Immeasurable Pleasures and Measurable Injustices: Communicating a Politics of Care

Publicly asserting the necessity of slow, careful attention to immeasurable pleasure and immeasurable cares can be a form of political activism in our speeded-up society. If 'caring' has to be defended actively, people need a public, political language for defending it. How do Americans publicly defend attention to immeasurable pleasures and immeasurable suffering? How do they speak in everyday life, about taking care of the world? If our society makes immeasurable caring difficult or invisible, how, if at all, do people discuss this problem while they are caring and being cared for? These are the questions for my project. In examining everyday conversation in care-giving situations, I hope to hear how Americans defend what American culture has generally considered indefensible, or else treated with yearning and nostalgia. We can hear whether people move from privately experiencing empathy and taking individual pleasure in helping someone, to talking about the social cultivation of--and denial of--empathy and care.