Activist care: acts of care as acts of citizenship

Abstract

Care is activist when acts of care produce acts of citizenship: acts of breaking the dominant models of being responsible. This article has the theoretical objective of parsing how some acts of care become activist because they subvert the dominant norms of involvement and produce new ways of being mutually linked. They break established habits and social habitus, and they require new ways of acting and responding. This is what allows us to reinterpret care as a subversive practice, reshaping the political, affective and ethical boundaries. This can generate the condemnation and criminalisation of care in response.