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Private Dependence, Public Personhood: Rethinking “Nested Obligations”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2014

Laura Back
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Abstract

This paper responds to Love's Labor, Eva Feder Kittay's seminal contribution to feminist disability theory, arguing that Kittay's “nested obligations” approach creates a two‐tiered system of justice in which care relationships built around private dependence and private obligation are figured as wholly prepolitical, to the detriment of both gender justice and disability justice. I suggest that centering the civic membership of the disabled person allows us to keep what is valuable in Kittay's contribution, namely her theorization of the nature of care and its political significance, and her call for collective support of care relationships, while omitting the nesting of obligations and resituating care recipients and care workers as equal and interdependent.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 30 , Issue 1: Special Issue: New Conversations in Feminist Disability Studies , Winter 2015 , pp. 115 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by Hypatia, Inc.

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Footnotes

Christine Di Stefano and Jamie Mayerfeld provided invaluable advice and encouragement throughout my work on this paper. I also received extremely helpful feedback on earlier drafts from Jack Turner, Kim Q. Hall, two anonymous Hypatia referees, and numerous participants in a University of Washington graduate conference on Care, Work, and Diversity, organized by Anna Haley‐Lock and Kim England. Alexei Kosut and Robert Au provided proofreading, encouragement, and the care on which I have often depended.

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