Past Caring: A Feminist Reevaluation of Solitude

In an age of environmental and social crises, the concept of care has become one of the most powerful tools to challenge the way we relate to each other and to the spaces where we live. However, our contemporary understanding of care is still largely shaped by the gendered asymmetries of the locus with which, more than any other, we identify it: the home. This seminar will try to rethink the home beyond a traditional idea of maternal care by looking at architectural examples of residential spaces that reject the family as key subject. Starting from a close-reading of case-studies that address the possibility of living alone, we will define the differences between domestic, affective, and reproductive labour in the attempt to reassess the very way in which forms of care are constructed through the scripting of space. The domesticity of the single inhabitant, and of the temporary inhabitant, represents an alternative to the dominant family model in that it requires other ways of arranging care – by commodifying it and externalizing it, but also, possibly, by sharing and socializing responsibilities. Ultimately, we will argue that a new feminist take on care could be constructed through a radical evaluation of the idea of solitude – and that living past caring might very well mean living past typology.

Maria S. Giudici is the editor of AA Files and the founder of Black Square, a research platform based in Milan, Italy. At the AA, Maria is also a PhD Supervisor and Unit Master of Diploma 14.

Image: Santa Catalina Monastery, Arequipa, Peru