and backgrounds working together, they stand up for what they call “love without borders” and advocate on behalf of migrant justice.60 Those arrested were suspected of entering restricted territory near the fence that separates the two countries. Priests, imams, rabbis, pastors, and indigenous spiritual leaders were kneeling down in front of a row of Border Patrol agents who were covered with riot gear. The protest group adamantly seeks the defunding of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement regimes because of their explicit denial of migrants’ humanitarian care. The AFSC furthermore opposes the militarization of the border and the extension or expansion of a border wall. According to Lucy Duncan, the outreach director for the AFSC, the group developed the idea for the protest after receiving

Contestatory Care as Love 171 information that the border authorities intended to close Friendship Park, a protected area along the border where friends and family on both sides can meet and where religious leaders can hold worship services.61 The two examples I have considered as paradigms of religious care call attention to the practical reality of what can be done not only to remind ourselves of the feeling of care, harkening back to the aesthetic yet pushing beyond the self-limitations of the distant observation of “everyday humanitarianism.” These examples also show what can be done through various constellations of disparate and previously unrelated individuals who care becoming united through collective action, which may take on aesthetic, ethico-political, or religiously motivated forms. In an age with so much abstract legalist and proceduralist debates about rights and equality, Kierkegaard’s admonishment to care, despite what statereligious authority and cultural norms may tell us to do, offers a model of care as contestation through a practice of completion, which recognizes human embodiment, emotion, and suffering. Kierkegaard’s model is certainly not the only one we can turn to. But he presents us a productively “offensive” (his term) way to move forward to actualize substantive care and prevent further suffering of distant others in our own times. Herbert Marcuse was correct in his estimation of Kierkegaard in 1929. When we apply it, Kierkegaard’s religious philosophy gives us concrete results for material action against state-religious oppression. Throughout this chapter and those preceding it, I have argued for an a reconception of care as a form of contestation understood as an emplaced practice of completion that agitates against the current and ongoing suffering of distant others through three spheres of human experience: the aesthetic, the ethico-political, and the religious. I have attempted to shed light on how individuals, on their own and in their efforts to form collectives, can possibly move forward from out of or against Western hegemonic power. The authors I have engaged in my study are all working toward this goal, albeit from within different historical and practical contexts. I have brought them together with the aim of weaving their insights into a compelling argument on the necessity of rethinking solutions to the humanitarian need of those excluded from the E.U. and U.S., and to recognize the robust agency of those seeking viable living conditions there. As mentioned in the Introduction, Hannah Arendt was one of the foremost figures of “the refugee” and émigré philosophy in the wake of World War II. Her writings counseled those on all sides of history. Consider, in closing, some of the opening lines from her essay from 1943, titled “We Refugees.” Here Arendt states openly that she does not want to be called a “refugee” and that she simply wanted to rebuild her life after losing almost everything. Her optimism is her main point. People who flee insurmountable circumstances should be recognized for the “yes-saying” that they give to life, to adopt Nietzsche’s term—for the affirmation of

172  Contestatory Care as Love their own life’s prospects in the face of the worst of chances. Arendt simply asks for recognition of this fact in her account of her life’s experience: In the first place, we don’t like to be called refugees. . . . A refugee used to be a person driven to seek refuge because of some act committed or some political opinion held. Well, it is true we have had to seek refuge; but we committed no acts and most of us never dreamt of having any radical political opinion. With us the meaning of the term “refugee” has changed. Now “refugees” are those of us who have been so unfortunate as to arrive in a new country without means and have to be helped by refugee committees. . . . Yes, we were “immigrants” or “newcomers” who had left our country because, one fine day, it no longer suited us to stay, or for purely economic reasons. We wanted to rebuild our lives, that was all. In order to rebuild one’s life one has to be strong and an optimist. So we are very optimistic. Our optimism, indeed, is admirable, even if we say so ourselves.62 Heeding the words of Arendt, the time is long overdue to rethink political belonging and its associated conceptions of who gets to receive care and who has the agency to provide it.

Notes 1. Honig, “Difference, Dilemmas, and the Politics of Home,” ibid. 2. See Held, The Ethics of Care, ibid., p. 3. 3. For the most robust and compelling analysis of Kierkegaard’s attack on the problem of Christendom, see Backhouse, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Christian Nationalism, ibid. I will be relying on the important insights and analytical conclusions from this monograph throughout the present chapter. 4. See Balibar, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism, ibid.; and Benhabib, Dignity in Adversity, ibid., for two of the most important examples. 5. Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil, ibid., p. viii. 6. Ibid., pp. viii–ix. 7. Ibid., p. 51. 8. Ibid., pp. 51–52. 9. Herbert Marcuse, “On Concrete Philosophy,” in Richard Wolin and John Abramoweit (eds.), Heideggerian Marxism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), p. 34. 10. Cited in Backhouse, ibid., frontispiece. 11. Cited in Paul Muench, “Understanding Kierkegaard’s Johannes Clima cus in the Postscript,” https://humstatic.uchicago.edu/philosophy/conant/ Muench%20-%20Understanding.pdf, accessed 1/3/19. 12. Perhaps the most famous is the dissertation of Adorno, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, ibid. 13. Lee Barrett, “Kierkegaard as Theologian: A History of Countervailing Interpretations,” in John Lippitt and George Pattison (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 546.

Contestatory Care as Love 173 14. Jamie Aroosi, “The Future of Human Nature: Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnology, and the Challenge to Human Identity.” Paper presented at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division, Panel Presentation, Political Theology Group, San Diego, March 2018, pp. 21–22. Unpublished manuscript cited by permission of the author. 15. Ibid. 16. David Lappano, Kierkegaard’s Theology of Encounter: An Edifying and Polemical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 17. Ibid., p. 241. 18. Ibid., p. 243. 19. Simon Podmore, Kierkegaard and the Self Before God: Anatomy of the Abyss (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2011), p. xiv. 20. Ibid. 21. Lee Barrett, “Kierkegaard as Theologian,” ibid., p. 538; Podmore, ibid. 22. Darren Surman, “Infinite Echoes: Deriving a Political Theory of Love from Kierkegaard’s ‘The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air.’ ” Paper presented at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division, Panel Presentation, Political Theology Group, San Diego, March 2018. Unpublished manuscript cited by permission of the author. 23. See Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (New York: Harper & Row, 1962). 24. Ibid. 25. Marcio Gimenes de Paula, “Hannah Arendt: Religion, Politics, and the Influence of Kierkegaard,” in Jon Stewart (ed.), Kierkegaard’s Influence on Social-Political Thought (New York: Routledge, 2016), p. 33. See Hannah Arendt, “Søren Kierkegaard,” in Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930–54: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism (New York: Schocken Books, 1994), pp. 44–49. 26. Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 103. 27. See this point in Backhouse, ibid., p. 179. 28. Ibid., p. 180. 29. Ibid., p. 208. 30. For my critique of the necessary connection to one’s circle of concern in order to receive an affective response, see my discussion of Nussbaum, Political Emotions, ibid., in chapter 5. 31. Backhouse, ibid., p. 209. 32. See Bhabha, Can We Solve the Migration Crisis? ibid., discussed in chapter 1 along with similar positions from additional authors. 33. Backhouse, ibid., p. 202. 34. Kierkegaard, Point of View, ibid., p. 111, cited in Backhouse, ibid., p. 193. 35. See, e.g., Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, ibid. 36. Backhouse, ibid., p. 196. 37. Ibid., pp. 196–197. 38. Ibid., p. 206. 39. Ibid., p. 195. 40. Ibid., p. 210. 41. Ibid., p. 196. 42. Ibid. 43. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, ibid. 44. Backhouse, ibid., p. 93. 45. Ibid.

174  Contestatory Care as Love 6. 4 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

These works are cited in the Introduction. Backhouse, ibid., p. 94. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. For further elaboration of this argument, see my chapter “Reading Kierkegaard,” ibid. 52. Melissa Eddy, “Migrant’s Funeral in Berlin Highlights Europe’s Refugee Crisis,” New York Times, June 16, 2015. See the website of the Center for Political Beauty and their description of the operation titled “The Dead Are Coming”: https://politicalbeauty.com/dead.html. 53. Bieberstein and Evren, “From Aggressive Humanism to Improper Mourning,” ibid., p. 453. 54. Ibid., p. 455. 55. See “The Dead Are Coming,” Center for Political Beauty: https://politicalbeauty.com/dead.html, accessed 6/28/19. 56. Bieberstein and Evren, ibid., p. 457. 57. See Agamben, Means Without End: Notes on Politics, ibid., pp. 15–28. See especially the concluding pages where he discusses the theme of perforation. 58. Ibid., pp. 27–28. 59. See American Friends Service Committee: www.afsc.org/about-us, accessed 7/22/19. 60. “Religious Leaders Arrested at US Border in Pro-Migration Protest,” The Guardian, December 10, 2018: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/ dec/10/love-knows-no-borders-agents-arrest-32-as-religious-leaders-gatherat-us-border, accessed 7/22/19. 61. Jack Jenkins, “At Least 30 Faith Leaders Arrested in Border Protest,” Religion News, December 11, 2018: https://religionnews.com/2018/12/11/atleast-30-faith-leaders-arrested-in-border-protest/, accessed 7/22/19. 62. Arendt, “We Refugees,” ibid., p. 264.

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Index

Acampora, Christa Davis 46, 85, 91, 100, 101, 175; Contesting Nietzsche 46, 100, 101, 175 act of assembly 28; see also Butler, Judith; performative theory of assembly; political assembly; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty act of declaration 96; see also Butler, Judith; freedom; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty Adorno, Theodor W. vii, viii, 2–5, 10, 12, 19, 20, 43, 49–76, 83, 85, 86, 111, 142–143, 151, 172, 175, 177, 178, 180; Aesthetic Theory 49, 58, 61, 68, 73, 74, 75, 85, 175; Dialectic of Enlightenment 4, 20, 175; Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic 19, 172; Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life 19, 75, 151, 175; Negative Dialectics 19, 175 aesthetic care 7, 10, 12, 16, 17, 27, 43, 49–76, 103, 107, 110–112, 120, 142; see also contestatory care; distant suffering; witnessing aesthetic distance 83, 86, 155; as a form of life 155; and Friedrich Nietzsche 155; and Søren Kierkegaard 155; see also pathos of distance aesthetic experience 5, 7, 10, 43, 51–53, 59, 65, 68–72, 77–78, 83–84, 110, 112, 131, 143, 166; and communicative potentialities 50, 72; see also mute aesthetics aesthetic representation 10, 15, 37, 50–52, 58, 60–66, 68–71, 73, 77, 81, 84, 107, 110, 132, 148, 149

affect: affective agency 147–148; affective dignity 107, 131, 148–149; affective grammars 148; affective motivation 164; affective response 50, 52, 56, 58, 66, 67, 163, 173; affective transformation 6, 7, 8, 14, 15, 25, 64, 68–72; see also aesthetic care; aesthetic experience; agency; Ahmed, Sara; dignity; emotion(s); grief Agamben, Giorgio 47, 87, 100, 169–170, 175; Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life 100, 175; Means Without End: Notes on Politics (Politics Out of Bounds) 47, 175; see also Arendt, Hannah; Loick, Daniel, “We Refugees” agency 1, 8, 10, 14, 16, 17, 19, 24, 25–27, 45, 47, 51, 81, 86, 96, 97, 102–103, 111, 113, 115, 117, 122–125, 126, 131, 147–148, 152–153, 170–172, 179; see also affect, affective dignity; avantgarde political agency; dignity; emotion(s), emotional agency; political agency Agier, Michel 32, 46, 86, 100, 175; Borderlands: Toward an Anthropology of the Cosmopolitan Condition 100; “Humanity as an Identity and Its Political Effects (A Note on Camps and Humanitarian Government)” 46; Managing the Undesirables: Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Government 100; On the Margins of the World: The Refugee Experience Today 100 Ahmed, Sara 10, 67–68, 70, 75, 134, 175; and hate group research 134;

184 Index “In the Name of Love” 150, 175; “The Skin of the Community: Affect and Boundary Formation” 75, 175 Al-Saji, Alia 117, 128, 139, 150, 175; “Why We Should Stop Fixating on What Muslim Women Wear” 150, 175 Anderson, Benedict 36, 47, 175; Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism 47, 175 Arendt, Hannah 3, 4, 15, 37, 47, 85, 132–133, 136, 140, 171–172, 175, 176, 178; and Daniel Loick, “We Refugees” 47, 179; and Immanuel Kant 85; “The Meaning of Love in Politics: A Letter to James Baldwin” 149, 175; “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing” 20, 176; and philosophy of the refugee 37; “Søren Kierkegaard” 160, 176; “We Refugees” 20, 47, 171, 174, 176; see also Hardt, Michael; Loick, Daniel Aristotle 6, 105, 139, 140, 150, 176; ethics 6; Poetics 150, 176 Armour, Ellen T. 73, 176; “Justice for Alan Kurdi? Philosophy, Photography, and the (Cosmo) Politics of Life and Death” 73, 176 Aroosi, Jamie 157, 163, 173, 176; “The Future of Human Nature: Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnology, and the Challenge to Human Identity” 173, 176 Atac, Ilker 43, 176; The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship from the Margins 43, 176 avant-garde political agency 47, 123–126; see also act of assembly; agency; contestation; cosmopolitanism; performative theory of assembly; political agency; political assembly; radical cosmopolitanism Backhouse, Stephen 101, 161–166, 172–173; Kierkegaard’s Critique of Christian Nationalism 101, 161–166, 172–173

Balibar, Ètienne 21, 117, 128, 139, 148, 150, 172, 176; Secularism and Cosmopolitanism: Critical Hypotheses on Religion and Politics 21, 172, 176 Banerjee, Paula 25, 43; “Critical Forced Migration Studies” 25, 43 Barrett, Lee 157, 159, 172, 173, 176; “Kierkegaard as Theologian: A History of Countervailing Interpretations” 172, 173, 176 Bartos, Ann E. 31, 45, 176; “The Uncomfortable Politics of Care and Conflict: Exploring Nontraditional Caring Agencies” 45, 176 Bauman, Zygmunt 46, 78–79, 81, 86, 99, 100, 103, 176; Liquid Modernity 100, 176; Strangers at Our Door 100, 176; Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts 46, 78, 79, 99, 100, 176 benevolence 6, 25, 32–33, 51, 79–80, 107, 118, 126, 144; see also compassion; empathy; pity Benhabib, Seyla 21, 172, 176; Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled Times 21, 176; Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender 176 Benli, Ali Emre 47, 103, 116, 123–126, 128, 129; “March of Refugees, Cosmopolitanism, and Avant-Garde Political Agency” 47 Bernstein, Richard J. 3, 10, 15, 17, 21, 22, 29–30, 38–40, 45, 47, 48, 91, 99, 130, 132, 136, 143, 145, 148, 151, 153–154, 172, 176; The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion Since 9/11 29–30, 38–40, 45, 47, 99, 130, 151, 153–154, 176; and “clash of mentalities” 17, 148, 153; and fallibilistic pluralism 143; “Heller’s Either/Or” 48; pluralism 17, 91, 143, 153; and pragmatic fallibilism 38, 47, 134; religious pluralism 91; Richard J. Bernstein and the Expansion of American Philosophy (edited by Megan Craig and Marcia Morgan) 47 Bhabha, Jacqueline 36–37, 47, 162, 173, 176; Can We Solve the Migration Crisis? 36–37, 173, 176

Index  185 Bloch, Alice 42, 43, 176; Forced Migration: Current Issues and Debates 42, 43, 176 Blunt, Gwilym David 44, 177; “Illegal Immigration as Resistance to Global Poverty” 44, 177 Boltanski, Luc 10, 69–71, 73, 75, 76, 82, 86, 93, 100, 111, 120, 155, 177; Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics 73, 75, 76, 100, 177; and humanitarian spectatorship 71, 73, 155 Brannelly, Tula 126, 181; Ethics of Care: Critical Advances in International Perspectives 126, 181 Brudholm, Thomas 99, 133–134, 143, 150, 151, 177; Emotions and Mass Atrocity 99, 143, 144, 150, 151, 177 Brunkhorst, Hauke 79, 81, 177; “Global Society as the Crisis of Democracy” 99, 177 Butler, Judith 11, 44, 77, 87–92, 95–96, 100, 101, 118, 128, 150, 177; Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly 96, 101, 128, 177; Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence 150, 177; Who Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging 100, 128, 177; see also act of assembly; act of declaration; performative theory of assembly; political assembly Carastathis, Anna 46, 177; “Crisis, What Crisis? Immigrants, Refugees, and Invisible Struggles” 46, 177 Caraus, Tamara 44, 45, 47, 129, 177; Migration, Protest Movements and the Politics of Resistance: A Radical Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism 44, 45, 47, 129, 177 care ethics 6, 7, 9, 12–16, 20, 23–27, 30, 31, 33, 42–47, 95, 98, 102–129, 131–132, 138, 141, 145, 147–149, 158, 177, 178, 180; see also contestation; emotion(s); justice Carens, Joseph 47; The Ethics of Immigration 47 care of the other 6, 7, 10, 24, 77–99, 103; see also contestation; neighbor love; preferential love; self-care

Center for Political Beauty 166–169, 174 Cherem, Max G. 177; “Refugee Rights: Against Expanding the Definition of ‘Refugee’ and Unilateral Protection Elsewhere” 177 Chouliaraki, Lilie 69, 75, 177; The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism 75, 177; and irony 69; see also Boltanski, Luc Christendom see Backhouse, Stephen; Christian nationalism; Kierkegaard, Søren Christian empire 152; see also Butler, Judith; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty Christian nationalism 17, 18, 41, 101, 153, 156, 158, 161, 164, 172, 176; critiqued by Søren Kierkegaard 153, 156, 158, 161, 164; see also Backhouse, Stephen Cloyes, Kristin G. 42, 43, 45, 177; “Agonizing Care: Care Ethics, Agonistic Feminism, and a Political Theory of Care” 42–43, 177 compassion 6, 11, 14, 25, 27, 31–33, 41, 51, 56, 62, 63, 70, 77, 79–82, 84, 85, 91, 93, 99, 102, 107, 113, 117, 118, 126, 132, 136, 142, 144, 150, 155; see also benevolence; empathy; pity contestation 2, 6–18, 47, 50, 77–101, 103–111, 116–118, 120, 123, 125, 131–132, 139, 143, 148, 152–154, 160–172; see also Foucault, Michel; Honig, Bonnie; Kierkegaard, Søren; Nietzsche, Friedrich; protest movement; witnessing contestatory care 152–172; see also aesthetic care; contestation; Kierkegaard, Søren; neighbor love; political care; preferential love; protest movement; religious care; witnessing cosmopolitanism 15, 21, 35, 44, 47, 122–126, 128, 129, 172, 176, 177; “cosmopolitanism from above” 122; “cosmopolitanism from below” 124; see also avantgarde political agency; radical cosmopolitanism

186 Index counter-conducts 6–8, 11, 89–95, 152, 170; see also contestation; Foucault, Michel crimmigration 99, 179; see also ethics of immigration; Mendoza, José Jorge critical forced migration studies 25, 43 Daqneesh, Omran 1, 3, 4, 18, 53–56, 60, 62, 66, 68, 72, 74, 87, 88, 100, 112, 114, 131, 131, 142, 166 Davenport, John 45, 177; A League of Democracies: Cosmopolitanism, Consolidation Arguments, and Global Public Goods 45, 177 Debes, Remy 15, 145–149, 151, 177; “The Authority of Empathy (Or, How to Ground Sentimentalism)” 145–149 democracy 5, 13, 43, 65, 86, 96, 100, 105, 135, 177, 178, 181; and anxiety 86; caring 13, 43, 105, 126; crisis of 99; democratic politics 153; and the foreigner 100; illiberal 5; liberal 29, 135, 137–139, 149 dialectic 5, 51, 52, 58, 69, 175; in Adorno’s aesthetics 58, 69; in aesthetic experience 5; in aesthetic meaning of images 10, 132; dialectical argument 52; dialectical relationship 78; of enlightenment and myth 4, 69; in Hegel’s philosophy of subjectivity 102, 110–111; in Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existence 158; in Sontag’s aesthetics 58, 60 dignity 14, 17, 21, 58, 84, 147–149, 153; see also affect, affective dignity; agency dilemmatic space 12, 16, 45, 93, 152; see also Honig, Bonnie distant others 5, 7–10, 17, 23, 29, 30, 37, 38, 40, 50, 65, 72, 111–114, 140, 143–144, 146, 147, 148, 149, 154, 171; see also aesthetic distance; aesthetic representation; distant suffering; humanitarianism, everyday humanitarianism; humanitarian spectatorship; ironic spectatorship; pathos of distance distant suffering 51, 69, 70, 73, 100, 177; see also distant others

Donà, Giorgia 42, 43, 176; Forced Migration: Current Issues and Debates 42, 43, 176 Einashe, Ismail 177; Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere 177 El-Enany, Nadine 56, 74, 177; “Aylan Kurdi: The Human Refugee” 56, 74, 177 emotion(s) 4, 6, 8–9, 14–16, 20, 24, 25–27, 30, 33, 38, 42, 44, 45, 64, 66–69, 71, 79–80, 83, 85, 95, 99, 102, 105, 111–112, 117, 120, 130–151, 153, 155, 158, 161, 163, 171, 173, 177, 180; emotional agency 147; see also affect; dignity; political emotions empathy 5, 6, 14–15, 27, 28, 30, 33, 44, 71, 79, 80, 99, 107, 111, 113, 126, 127, 131, 132, 144–149, 150, 151, 155, 177, 178, 181; empathic judgments 146; and normative authority 33, 147; see also care ethics; Debes, Remy; Hamington, Maurice; sentimentalism; Slote, Michael Engster, Daniel 13, 20, 42, 43, 44, 106, 126, 177; Care Ethics and Political Theory 42, 43, 44, 177; “Care in the State of Nature: The Biological and Evolutionary Roots of the Disposition to Care in Human Beings” 42; The Heart of Justice 43, 126, 177; see also care ethics equality 8, 11, 13, 16, 26, 28, 29, 43, 44, 64, 65, 82, 83–86, 91, 93, 106, 118, 123, 126, 136–139, 149, 162, 171, 179, 180, 181 ethics of immigration 44, 47, 178 Evren, Erdem 32, 46, 167–169, 174, 176; “From Aggressive Humanism to Improper Mourning: Burying the Victims of Europe’s Border Regime in Berlin” 32, 46, 167–169, 174, 176 fallibilism 40, 53, 154; see also Bernstein, Richard J.; fallibilistic pluralism; pragmatic fallibilism fallibilistic pluralism 143 false compassion 56, 63; see also compassion

Index  187 false pity 11, 51, 69–71, 83–84, 86; and veil of pity 86; see also benevolence; compassion; pity Feder, Ellen K. 127, 179; The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency 127, 179; see also care ethics Feola, Michael 51, 72, 98, 177; The Powers of Sensibility: Aesthetic Politics through Adorno, Foucault, and Rancière 72, 101, 177 Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena 14, 27, 72, 74, 102, 112–118, 120, 128, 178, 179; “The Faith-Gender-Asylum Nexus: An Intersectionalist Analysis of Representations of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ ” 44, 102, 112–118, 127, 128, 178; The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies 127, 128, 179, 182; refugeehosts.org 72 forced migrant(s) 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 32, 36, 39, 45, 64, 78, 80, 92, 102, 107, 110, 112, 114, 115, 116, 121, 122, 123, 125, 127, 131, 132, 167, 170, 182 forced migration 6, 14, 18, 24, 33–34, 39, 42, 43, 44, 53, 72, 90, 115, 128, 130, 176, 180, 182; see also ethics of immigration; migration Foucault, Michel 11, 12, 16, 17, 47, 51, 72, 73, 89, 91–98, 101, 103, 109, 152, 153, 177, 178; Foucault Live: Michel Foucault Collected Interviews, 1961–1984 101, 103; Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978 89, 91–98, 101; see also counter-conducts freedom 3, 8, 11, 47, 91–98, 109, 121–123, 165–166; of movement 121–122 Gimenes de Paula, Marcio 173, 178; “Hannah Arendt: Religion, Politics, and the Influence of Kierkegaard” 173, 178 Givoni, Michal 52–53, 73, 88–89, 97–98, 100, 101, 178; The Care of the Witness: A Contemporary History of Testimony in Crisis 73, 100, 101, 178

global care chains 31, 45; see also Hochschild, A.R. globalization 78–79 global society 99, 177 grief 30, 130, 140–143, 151, 167, 179; see also affect; emotion(s); Liebsch, Burkhard Habermas, Jürgen 3, 101, 135, 150, 178; The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate 178 Hamington, Maurice 27, 42, 43, 44, 111, 127, 177, 178; Care Ethics and Political Theory 20, 42, 43, 44, 177; “Empathy and Care Ethics” 127, 178; see also care ethics Hammer, Espen 19, 59, 74, 75, 178, 180; Adorno’s Modernism: Art, Experience and Catastrophe 74, 75, 178 Hardt, Michael 15, 132–136, 149, 150, 178; “Love and Hate Politics” 132–136, 149, 150, 178; see also Arendt, Hannah, “The Meaning of Love in Politics: A Letter to James Baldwin”; Nussbaum, Martha, Political Emotions; political emotions Hegel, G.W.F. 75, 102, 107–111, 127, 178; Danish Hegelians 160; Phenomenology of Spirit 127, 178; and subjectivity 102; see also Oliver, Kelly, “Subjectivity as Responsivity: The Ethical Implications of Dependency” Held, Virginia 13, 25, 26, 27, 43, 44, 104, 152; “Care and Justice, Still” 43; The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global 43, 44; see also care ethics Heller, Ágnes 30, 38, 40–41, 45, 47, 80, 92, 94–95, 101, 129, 140; A Philosophy of Morals 40–41, 45, 47, 48; A Theory of Feelings 48, 99, 129 Heller, Kevin Jon 101; “Power, Subjectification, and Resistance in Foucault” 101 Hesford, Wendy S. 128, 178; “Mobilizing Vulnerability: New Directions in Transnational

188 Index Feminist Studies and Human Rights” 128, 178 Hidalgo, Javier S. 44, 47, 178; Unjust Borders: Individuals and the Ethics of Immigration 47, 178 Hochschild, A.R. 45; see also global care chains Hohendahl, Peter Uwe 68–69, 78; “The Fleeting Promise of Art: Adorno’s ‘Aesthetic Theory’ Revisited” 75 Honig, Bonnie 12–13, 16, 26, 44, 45, 77, 84–86, 91, 93, 96, 104, 106, 138, 152, 172, 178; Democracy and the Foreigner 100, 178; “Difference, Dilemmas, and the Politics of Home” 72, 100, 178; dilemmatic space 16, 45, 93, 152; Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics 44, 77, 100, 178; see also contestation Horkheimer, Max 20; Dialectic of Enlightenment 20 human dignity see dignity humanitarianism 6, 9, 12–13, 17, 24–25, 28, 31–34, 39, 46, 53, 79–81, 86, 91, 93, 99, 100, 103– 104, 108, 113, 117, 123, 142, 152– 153; carceral 42, 99, 101, 128, 180; and dehistoricization 100, 179; everyday 69, 171; post- 75, 177 humanitarian spectatorship 71, 73, 155 identity 19, 23, 30, 46, 82, 86, 89, 113, 118, 134, 138, 145, 156, 158–165, 173, 176; Christian 89; nationalist 159; see also Christian nationalism immigration 8, 18, 19, 22, 23, 44, 45, 47, 57, 63, 81, 87, 102, 106, 170, 177, 178, 180; see also crimmigration; ethics of immigration; migration Ingram, David 19, 34, 47, 125, 129, 179; World Crisis and Underdevelopment: A Critical Theory of Poverty, Agency, and Coercion 34–36, 46, 47, 129, 179 interdependency 7, 13, 41, 106, 109, 118, 132, 162 intersubjectivity 33, 97–98, 107; see also subjectivity; vulnerability

irrationalism 160 ironic spectatorship 75, 177 irony 69 justice 6–8, 9–12, 15, 16, 24–28, 31, 37, 38, 40, 43, 61, 64, 73, 84, 93, 98, 102–125, 131–132, 136, 138–139, 149; see also transnational justice Kant, Immanuel 26, 67, 75, 85, 94, 95, 97, 123, 163; and aesthetic theory 85; Critique of Judgment 75; see also liberalism Kelly, Michael 49–50, 60–62, 77, 83, 99; A Hunger for Aesthetics: Enacting the Demands of Art 49, 72, 74, 99 Kennedy, David 32, 46, 179; The Dark Side of Virtue 32, 46, 179 Khader, Serene 120, 128, 179; Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic 120, 128, 179; see also transnational feminism Kierkegaard, Søren 152, 153–166, 170–171, 172, 173, 176, 178, 184; Either/Or 173, 179; The Point of View 173, 179; Works of Love 153–166, 173, 179; see also Christian nationalism; moment, the; neighbor love; preferential love Kittay, Eva Feder 13, 43, 126, 179, Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency 126, 179; The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency 127, 179 Kouvelakis, Stathis 73, 179; “Borderlands” 73, 179 Kurdi, Aylan 1, 3, 4, 5, 20, 53–57, 60–64, 66, 68, 69, 72, 73, 74, 87, 114, 116, 128, 131, 142, 166, 176, 177 Lang, Johannes 99, 133–134, 143, 150, 151, 177; Emotions and Mass Atrocity 99, 143, 144, 150, 151, 177 Lappano, David 157–158, 173, 179; Kierkegaard’s Theology of Encounter: An Edifying and Polemical Life 173, 179

Index  189 Lewis, Rachel A. 128, 178; “Mobilizing Vulnerability: New Directions in Transnational Feminist Studies and Human Rights” 128, 178 liberalism 7, 8, 13, 16, 26, 28, 29, 43, 47, 63, 82, 92, 94, 95, 97, 104, 106–107, 109, 118, 120, 123, 126, 131, 135–139, 149, 150, 181; games of liberalism 92; illiberal democracy 5, 137; liberal democracy 9, 29, 82, 135, 137– 139, 149; see also Kant, Immanuel; Nussbaum, Martha; Rawls, John; Slote, Michael Liebsch, Burkhard 130, 140–142, 149, 151, 179; “Grief as a Source, Expression, and Register of Political Sensitivity” 130, 151, 179 Loick, Daniel 47, 179; “We Refugees” 47, 179; see also Arendt, Hannah Long, Katy 121–122, 124–125, 128; “Rethinking Durable Solutions” 121, 128 love see contestatory care; neighbor love; preferential love Malkki, Liisa 86, 100, 179; “Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization” 100, 179 Marcuse, Herbert 155–157, 171, 172; “On Concrete Philosophy” 155–157, 172, 179; and Søren Kierkegaard 155–157 Mares, Peter 46, 113–114, 179; “Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: Media Images of Refugees and Asylum Seekers” 46, 127, 179 Marian, Barnes 126, 181; Ethics of Care: Critical Advances in International Perspectives 126, 181 Mavelli, Luca 39, 44, 47, 178, 179; The Refugee Crisis and Religion 44, 47, 178, 179 McDonald-Gibson, Charlotte 100, 179; Cast Away: True Stories of Survival from Europe’s Refugee Crisis 100, 179 Mendieta, Eduardo 90, 101; “Spiritual Politics and PostSecular Authenticity: Foucault and

Habermas on Post-Metaphysical Religion” 101 Mendoza, José Jorge 44, 99, 179; “The Contradiction of Crimmigration” 179; The Moral and Political Philosophy of Immigration: Liberty, Security, and Equality 44, 180 methodological nationalism 96, 122; see also Sager, Alex migration 3, 14, 18, 20, 25, 27–28, 29, 36–37, 44, 45, 46, 47, 63, 81, 87, 97, 102, 112, 114, 119, 121–122, 127, 128, 129, 170, 173, 174, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182; see also Bhabha, Jacqueline; critical forced migration studies; FiddianQasmiyeh, Elena; forced migration; immigration ; Nail, Thomas; Sager, Alex Miller, David 180; Strangers in our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Immigration 180 Milner, James 121, 128, 180; “Protracted Refugee Situations” 128, 180 moment, the 156, 162–166; see also Kierkegaard, Søren Morgan, Marcia: “The Affect of Dissident Language: A Possible Dialogue between Theodor W. Adorno and Julia Kristeva” 20; “Reading Kierkegaard” 19, 43; Richard J. Bernstein and the Expansion of American Philosophy 47 Mosse, David 42, 74, 126, Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice 42, 74, 126, 180 Motha, Stewart 28, 44, 180; “The Redundant Refugee” 44, 180 Muslim ban 23 Muslim men 116; and fatherhood 116 Muslim women 44, 117, 128, 150, 175, 177; see also Al-Saji, Alia; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena; von Welser, Maria mute aesthetics 10, 50–51, 53, 57, 64, 67, 79, 110, 112; see also Adorno, Theodor W.; aesthetic distance; aesthetic experience; aesthetic representation

190 Index Nail, Thomas 37, 44, 47, 180; Being and Motion 47, 180; The Figure of the Migrant 44, 47, 180; Theory of the Border 47, 180 narcissism 5, 107, 120, 155, 159 neighbor love 82–84, 89, 153, 161–164, 166, 170; and Friedrich Nietzsche 82–84, 89, 161; and Søren Kierkegaard 153, 161–164, 166, 170 Newman, Edward 35, 36, 39, 46, 48, 179, 180; Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability, and the State 46, 179; “Refugees, Security, and Vulnerability” 180 Nietzsche, Friedrich 11–13, 26, 33, 44, 82–86, 89, 91, 99, 100, 101, 103, 138, 152, 155, 161–163, 173, 180; Beyond Good and Evil 152; Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality 99, 180; On the Genealogy of Morality 33, 44, 82, 100, 173, 180; see also Acampora, Christa Davis; contestation; Honig, Bonnie; neighbor love Noddings, Nel 111–113, 127, 180; A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education 111, 127, 180; Starting at Home: Caring and Social Policy 112, 127, 180; see also care ethics nostalgia 4, 111, 135 Nussbaum, Martha 15, 16, 20, 42, 44, 112, 132, 136–141, 146–149, 150, 173, 180; Political Emotions 20, 42, 44, 136–141, 150, 173, 180, 181; see also liberalism; political emotions Oliver, Kelly 12, 42, 76, 99, 101, 102, 107–111, 115, 127, 128, 180; Carceral Humanitarianism: Logics of Refugee Detention 42, 99, 128, 180; “Subjectivity as Responsivity: The Ethical Implications of Dependency” 102, 107–111, 115, 127; see also care ethics; subjectivity Orosco, José Antonio 180; Toppling the Melting Pot: Immigration and Multiculturalism in American Pragmatism 180

Parekh, Serena 42, 73, 99, 101, 128, 180; Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement 42, 73, 99, 101, 128, 180 Paris, Elena 44, 45, 47, 129, 177; Migration, Protest Movements and the Politics of Resistance: A Radical Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism 44, 45, 47, 129, 177 pathos of distance 83–84, 155; and Friedrich Nietzsche 155; see also aesthetic distance Pease, Bob 45, 180; Critical Ethics of Care in Social Work: Transforming the Politics and Practices of Caring 45, 180 performative theory of assembly 96; see also act of assembly; Butler, Judith; political assembly pity 83–84, 86, 144, 155; see also benevolence; compassion; false pity Podmore, Simon 158–159, 163, 173, 180; Kierkegaard and the Self Before God: Anatomy of the Abyss 173, 180 political agency 17, 47, 123–126; see also agency political assembly 8, 11, 28, 29, 96–97, 101, 125, 128, 177; transnational political assembly 11, 29, 96; see also contestation; justice political care 7–10, 12–14, 16–18, 31, 46, 73, 80, 91, 93, 98, 102–125, 130–149, 152–154, 158, 165, 170 political emotions 15, 16, 20, 26, 42, 44, 112, 136, 139, 150, 173, 180; see also Arendt, Hannah, “The Meaning of Love in Politics: A Letter to James Baldwin”; emotion(s); Hardt, Michael; Nussbaum, Martha political sensitivity 130 pluralism 17, 91, 143, 153 pragmatic fallibilism 38, 47, 134; see also Bernstein, Richard J.; fallibilistic pluralism preferential love 153, 161–164; in Søren Kierkegaard 153, 161–164 protest movement 9, 11, 15, 28, 44, 45, 47, 85, 100, 122, 126, 129, 177 radical cosmopolitanism 15, 123–125; see also agency; avant-garde political agency; contestation;

Index  191 cosmopolitanism; political agency; political assembly; protest movement Raghuram, Parvati 108, 118–120, 123, 125, 127, 128, 158, 180; “Locating Care Ethics Beyond the Global North” 127, 128, 158, 180; “Migration and Feminist Care Ethics” 128, 158, 180; see also care ethics Ramírez, Óscar Alberto Martínez 3, 49, 55, 56, 60, 62, 66, 68, 72, 166 Rancière, Jacques 10–11, 13, 50, 51, 52, 65–66, 68, 71, 73, 85–86, 91, 106, 156, 177, 180; The Future of the Image 180; The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible 181; see also aesthetic experience; aesthetic representation rationalism 26, 68, 163 rationality 14, 111, 131, 143, 144, 147 Rawls, John 26, 85, 139, 150; see also liberalism religious care 7, 9, 13, 14, 16–18, 27, 37, 43, 91, 115, 149, 152–172 Resnik, Judith 176; Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender 176 responsibility 7, 8, 27, 35, 73, 81, 85, 96, 105–110, 125, 126, 140–142, 157, 159, 162, 165, 166, 182; see also care ethics ressentiment 82, 86, 163; see also false pity; Nietzsche, Friedrich Roberts, David 68–69, 75 Roueché, Thomas 177; Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere 177 Rygiel, Kim 43, 176; The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship from the Margins 43, 176 Sachs, Nelly 151; “Ein Totes Kind Spricht [A Dead Child Speaks]” 151 Said, Edward 32, 46, 114; “The Case for Intellectuals” 46 Sager, Alex 27, 44, 45, 46, 47, 96, 112, 122–125, 127, 128, 129, 181; “Ethics and Migration Crises” 44, 46, 127, 181; The Ethics and

Politics of Immigration 46, 47; and methodological nationalism 96, 122; “Reclaiming Cosmopolitanism through Migrant Protests” 129; Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Mobility: The Migrant’s EyeView of the World 44, 129, 181; “The Uses and Abuses of ‘Migrant Crisis’ ” 44, 46, 181 Samaddar, Ranabir 25, 43; “Critical Forced Migration Studies” 25, 43 Sandel, Michael 85 Sander-Staudt, Maureen 127, 181; “The Unhappy Marriage of Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics” 127, 181 Sandoval, Amy Reed 47; “The New Open Borders Debate” 47 Saunders, Natasha 43, 181; International Political Theory and the Refugee Problem 43, 181 Schwartzman, Lisa H. 150, 181; “A Feminist Critique of Nussbaum’s Liberalism” 150, 181; see also liberalism; Nussbaum, Martha self-care 6, 7, 10, 24, 77–99, 103; see also agency; care of the other; contestation; counter-conducts; dignity; subjectivity sensibility 61, 72, 101, 177 sentimentalism 15, 33, 105, 111, 126, 127, 132, 138, 145, 149, 151, 177, 181; see also care ethics; Debes, Remy; emotion(s); Slote, Michael; Smith, Adam Slote, Michael 105–107, 109, 131, 149; “Care Ethics and Liberalism” 126, 149; The Ethics of Care and Empathy 126, 127; From Enlightenment to Receptivity: Rethinking Our Values 126; Moral Sentimentalism 126, 127; see also care ethics Smith, Adam 145–146; Theory of Moral Sentiments 145–146; see also sentimentalism Sontag, Susan 58, 60–62, 73, 74, 83, 86, 111, 181; On Photography 58, 181; Regarding the Pain of Others 58; see also aesthetic distance; aesthetic experience; aesthetic representation; dialectic; Kelly, Michael, A Hunger for Aesthetics

192 Index Spathopoulou, Aila 46, 177; “Crisis, What Crisis? Immigrants, Refugees, and Invisible Struggles” 46, 177 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 11, 44, 77, 87, 89, 95–96, 100, 101, 128, 177; Who Sing the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging 44, 77, 100, 128, 177 Standing, Guy 100, 181; The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class 100, 181 Stanford, Sonya 45, 180; Critical Ethics of Care in Social Work: Transforming the Politics and Practices of Caring 45, 180 Stanley, Jason 15, 22, 23, 29–30, 42, 45, 132, 135–137, 143, 146, 148, 150, 181; How Fascism Works 22, 29–30, 42, 45, 135, 150, 181; see also nostalgia; political emotions Stepan, Peter 20, 54, 73, 181; Photos That Changed the World 20, 73, 181 Stierl, Maurice 43, 176; The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship from the Margins 43, 176; Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe 43, 100, 126, 181 subjectivity 10–18, 41, 64, 65, 68, 70, 71, 77–79, 84, 87–91, 96–98, 102–111, 115, 127, 131, 151–153, 155–162; see also agency; dignity; Foucault, Michel; Hegel, G.W.F.; interdependency; intersubjectivity; Oliver, Kelly; self-care sublime 51, 68–70, 165; see also Adorno, Theodor W.; aesthetic experience; aesthetic representation; Boltanski, Luc; distant suffering; Hohendahl, Peter Uwe Surman, Darren 159, 175; “Infinite Echoes: Deriving a Political Theory of Love from Kierkegaard’s ‘The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air’ ” 175, 181 Terezakis, Katie 48; Engaging Ágnes Heller 48 Ticktin, Miriam 11, 31–32, 39, 46, 77, 79–82, 86–87, 91, 92–93, 96–97, 99, 105, 113, 117, 128,

142, 144, 148, 181; “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders” 46, 48, 77, 100, 101, 128, 105, 113, 117, 128, 181; “A World without Innocence” 46, 181; see also affect, affective grammars; compassion; humanitarianism; political care tolerance 17, 29, 39, 90, 153; see also benevolence; compassion; neighbor love; pity transnational feminism 104, 120; see also Khader, Serene; Raghuram, Parvati transnational justice 8, 12–16, 27–28, 37, 40, 104–106, 118, 122, 125, 132 Trimikliniotis, Nicos 43, 181; Migration and the Refugee Dissensus in Europe: Borders, Security, and Austerity 43, 181 Tronto, Joan 12–13, 25, 43, 105–106, 108, 181; Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice 43, 126, 181; “Democratic Caring and Global Responsibilities” 126, 181; Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care 43, 126, 181; see also care ethics; democracy, caring; responsibility Tsilimpounidi, Myrto 46, 177; “Crisis, What Crisis? Immigrants, Refugees, and Invisible Struggles” 46, 177 Valeria, Angie 3, 49, 55, 56, 60, 62, 66, 68, 72, 166 value fundamentalism 4, 9, 11, 14, 18, 24, 33, 37, 39–40, 66, 91, 114, 130, 149; see also Bernstein, Richard J., The Abuse of Evil; fallibilistic pluralism; pragmatic fallibilism van Selm, Joanne 48, 179; Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability, and the State 48, 179 Vàzquez-Arroyo, Antonio Y. 107– 108, 126; Political Responsibility: Responding to Predicaments of Power 107–108, 126; see also responsibility virtue ethics 104, 127, 138; virtue theory 84–85

Index  193 von Bieberstein, Alice 32, 46, 167–169, 174, 176; “From Aggressive Humanism to Improper Mourning: Burying the Victims of Europe’s Border Regime in Berlin” 32, 46, 167–169, 174, 176 von Welser, Maria 128, 182; No Refuge for Women: The Tragic Fate of Syrian Refugees 128, 182 Vreugdenhil, Anthea 45, 180; Critical Ethics of Care in Social Work: Transforming the Politics and Practices of Caring 45, 180 vulnerability 46, 116–118, 122, 128, 178, 179, 180; see also agency; dignity; interdependency; intersubjectivity; subjectivity Ward, Lizzie 126, 181; Ethics of Care: Critical Advances in International Perspectives 126, 181 Ward, Nicki 126, 181; Ethics of Care: Critical Advances in International Perspectives 126, 181 Wellmer, Albrecht 72, 75, 182; The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and

Postmodernism 72, 75, 182; see also Adorno, Theodor W. Welsh, Jennifer 20, 29, 45, 63, 64, 73, 182; The Return of History: Conflict, Migration and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First Century 20, 45, 63, 73, 182 Wilson, Erin 39, 44, 47, 178, 179; The Refugee Crisis and Religion 44, 47, 178, 179 witnessing 9–10, 12–18, 25, 37, 49–72, 88–89, 97, 98, 103, 107, 110, 112, 114–115, 120, 142, 166, 168; see also aesthetic care; aesthetic representation; Givoni, Michal, The Care of the Witness Wright, Terence 113–114, 182; “The Media and Representations of Refugees and Other Forced Migrants” 127, 182 Yildiz, Yasemin 75, 182; Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition 75, 182 Zetter, Roger 42; “Conceptualising Forced Migration” 42