ChoreoCare · Choreographies of vulnerability :towards a new public ethics of care

The project assumes the “vulnerability paradigm” as a theoretical framework that enables an innovative understanding of collective social, political, health-related, and economic phenomena, including the protests against structural racism that have been organized inside and outside the United States after George Floyd’s death on May 25th. ChoreoCare aims to shape a new ethical approach by framing an argument in favour of it situated in political theory. The argument is that, if a collectivity recognizes vulnerability as a condition that all individuals embody, although each one in a different way and with different resources, it will also promote practices of care as a necessarily shared task. I have coined the notion of “choreographies of care”, which identifies the public and concerted mode of acting together performed by subjects who recognize their own and the others’ social embeddedness, embodied vulnerabilities, and mutual dependencies. ChoreoCare adds to feminist theorists who have remarked the importance of how a bodily political performance is narrated and acted out in public discourse, insisting on the urgency of counter-narratives. It takes into consideration the aesthetics of different collective efforts in the name of care. I have selected several scenes in which vulnerability is exhibited and, I claim, a collective demand for care is in place. I will compare and connect the political discourse related to feminist collective actions, ranging from the feminist strikes organized in Argentina and Mexico in March 2020 with the aim to protest violence against women, to the “Wall of Moms”, a public demonstration that took place in Portland, Oregon in July 2020 in support of the Black Lives Matter protests. We can find examples of this kind of collective performances also in the ancient Greek theatre. I will dedicate a specific portion of this research to my own interpretation of Sophocles’ Antigone, which is a staple in feminist theory.