'A decolonial ethics-aesthetics of care', by Maria Grace Salamanca

Formal lecture given on the 21st October 2022 by Maria Grace Salamanca, in the capacity of keynote speaker during the 2nd IEF International Colloquium ROADS TO CARE, held at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra between October 19 and 21, 2022, organized by the R&D Unit IEF - Institute for Philosophical Studies, funded by the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of the Portuguese Republic, under the UIDB/00010/2020 project.

Abstract:

The current planetary context reveals an urgency to make a philosophy committed to our world. Since its creation, Latin American critical theory has defended the imprint of creating alternatives to create worlds in which all worlds fit, taking up the zapatista’s formulation. In this context, I propose to take an other-path to think about the ethics of care, other than that of modernity-coloniality.

At first, I will present a decolonial reading of the ethics of care, articulating it around three axes: the human condition understood as vulnerable, the dynamics of attention and inattentiveness, typical of the modern world-system, and the contextualization of decisions.

In a second moment, I will describe decolonial aesthetics, to end with the proposal of the aesthetics of care which propose sensitive and sensitizing practices to respond to the ethical urgencies of our time.

Bionote:

María Grace Salamanca concluded a PhD in Philosophy within the framework of a co-direction between the University of Lyon and the research program “Social Actors of the Medicinal Flora in Mexico”, run by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). She enjoyed a post-doctoral research stay at the École Urbaine de Lyon, working on the aesthetics of care in the context of the Anthropocene. She is a specialist in the Epistemologies of the South and a theater actress practicing decolonial aesthetics. María is also a member of research and clinical ethics committees and a professor of ethics, bioethics, and epistemology.