The ephemeral politics of feminist accompaniment networks in Mexico City

Bibliographic Data

ID4366969
AuthorsAmy Krau (0000-0001-7996-7799, Princeton University, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume20
Issue1
Pages37-54
Publication date2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700118755660
OpenAlexW2793979941
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited30

This article examines the tension in Hannah Arendt's thought between the creativity of political action and the worldlessness of labour in light of fieldwork with feminist activists in Mexico City. Drawing from my ethnographic research, I explore how labour and action are knitted together in the feminist practice of accompanying women who seek safe abortion in the city. Bringing Arendt's thought into dialogue with anthropologies of illness experience as well as the reflections of my interlocutors in the field, I shift from an approach to the situation of abortion as a decision-making event, to ask other questions about autonomy and dependency, freedom and necessity, mortality and political life. I argue that what is interesting about Arendt's conceptualisation of the labouring body is not that she separates 'bare life' from the political sphere of 'men', but rather that it alerts us to the uncertain way our life is implicated with others. In conclusion, I argue that feminist accompaniment networks foster an ephemeral relation of care between activists and women in situations of abortion, one that invites us to re-imagine the temporality of political action and to ask, again, what it is to make a new world versus make this world livable

Abortion · Aesthetics · Autonomy · Ephemeral key · Epistemology · Ethnography · Feminism · Political action · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Temporality · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy