Choreographies of vulnerability :towards a new public ethics of care

Project Information

ChoreoCare

Grant agreement ID: 101029336

DOI

10.3030/101029336

Project closed

EC signature date 19 April 2021

Start date 1 January 2022

End date 31 December 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 251 002,56

EU contribution

€ 251 002,56

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI VERONA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ChoreoCare (Choreographies of vulnerability :towards a new public ethics of care)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

My research grounds a public ethics of care in a phenomenological understanding of vulnerability by constructing a historical trajectory that extends from ancient Greek drama to contemporary feminist theory. Its development is articulated on the grounds of three fundamental research questions: (a) How can we narrate vulnerability as an embodied condition and practices of care in their situatedness? (b) How is care instituted, based on vulnerability and interdependency as the fundamental traits of (not only human) life? (c) How is care performed as a collective practice able to transform the socio-political context?
My claim is that, if a collectivity recognizes vulnerability as a condition that all individuals embody, although each one does so in a different way and with different resources, it will also promote practices of care as a necessarily shared task.

In the final period of this research, I have addressed the different critiques regarding the use of vulnerability in legal studies. Some concern its understanding as an ontological concept (namely vulnerability as a shared human condition) and others its use as a political and legal identification of specific groups or individuals as being “vulnerable subjects.” The first type of critique points out that the universalistic account of the notion fails to bear witness to the unequal distribution of precarity in the lives of certain subjectivities and groups, who therefore end up not being represented in the juridical realm. As for the particularistic account of vulnerability as characterizing specific groups and/or identities, the claim is that this categorization reproduces and even fosters the isolation and marginality of groups and individuals identified as needing protection. It can even lead to the opposite of care when the very system (the police or legal and judiciary institutions) that is supposed to protect a community in fact reinforces and reproduces the same discrimination it allegedly counters. Judith Butler embraces the latter critique, highlighting that by defining groups or individuals as ‘vulnerable’ we essentialize a condition of vulnerability that is rather produced by socio-political factors. Their claim is that vulnerability, in its embodied and relational connotation, is only helpful if it allows us to see how forms of resistance emerge.
Although I share Butler’s concern about possible developments of the concept, especially in legal theory, I still consider the vulnerability framework a productive way to understand politics and to actively initiate political mobilizations, groups, and even institutions. Some of these may gather many bodies, like feminist assemblies, mobilizations for environmental justice, or strikes. Others might be small gatherings, like those organized by nonprofit organizations to raise awareness on certain topics. Some of them are institutionally framed, others are entirely bottom-up. I propose reading care as a key notion for understanding the inaugural character of these kinds of gatherings and demonstrations. Indeed, they are not solely a reaction to pervasive conditions of inequality, discrimination, and violence, but rather they initiate something by performatively influencing the socio-political context in which they are enacted and perhaps transforming it.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

I published my first monograph "Il teatro della polis: filosofia dell’agonismo tragico" (Pisa: ETS, 2024)

I have published the following articles:
“Feminist archives: narrating embodied vulnerabilities and practices of care,” Biblioteca della Libertà, vol. LVII, no. 235 (2022): 39-71 (Planned as Deliverable 3).
“Pensare l’agone: Foucault, Cassin e la storia dell’esclusione della sofistica,” Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Politica, 3 (2022): 261-280.
Additionally, I prepared a book proposal that is currently under review with Edinburgh University Press, titled "Gendered Logos and Corporeality in Sophocles: Staging the Agon".
During 2023 and 2024 I co-edited the volume E. Mason, V. Moro (eds.), "Judith Butler and Marxism: The Radical Feminism of Performativity, Vulnerability, and Care" (Rowman&Littlefield, 2025), which has just been published. I have also authored two book chapters that are now forthcoming: “Adriana Cavarero’s public ethics of care: plural uniqueness, narratability, vulnerability,” in C. Salzani, F. Dal Bo (eds.), The Resistible Crisis of Italian Thought (New York: SUNY Press, 2025) and “Oedipus' fragments of truth: Foucault's project of a genealogy of truth-telling,” in D. Lorenzini (ed.), The Foucauldian Mind, Routledge. Moreover, I have submitted a third book chapter titled “The Body and the Collective: Thinking a Radical Politics of Care with Federici” and an article titled “Credere a Palamede: Cavarero e la responsabilità etico-politica della narrazione relazionale”, under consideration with a scientific journal of philosophy.


At DePaul I attended two graduate seminars taught by my hosting supervisors.
During the return phase, I taught a 30 hour introductory course in political philosophy for BA students in communication science at the University of Verona (fall 2024).

I presented my work in many invited and peer reviewed conferences, including one as a keynote speaker: “Dalla politics of grievability alla politics of care: un linguaggio politico per la critica femminista al neoliberismo,” Keynote Lecture at V Annual Conference of SWIP (Society for Women in Philosophy) Italia, University of Cagliari, Italy (December 12-13, 2024)
I was a member of the organizing committee of the international conference 17th Hannah Arendt Circle held at New York University (4-6/6/2024).


Conferences I have, respectively, organized and co-organized with my own research funding:
1. International conference 16th Hannah Arendt Circle at UNIVR (26-29/06/2023)
2. International workshop "Situating Vulnerability: Politics, Law, and Institutions" at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin (27/06/2024)


My public website was designed by Massimiliano Parolin under my supervision + training to learn how to use it.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The MSC fellowship has helped me matching the standard requirements by allowing me to: a) increase and improve my international record of publication; b) participate in international conferences relevant in my main research fields, political philosophy and feminist theory; c) extend my academic network and the international impact of my research; d) further demonstrate my multidisciplinary expertise; e) improve my teaching abilities.

The project has achieved most of its objectives and milestones for the period, with relatively minor deviations. I originally did not plan to publish my first monograph but I had the opportunity to do it with ETS published and the Project Officer allowed me to use part of my research funding.


As for my short-medium term career goal: in January 2025 I have started working as an Assistant Professor (tenure track) of Philosophy at Stony Brook University.


ChoreoCare demonstrates the EU’s commitment to raise the general public’s awareness on extremely urgent political issues, like race- and gender-based discrimination. By communicating the results of this research through my website, I aim to inform non-expert audience in relation to politics of care as it is enacted by certain contemporary social movements and its intersectional connotation.

Ni Una Menos Choreography of Vulnerability and Care