Of Animacy Reading Group: Alterbiopolitics

Of Animacy Reading Group convenes to discuss María Puig de la Bellacasa’s proposition of alterbiopolitics as an ethics of collective empowerment.

Bringing together permaculture ethics and a feminist notion of care, Puig de la Bellacasa articulates care as an everyday practice and ethos that foregrounds an ethical obligation towards the Earth’s needs. Here biopolitical care does not begin from edifying ‘the ethical self’, but from contributing to the collective endeavour of maintaining life in accordance with its interdependencies, and with a heightened sensitivity to our own entanglements with all living beings.

• María Puig de la Bellacasa, ‘Alterbiopolitics’ in Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)

Excerpts of the text will be read together during the session to support open discussion

For access to and further information on the readings, please email nella.aarne@ica.art

This monthly reading group led by curator Nella Aarne thinks through feminist engagements with human and non-human agents in the material world. The reading group meets every month at the ICA and is always open to all