Contaminations of humanitarianism care

Humanitarian-first principles include “neutrality,” which means humanitarians seek to help all who suffer, without discrimination; they also include “humanity,” which is the belief that all people have equal dignity by virtue of their membership in humanity. But in practice, institutionalized forms of humanitarianism are structured by clear and fixed distinctions between the helper and the helped, with those in the Global South generally serving as recipients of aid, while those in the Global North are the givers. Despite the theoretical ideal where these positions can and should be regularly reversed—where everyone can at times be helper, at times, helped—the dynamics never seem to change, sedimenting the binary subject positions into those of victim and savior. These have effectively become different human kinds, marked by racial coordinates.

But despite its global dominance, humanitarian care need not be practiced this way. In particular, this schema is put into relief when the aid does not travel from Global North to South, and when differences in power are not already fixed in advance.

Cuban doctors who go to serve in Brazil, as Maria Lidola writes in her contribution to this theme section, challenge these hierarchies of power and these categorical distinctions; they make a concerted effort to enact alternative forms of aid based on South-South solidarities. In her article “Affective relatedness, temporalities, and politics of care in a medical South-South partnership: The Cuban mission in Brazil,” Cuban doctors take the idea of anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist action seriously, challenging Western humanitarians as the only ones who can help. In “Along the twilights of care: Continuities of technomoral politics in São Paulo's pro-migrant activism,” Heike Drotbohm also reveals South-South solidarities in Brazil, but with a different directionality and set of power dynamics—for her, care is enacted by Brazilians for Haitian migrants. Hierarchies of care are scrambled in the struggle between logics of activism and humanitarian action, and complicated by the fact that both activists and humanitarians use the same technologies of control. In Montenegro, too, as Čarna Brković writes in “Disappointment and awkwardness as ugly feelings: Humanitarian affect in a ‘Global East,’” this configuration does not fit. Local actors enact alternative forms of aid that challenge Western humanitarians as the only ones who can offer help. That is, those in the formerly socialist Yugoslavia have found themselves in both positions, as helper and helped, depending on their shifting geopolitical status—initially as a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement and then in the 1990s as the recipient of development aid. They do not fit easily into the categories of Global North or South, and as such, they show the fickle nature of care—at some point in our lives, we will all need it, even as we are also all capable of giving care.

If these geographical and historical relationships work to undermine fixed distinctions between subjects and objects of aid, we see that hierarchical forms of care are also destabilized by different political traditions. Humanitarianism largely derives from a liberal tradition—whether we date this to colonial or abolitionist histories or more recent practices of “humanity” by Médecins Sans Frontières. But when combined with socialist traditions, it is enacted differently. In Brazil, solidarity is a distinct political practice, one that evolved in the 1960s and 1970s to fight social inequality and the exploitation of the most marginalized. Drotbohm's ethnography of pro-migrant activists in Brazil reveals they inherited this tradition, even as they now recombine their activist positions with the hierarchies and roles of humanitarianism. In this sense, they initially received migrants—coming primarily from Haiti—in the frame of solidarity, based on a participatory and inclusive approach. That said, these “solidarians” subsequently wavered between solidarity and humanitarian practice, which rendered policies of pure leftist identification more difficult. In Lidola's piece, the Cuban doctors bring a horizontal model of solidarity to bear in their care for Brazilians, with the idea that they owe a “moral debt” to humanity; they believe in equal access to medical care for all, not simply in times of emergency or crisis. They also center dignity in their treatment, while the liberal tradition of humanitarianism tends to focus on identifying victims and prioritizing vulnerability, which often works at cross-purposes to maintaining dignity.

But perhaps more than anything else, humanitarian care is identified by its emphasis on intervention in situations of emergency or crisis. That is, the goal of humanitarianism is not to change larger political contexts but to help in a moment of dire need. The reason given is that humanitarians do not want to lapse into functioning as a parallel or competing political or medical system—they do not pretend to displace the state apparatus. Yet, this collection of articles shows how expanding the temporal dimensions of care can radically change the political dynamics, and the very meaning of care.

In Montenegro, even if people want to respond in times of emergency, they do not always have the ability or the means to do so; as already mentioned, their positioning as subjects or objects of humanitarian compassion is ambiguous. This creates what Brković calls “suspended agency”; here, time stops, everything is put on hold, as one does not know how to care, how to act. We see that to act and to care is, in fact, a privilege, but to not act can also be an ethical choice that questions the meaning of intervention. The opposite is true in the case of Cubans in Brazil; the Cuban doctors extend the time of care for each patient, well beyond what was ever thought possible by poor Brazilians. In this sense, they change the dynamics between rich and poor, showing that everyone is worthy of sustained medical care—that their lives matter. Drotbohm reveals the contingency of care: pro-migrant activists joined with migrants to fight for collective housing—either in the form of shelters or squats—for a limited period of time; this can be understood as a form of “provisional solidarity” that admitted to uncertainty and doubt about shared goals. With different temporal frames, the meanings of care change: from paralysis to temporary to nonlinear and enduring.

These “corruptions” or vernacularizations of humanitarian care reveal new types of emotion and feeling, which is perhaps the most important intervention of all—expanding the moral and affective grammars of engagement. There are “ugly feelings”—as Brković calls it, using Sianne Ngai's term—like disappointment about not being able to participate in regimes of care; there is sarcasm in the face of humanitarian initiatives, because people feel compromised, impotent. There is doubt, uncertainty, awkwardness, and embarrassment in the coalitions—mistrust and jealousy. As Drotbohm writes, there is irritation, ambivalence, and even stubbornness between the helpers and helped. These feelings are complex and sometimes provoke conflict, but most importantly, they make space for relationships that are more than simply about paternalism or fixed forms inequality. They challenge the dominance of liberal sentiments like sympathy, compassion, and pity, which often simply reproduce inequality, even if unintentionally so (Fassin 2005; Muehlebach 2012; Ticktin 2011).

While these alternate forms of care challenge the hierarchies embedded in humanitarian care, they leave one particular relation of power in place: racism. As scholars have shown (Benton 2016; James 2010), insofar as humanitarianism is structured as the Global North intervening in the Global South, and insofar as the (often white) international aid workers are treated differently than the local (often nonwhite) workers (Fassin 2011; Redfield 2013), and insofar as so many of the disasters and conflicts that humanitarians respond to are the consequence of unredressed colonial or imperial histories, the practice of humanitarianism is constantly reproducing the global color line, not only by leaving these structural inequalities unaddressed but also by directly playing into them (DuBois 2014; Razack 2004).

This is perhaps clearest in Brković’s piece. She describes the disappointment of a 16-year-old Montenegrin girl who wants to be a global citizen and participate in international networks of help; in particular, she wants to volunteer for a program in Lesotho, but she is financially unable to do so. Her desire to do this work is shaped by what many have called a “white savior complex”—she does not want to do the same work in places like Romania or Canada. She wants to engage with what she thinks of as the real sites of need and Otherness, shaped by racialized difference. This same idea of people of color as somehow victims, as lesser, as Other, is echoed in Brazil, with Cuban doctors. And as Lidola recounts, the Cuban doctors constantly bump up against the racism of the Brazilians, who expect and want their doctors and aid workers to be white, in order to respect them—the fact that they are often not white simply makes their work harder, rather than undermining racist beliefs about who is a legitimate aid worker. In the case of the struggles for refugee and immigrant rights in Drotbohm's article, even as a model of solidarity shaped the initial engagements, a racialized politics of anti-immigrant sentiment shaped the larger contexts, enabling a form of paternalism to take the upper hand among the solidarians or volunteers. Racism is still an often unacknowledged, structuring reality of humanitarian care.

BLM and the politics of radical collective care

What if, however, care started with anti-racism, rather than keeping it in place? Could this enable a different form of political care? I want to discuss very briefly the Movement for Black Lives and its abolitionist politics of care, which approaches racism through the lens of racial capitalism, that is, as always in intersection with class inequality. The movement is working to change the meaning of care from a series of practices largely built on hierarchy, volunteerism, or individualist self-care, into what they call “structural care” (Woodly 2020). That is, BLM interrupts and reworks care in similar ways to the vernacularizations discussed in this issue, but it starts with and centers the need to counter the legacies of racism. That said, like the impure humanitarianisms in this issue, first, it undoes the distinction between subject and object of care; second, it reworks the temporality of care; and third, it challenges liberal versions of humanitarian care, but in this case, it does so not only from the perspective of socialism but from a Black radical and feminist tradition, all of which challenge the basic tenets of racial capitalism. Finally, it also adds a new affective form to its mandate: joy.

Before proceeding, I want to be clear that The Movement for Black Lives, while originating in the United States and its specific histories of slavery and anti-Black racism, is also a global movement, as we saw during the protests of the spring and summer of 2020; anti-Black racism exists globally, even as the meaning of “Black” changes across contexts (for example, historically, “Black-British” was an expansive political affiliation in the UK, including all those from former colonies, from Pakistan to Jamaica). While there are certainly different strains in the movement, I focus on those guided by abolitionism, which are not identity-based: it challenges injustice and oppression broadly conceived, starting with those who are most marginalized—these include those who identify as Black, brown, Indigenous, colonized, and so on. It works horizontally to bring very different people together in coalitions across local, regional, and national borders. BLM builds on the Black radical tradition that was international and often internationalist; examples include the work of Frantz Fanon, the Black Panthers in Algeria, and the long-standing solidarity between Black radicals and movements for Palestine. These thinkers and activists were in dialogue about imperialism, racism, and capitalism. Similarly, abolitionism is a global demand, insofar as it stands against police violence and condemns global militarisms and forms of incarceration. In other words, this form of care is emerging as a transnational practice, offering a challenge to humanitarianism on the same scale, working to challenge the causes of inequality, not simply its effects. In so doing, I suggest it offers a revolutionary notion of care.

First, BLM centers those who are most marginalized, but rather than treating them as victims to be saved by others, the people who are facing oppression—indeed, communities who have inherited centuries-long legacies of oppression—are the same people who are both fighting for revolution, and doing so by caring for themselves and others. They insist on the interconnection between care work and political organizing. This is perhaps best exemplified by the groups of mothers who have fought against police violence. As Nadine Naber et al. (2020) state in their essay about MAMAS (Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity), their organization of primarily Black and Latinx mothers of incarcerated victims of police violence, “Mothers trapped within the prison industrial complex in one way or another have been modeling what it looks like to integrate care work (often conceived of as ‘service’) and political organizing as part of a collective, revolutionary project.” These mothers care for all those who are incarcerated; they model collective ways of being that include caring for extended relatives, friends, neighbors, and cellmates. They take collective responsibility for each other's children, creating networks that demand justice for all. For instance, they fought for COVID-19 protections for all their children in prison—for face masks and soap and supplies to keep all their children safe, lobbying the governor, speaking out, getting legal teams involved. In terms of privilege and expertise, there is no separation between subject and object of care, giver and recipient. There are no longer two “human kinds” (Hacking 2006) here, as there often are with humanitarianism, even if relations of power are always present. To be sure, they build on the abolitionist work of mothers who were active before BLM officially existed, such as Mothers Reclaiming Our Children (Mothers ROC); as Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2007) writes, these mothers transformed their caregiving and reproductive labor into activism to reclaim all children in the criminal justice system, regardless of race, age, residence or alleged crime. Both MAMAS and Mothers ROC are composed of mothers from many different backgrounds—Black, brown, Asian American, and white—and they claim links with Third World and other grassroots activist mothers, invoking South African, Palestinian, and South American struggles.

Second, in the case of abolitionism, the temporality of care is extended well beyond crisis, insofar as crisis has become chronic and quotidian for many touched by anti-Black racism. It is about a long-term politics of care that changes subjectivities, communities, and infrastructures. That is, even the vernacular humanitarianisms in this issue, while extending and complicating the temporality of humanitarianism, ultimately provide temporary measures. While the response to police violence and to the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor—and so many others during the spring of 2020—was one of massive, urgent global protest, including demands to defund the police, in fact, BLM is not simply about protest. It is about positive, enduring change: as Deva Woodly (2020) states, the movement enacts structural care, which in turn addresses structural harm. Abolitionism is not about healing individuals but instead focuses on socioeconomic and political change as part of a cure for oppressive conditions. While the crisis model is precisely what is used by the police to maintain a white supremacist social order, abolitionist scholars and activists like Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Patrisse Cullors, and Mariame Kaba suggest that caring should take the form of diverting attention away from regimes of policing and security, toward health care, housing, education, and good jobs. In this spirit, Critical Resistance—arguably the most well-known abolitionist organization in the US—includes three strategic frames: dismantling, changing, and building. To defund the police is not only to stop police violence but to divert this money into building new worlds. It is about creating the practical conditions in which people do not harm each other—which include building new infrastructures and laws.

Third, this is not a liberal form of care, like humanitarianism, and while it does build on traditions of socialism and solidarity, as do many of the vernacular humanitarianisms in this issue, it infuses its socialist, Marxist-feminist approaches with the Black radical tradition. Just as Black Marxist feminists like Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore have shaped the politics of abolitionism, Black feminists have reworked the meaning of care more broadly. People are returning to Audre Lorde (1988) for guidance, who stated that, for those who are marginalized, care is a form of political warfare: to engage in care is to uphold the right to survive. Similarly, Saidiya Hartmann (2016) argues that the labor of care produced through the violent structures of slavery and subsequently exploited by racial capitalism is not exhausted by either of these violent formations: this care enables those who were never meant to survive to do just that, even in the most brutal of contexts, including this current one. They recognize that all capitalism is racial capitalism (Robinson 1983), and therefore radical care needs to be anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, feminist, and queer. This form of care is about a politics of repair, not one of saving or rescuing; in other words, unlike humanitarianism, it uses the guiding principles of care to challenge the roots of injustice and inequality. The goal is to redistribute resources in ways that allow everyone to thrive.

Finally, just as the vernacular humanitarianisms surfaced different emotions, abolitionist care centers and amplifies “Black joy.” Woodly states that this is based on a form of “unapologetic Blackness,” which makes room for everyone—it is does not divide people into categories of worthy or unworthy of care, reputable or disreputable, and refuses to shame anyone for their needs. As part of this inclusionary practice, joy is claimed as an affirmation of Blackness and is expressed as “a sensation of euphoria that one feels in the presence of others who are aligned in thought and action” (2019: 230).

Perhaps most importantly, this is a form of care that refuses to prioritize profits over lives. If we locate the origins of humanitarianism in the histories and legacies of slavery and colonialism, and if, as Thomas Haskell (1992) has argued, it was similarly interconnected with practices of capitalism, then the abolitionist care being enacted by BLM necessarily breaks with humanitarian care, even in its contaminated forms; indeed, it promises to take us somewhere radically different beyond the color line, with the goals of helping to forge a society where all people can live and thrive, where everyone can care, and where everyone matters.