CFP: Hypatia: A Feminist Journal of Philosophy

This special issue of Hypatia focuses on philosophical, social, and political analyses, and draws ethical boundaries using a feminist framework that should be in place when we engage in self-care practices. Self-care is a healthy, restorative, self-respecting, and affirming practice. It is primarily an intentional act of grounding, establishing safety, and building protective boundaries to grow and live a full human life. As Audre Lorde says, for those facing overlapping forms of oppression, these are acts of political warfare. It is important to examine the sort of cognitive states and epistemic framing toward self-care requires to more fully actualize the political radical nature that Lorde has in mind. Many depictions and hashtags portray self-care as an individualist act, one that often requires the acquisition of material goods and indulgent services. This requires not only time but money. Acts of self-care are prompted as luxuries. But self-care possibilities are both ambivalent and political. It is in those ambivalent possibilities that we ought to balance care of self, with the genuine care of others. Self-care is communal. It is radical. It is self-love. It is social care. The issue examines the sorts of ethical, political, and epistemic questions that arise when we practice self-care as a mode of feminist knowledge production and distribution and give examples of productive self-care practices that provide means of disruption, intervention, and resistance.

This issueis dedicated to feminist philosophical perspectives of self-care in an unjust world. With the recent protests and uprisings in response to the ongoing state-sanctioned murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless named and unnamed others, BIPOC had to contend with the precarious nature of their existence. Even prior to this social reckoning, and since mandatory self-quarantine and social distancing measures were implemented, the question of “how are you coping” has been on the front of everyone’s minds. We faced equal and opposite pressures to produce and be still at the same time. Social media calls to disengage were met against workplace expectations of mass productivity.  Even before the pandemic restructured the notion of “sociality,” racial stress, and the burden of being in our oppressive workplaces, trying to balance these as BIPOC, disabled, LGBTQIA+ members of academia has been a tumultuous lifelong task.