Care is essential for life and survivance. The social and ecological fabric of existence is woven by care. But how is care being cared for in political and economic terms?  How is care understood as a specific way of knowing the planet and relating to the world? How does knowing change if the analysis of the condition of the planet and the world starts from relations of care?

Tracing how modern colonial ontologies of gender were linked to mammalian epistemologies and their political economy of care essentialism, this lecture reflects on what kinds of analysis are needed for liberating care from patriarchal violence and capitalist extraction. Presenting the aims of feminist recovery plans, which were written by policy makers, care workers, activists, and researchers during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, this lecture asks how feminist recovery against care violence can be imagined and put into practice.

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Elke Krasny is a feminist cultural theorist, urban researcher, curator, and author. She focuses on concerns of care, reproductive labor, social and environmental justice, commemorative practices and transnational feminisms in art, architecture, infrastructures and urbanism. In 2023, Krasny received the Gabriele Possanner Award for promoting gender research in Austria. Krasny is a Professor of Art and Education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Together with Angelika Fitz she edited Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet (MIT Press, 2019). Together with Lara Perry, she edited Curating as Feminist Organizing (Routledge, 2023) and Curating with Care (Routledge, 2023). Her book Living with an Infected Planet: Covid-19 Feminism and the Global Frontline of Care (transcript publishers, 2023) focuses on militarized care essentialism and feminist recovery plans in pandemic times. Together with Urška Jurman she initiated the group Ecologies of Care and currently works on establishing approaches to Feminist Infrastructural Critique.