Wednesday, October 1, 2008
I thought Sara Ruddick's analogy/comparison of caregivers and militarists was an interesting one. Her unpacking of job of 'caregiving', I think, was fairly accurate (even though she didn't really acknowledge the roles that men play in caregiving -- or did she? or was that the point? either way, it seemed omitted to me). Yet like many ideas and thoughts, the practical implementation of said idea seems partially unclear. How does Ruddick imagine "nonviolent caregiving" in real-life situations? Where would've, say, the escalation to the War in Iraq veered from its path toward war to a path toward "nonviolent caregiving"? What form does this "caregiving" take?
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I completely agree with your take on Ruddick's article. I was also confused about her views on the role that men play in caregiving. She seems to couple caregiving with femininity and she has a hard time separating femininity from women. Does this mean she doesn't think men have a place in caregiving? Is that an exclusively female realm (since she does say it's an exclusively feminine one)? I'm not very sure.
ReplyDeleteAnother point that she did not resolve in her model of the maternal caregiver as peacemaker is the natural vulnerabilities that a caregiver works with. Ruddick points out that a militarist uses force to try to create the inequalities that a caregiver automatically already has as a part of their situation. How can a caregiver work without this given inequality?
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