Description
Book SynopsisConsidering solidarity and mutual aid at the intersection of political philosophy and biology, made more urgent and prescient by the COVID-19 crisis, this book is grounded in the work of Catherine Malabou and takes her theories in creative new directions.
To think about solidarity mutual aid is to think about how we can and do live together, and how we might do so differently. Mutual aid is, in Peter Kropotkin’s famous formulation, a factor of evolution, but also a conscious political strategy undertaken by activists in times of crisis. While this combination of biology and politics has been a source of controversy, and even embarrassment, recent developments demand a rethink. The contributions in this volume aim to renew interest in the idea of mutual aid, and to consider how biological claims might be incorporated into political projects without appearing as essentialist constraints. They do so in dialogue with Catherine Malabou, whose work insists on the importance of the biological while rejecting any notions of biological determinism. They thus point to the necessity of solidarity and mutual aid for understanding our social life, while releasing them from the biological and symbolic chains in which they often appear.
Table of ContentsChap. 1 Introduction – Petr Kouba, Catherine Malabou, Dan Swain, Petr Urban
Chap. 2 Politics of Plasticity: On Solidarity and Cooperation – Catherine Malabou
Part I ‘An Internal Principle of Cooperation, Assistance and Repair’ - Solidarity and Plasticity
Chap. 3 The Dynamics of Plasticity – Rasmus Sandness Haukedal
Chap. 4 Materialisms, Old and New: Solidarity and Individuation in Gilbert Simondon and Catherine Malabou – Arianne Conty
Chap. 5 Solidarity, Cooperation and Equality in View of Plasticity – Petr Kouba
Chap. 6 Ethics of the Care for the Brain: Neuroplasticity with Stirner, Malabou, and Foucault – Elmo Feiten
Chap. 7 On the Concept of Nature, or the Biology and Politics of Cooperation – Bartłomiej Błesznowski, Cezary Rudnicki
Chap. 8 Solidarity as Necessity: Subject, Structure, Practices – Thomas Telios
Part II ‘The War of Each Against All Is Not the Law of Nature’ - Mutual Aid Between Biology and Politics
Chap. 9 Depressive Revolution and Anxious Solidarity - Julie Reshe
Chap. 10 Mutual Aid Technologies: Plasticity "All the Way Down" – Eugene Kuchinov
Chap. 11 Solidarity: not altruism – Jonas F Costa
Chap. 12 Selfish Genes, Evil Nature: The Christian Echoes in Neo-Atheism – Ole M. Sandberg
Chap. 13 Loosing the Chains: Solidarity and Universal Interdependence – Alessandro Volpe and Federico Bina
Part III ‘At the End of the Day, It’s Just Us’ - The Actuality of Mutual Aid
Chap. 14 Counterpublics of the common. Feminist solidarity unchained – Ewa Majewska
Chap. 15 The Anarchist Impulse: A Factor of Human and Non-Human Nature - Gearoid Brinn and Georgina Butterfield
Chap. 16 From Scaremongering to care-mongering – Jade da Costa
Chap. 17 Prefigurative Biology: Can mutual aid be natural and prefigurative? – Dan Swain
Index
