Planetary Care

The concept of planetarity is introduced by Spivak (2003) who proposes planetary thinking to ‘overwrite’ the language and values of globalization. Here, the Planetary is a way of thinking about otherness, creating a space for imagining Earth from a perspective of another world – beyond the colonial and capitalist processes of globalisation, and the well-intentioned language of internationalism. To think on a planetary scale opens up possibilities of thinking about the future from a different perspective, valuing pre-capitalist culture, or culture outside of capital, towards new/old forms of collective responsibility. Responding to the climate crisis, and the breakdown into fragile and undervalued care systems, the idea of Planetary Care works towards new forms of collective care organisation, practice and analysis. Care is considered from a planetary perspective and scale, drawing on Donna Haraway’s notion of kinship (2016), and Anna Tsing’s analysis of survival in the ruins of capitalism (2015). Planetary Care invites us to take a holistic multispecies ecological perspective, joining all organisms, including humans, together (Tsing, Swanson, 2017). For this purpose, material analysis, speculative thought, intersectional feminist and decolonial perspectives, are essential for reimagining the ethical and the aesthetic world.