Care Beyond Innocence By Miriam Ticktin, The New School

This talk will explore the relationship ofinnocenceandcare, with the goal of reconfiguring and reclaiming a more radical political concept ofcarethat works across temporalities and affective registers. I start by exploring the concept of innocence, then move on to ask if a non-innocent form of politicalcareispossible. If so, what does it look like? Professor Ticktin will draw on recent feminist theories ofcare, and think with other political movements, such as the politics of sanctuary; ultimately, the talk willpush anthropological methods into the speculative: how might we imagine, design and amplify possible alternate political forms?

Miriam Ticktin is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research.Her research has focused in the broadest sense on what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity.She is the author ofCasualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France (University of California Press, 2011)andIn the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care(co-edited with Ilana Feldman, Duke University Press, 2010), along with many other articles and book chapters. She is a founding editor of the journalHumanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development.Ticktin is currently at work on two related book projects: 1) a short book on innocence as a political concept, and how it produces an unending search for purity; 2) a book on practices of containment at the border, from border walls to spaces of quarantine.