In this stage of capitalism, the notion of “self-care” has become a ubiquitous imperative functioning as not only a revolutionary rallying cry, but also as a neoliberal disciplinary tool. The latter furthers our collective systemic oppression, while the former facilitates our refusal to lay our bodies down to oppressive mechanisms. Corporate “wellness” urges us to practice mindfulness in the name of upping our productivity. Social media algorithms serve advertisements for luxury skincare regimes framed as “mental health maintenance.” Yoga classes are offered as a solution to the structural burnout caused by an unjust world. This special issue of Hypatia, “The Politics of Self-Care in an Unjust World,” emerges from the collective exhaustion of a global pandemic and a world riddled with war and genocide. We believe that in a world marked by inequalities the concept of self-care remains a vital site of philosophical contestation. Who is allowed to care for themselves? At whose expense is that care produced? And how do we reclaim the radical concept from the clutches of capitalism to serve the ends of liberation?

To better understand the stakes of this inquiry, we must turn to works that politicized the care of the self. Foucault identified epimeleia heautou not as narcissism, but as an ethical practice of freedom (1988). It was a way of constituting oneself as a subject who is capable of ethical action within the political system. For Foucault, self-care was a form of resistance against the technologies that create docile bodies; moreover, caring for one’s self is a prerequisite for caring for others. Lorde radicalizes this concept by framing self-care not just as an ethical practice, but as a tactic of survival within a hostile state. Lorde writes “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” (1988, 131). The invocation is not advocacy of heated eye masks, comfy slippers, or the latest AI personal assistant. Rather, it is the radical assertion of self-ascribed value by those whom the capitalist world has deemed as disposable. hooks echoes this sentiment in Sisters of the Yam that, for Black women and other marginalized groups, self-care and self-love is a form of resistance to a system of domination that relies on depletion of the marginalized (1993). But the tool of self-care as resistance is easily co-opted back into the system. As Ahmed (Reference Ahmed2014) warns us, whenever institutions adopt the language of self-care, the burden of systemic oppression is shifted onto the individual. If you are tired, weary, or burnt-out, the system insinuates that it’s not because the world is inequitable or the workloads are unmanageable. It is because you as an individual have failed to practice “adequate self-care.” There’s a gaslighting that is occurring here. While the unjust system is to blame, the system indicts those who are most vulnerable to the system’s unethical actions.

The theoretical urgency of this special issue is inextricably bound to the material realities of its completion. During the assembling of this collection, we, as guest editors, have been forced to continuously navigate the very fractures the contributing authors describe. We have edited manuscripts between the relentless demands of academic labor placed upon untenured women of color who are also active caregivers at home. We have waded through the pools of familial grief, political upheavals, and devastations within our home countries. In making these conditions visible, we are not seeking an apology for the delays of this work. We bring attention to these demands because we acknowledge the embodied reality of the work. To theorize the politics of self-care in an unjust world is to theorize while the world around us actively burns. Both of us are living the very “care crisis” this special issue interrogates.

It is from this grounded (and exhausted) space that we offer this special issue to you. The articles and musings move from a critique of the neoliberal version of “wellness” toward a re-conception of self-care as an ethical and collective duty. In refusing to adhere to the binary between theoria and praxis, musings are interwoven with more traditional philosophical articles. The issue begins by exploring the ecology of self-care and the body: self-care beyond the self. Expanding conceptions of self-care to incorporate not only natural spaces, but community with nature, drives the first collection of papers. Each paper focuses on more direct embodied acts concerning the psychological costs of systemic injustice.

Hugue and Yue, in their article “We’re Here, we’ve Got Changed, we’re Going Out,” explores the conception of wild swimming groups as “ecologies of care.” Utilizing an abductive approach to analysis, their research draws upon two groups in Scotland examining the mental health benefits of blue space engagement. While several participants noted individual improvement of their mental health, Hugue and Yue note that said benefits are entangled with the collective as well as the environment. The practice of well-being was made possible via the mutual support of the groups (the ecologies of care) as well as the natural blue spaces. For example, several swimmers noted that they would not have entered the cold dark water alone. Care, in this sense, is a collective environmental embodied practice.

Transitioning from a concept of embodied resistance that is collectively external, we have Leboeuf’s article “Eating and the Politics of Self-Care.” Leboeuf positions the recovering body as a site of political resistance against diet culture norms through the practice of intuitive eating. This frames self-care as not simply an ethical idea but a political one. Drawing on Manne’s concept of “bodily imperative,” Leboeuf argues that restrictive eating (i.e., dieting) in the service of an aesthetic ideal is morally wrong since it denies a universal imperative to eat. By engaging in intuitive eating, individuals affirm themselves as worthy of care in a system that devalues their bodies. To engage in the path of life-affirming care in an unjust world is to commit a political act of warfare against said oppressive system. It is the diet industry that creates the demand for intuitive self-care. Rather than falling into despair regarding this need for political resistance, intuitive eating offers practices which reassert one’s agency. While individuals can feel a deep sense of despair, one can nevertheless assert their own agency for themselves.

However, the state of despair is something that manifests differently when talking about more collective cases of injustice. Such is the case with climate change. D’Ettorre addresses the individual despair of the collective concern of climate change within the musing “Moral Injury, Despair, and Climate Justice Obligations.” Grappling with both individual and collective climate justice obligations exact a heavy emotional toll. Such despair might lead one to reject any obligation to act because climate justice is too demanding. And if the demands lead to anxiety or depression, then as an act of self-care, not addressing climate justice is preserving one’s mental health. D’Ettorre refers to this objection as the “The Demandingness-from-Despair” (DfD) and views it as a flawed conception of self-care. The despair that motivates the DfD objection is better viewed as a symptom of moral injury. When we understand that the resistance to addressing climate injustice for the sake of one’s mental health is because one feels as though their ability to address said injustice has been compromised, then we can hold the priority of restoring moral care. Said moral repair is the act of recovering “a shared sense of value and responsibility.” It is here that we can activate reparative self-care in a life-affirming manner that counteracts feelings of despair. D’Ettorre considers the virtue of epistemic humility as such a way to aid in reparative self-care. Within D’Ettorre’s view, epistemic humility encourages individuals to reflect on their epistemic limitations. This then limits the possibilities for climate justice action and acceptance of the vulnerability of uncertainty. Accepting the limitations and vulnerability not only limits tendencies toward disassociation but also facilitates space for hope.

Following an exploration into reparative care in the face of a worldwide crisis, the issue turns to confront the matter of the neoliberal co-option of self-care. In Radhakrishnan’s article “When Self-care is Not Neoliberal: Insights from Black, Decolonial, and Disability Feminisms,” clarity is given regarding the ambiguity concerning critiques of the notion of self-care. Distinguishing between an individualistic, commercial, and responsibility conception of self-care, Radhakrishnan utilizes Black, Decolonial, and Disability feminisms through a Foucauldian lens to demonstrate that, for historically marginalized groups, self-care is not merely a capitulation to the neoliberal market forces. It is necessary as a defense against a state that continually functions as coercive. Despite neoliberalism shifting the responsibility of the self’s own social reproduction back to the individual, for such marginalized groups self-care is a vital site of refusal.

Building upon Radhakrishnan’s neoliberal critique, Wolf shifts the framework toward a materialism grounded within disability justice. The musing “Crip Care Assemblages: Disability Justice, Sociomateriality, and the Radical Potential of Crip Worldmaking” offers another neoliberal critique of self-care within the scope of online disability support groups. Wolf reframes such spaces as “crip care assemblages.” Within these spaces, care is not a sacred commodity. Rather, it is more apt to view care as a radically collective practice of “crip worldmaking.” Within “crip worldmaking,” individuals creatively adapt to and resist interlocking systems of oppression via engaging in social material relations. The validation of all forms of engagement, including silence, that occurs within these spaces subverts capitalist demands such as performative productivity. Such localized adaptations form the groundwork for the next set of papers that explore self-care as a tool for epistemic and hermeneutical resistance.

Self-care involves a component of epistemic resistance to address systemic oppression and structural injustice. Picking up a similar mantle is Mastrelli’s article “Hermeneutical Rebellion as Lordean Self-Care.” Mastrelli explicitly utilizes Lorde’s conception that self-care is an act of political warfare. Structural oppression inherently alters one’s sense of self. Self-care is the practice that liberates one’s self-understanding. Hermeneutical rebellion is a specific form of epistemic self-care that is used to fight the harms to one’s identity spurred by oppressive narratives. The article uses breast cancer survivor narratives as a pinnacle case study to show the power of Hermeneutical Rebellion. Rooted in white, cis, and heteronormative notions of femininity, the dominant narrative molds survivors’ conception of identity. Survivors of breast cancer are then subjected to a form of hermeneutical injustice constraining their sense of self-understanding. It is not enough to simply reject the dominant narrative, according to Mastrelli, because the dominant narrative keeps individuals constrained by the same identity power. Something more radical is needed. As an epistemic tool, it loosens the grip of identity power in embracing the absurdity of the dominant narrative followed by imagining and engaging with new conceptual tools (such as Donna Haraway’s cyborg narrative) to construct positive identities.

From interrogating the conception of the self concerning self-care, the previous papers explore the ways in which the self is affected by ecology environments, commercialism, and dominant narratives. The following papers directly challenge the commercialization of mainstream self-help narratives. These papers explore how “wellness” and “self-care” are weaponized to enforce a sense of “healthy” productivity along with offering ways individuals can reclaim their autonomy via acknowledging affective states. Isern-Mas, Almargo, and Latham, in their paper “The Harms of Self-Help Disclosure,” critique the commercialized self-help industry. While previous papers have touched on what self-care entails, Isern-Mas et al. explicitly state what self-care is not. They identify core principles of the self-help industry (i.e., the power of positive thinking, elimination of negative thinking, gratitude, self-knowledge for self-improvement, and individual choice and responsibility). Rather than aiding the self, these principles reinforce oppression by individualizing the responsibility for change. Forcing self-disclosure and personal responsibility for well-being reinforces the very status quo the self-help industry purports to alleviate. For Isern-Mas et al., this generates harm because it is not only victim blaming, but the principles of the self-help industry contribute to epistemic and affective harms. The industry perpetuates a knowledge imbalance which discourages the expression of certain perspectives and levied experiences (via the eradication of “negative talk”). Dismissing emotional experiences and the imposition of emotional norms creates affective injustices. Overall, the self-help industry constitutes emotional imperialism.

While Isern-Mas et al. reject a commodified notion of self-care that is grounded in individualism, we move to a framing that acknowledges the unjust aspect of self-care, but nevertheless positions self-care as a necessary duty to oneself. In “Responsibility Recover: Addiction and Self-Care,” Rodriguez rejects the “disease model” in addiction recovery and proposes an approach where “addicts” adopt a framework of a responsibility to recover framed as a “caretaker of oneself.” By adopting a responsibility for their own welfare, vulnerable people (such as addicts) are more holistically encouraged to partake in actions that are both epistemically and prudentially rational. Rodriguez distinguishes between liability and responsibility. Several frameworks, including the disease model, an unjust society, or even pharmaceutical companies, utilize a liability conception, aiming to determine who is at fault for causing the addiction, which is backward-facing. Rodriguez notes that, while such models do not blame the addict themselves for their addiction, these frameworks incorrectly remove all agency from an addict. Rodriguez proposes a forward-facing responsibility where the onus to recover is on the addict as a duty to prevent future harm to oneself. This facilitates an addict acting in a way that is in alignment with one’s own best interest for long-term welfare (prudentially rationally), as well as encouraging the recovering addict to hold beliefs that are justified and rational about their own future welfare (epistemically rationally). Rodriguez also acknowledges that this responsibility is a burden for an addict—one that can rightly stoke anger. Nevertheless, Rodriguez argues that an addict can retain “apt anger” without causing oneself further injury.

While Rodriguez focuses on the duty to care for oneself. even if said duty is an additional burden to bear, Gunn, in the musing “The Part-Time Cyborg,” challenges the assumptions of the normative human subject. After covering several diagnostics concerning the toxicity of the neoliberal wellness regime, the papers pivot to the project of reclamation. If neoliberal self-care is a trap, then what are the alternatives? In introducing us to the “Part-Time Cyborg” (a concept often associated with post-humanism), Gunn utilizes a Black feminist framework to destabilize the conception of a bounded and singular self. What does autonomy mean when not only our survival but our very being are mediated by non-human technological elements? Given our interconnected systems, who is this self that the self-help industry purports to help? The notion of the “Part-Time Cyborg” embodies a hybridity permitting Black women to move through a labyrinth of states of being such as visibility/invisibility and presence/absence especially within white academic settings. Such small acts as turning off one’s Zoom camera are reconfigured as micro-subversive moments of rest and strategic withdrawal. The latter is subversive against the system of control through hyper-surveillance, which echoes a long history of surveillance and objectification of Black women. While rest, for the “Part-Time Cyborg,” constitutes intentional disengagement from the visibility and performance demands Black women face as well as a refusal to constantly be available.

Gunn offers us an examination of the external macropressures that can be internalized and offers practical ways Black women can maneuver within the system. With Conkling’s musing “My Friend, Anger,” we shift to the concept of emotional suppression regarding micropressures toward a radical affective reclamation of anger, which is often viewed as a negative emotion. Conkling offers us a rich personal narrative on embracing their own anger despite the philosophical legacy of anger being construed as irrational for women. For women, the only appropriate level of anger is none. This leads to a recurring pattern where Conkling’s anger about an unjust situation is deemed worse than the situation itself. Since the affective state of anger is viewed to be worse, then Conkling would be censured and apologize. Assertiveness in these types of situations is labeled as “aggression.” Nevertheless, shifting to a more nuanced conception of female anger enables viewing anger as a superpower. Conkling finds that viewing anger in this light has allowed them to find peace and acknowledge anger’s driving force to persevere within philosophy.

We now shift from the assertion of the autonomous self to the acceptance of the interdependent self. Within the final theme of “Relational Ethics and Collective Survival”, the framework moves from individual liberation to interpersonal responsibility and collective survival. Moving from the question “How do I assert my (true) self within an unjust world?” to “Given that myself is fundamentally intertwined with others, what are our mutual obligations for care and survival?,” the remaining papers reposition the subject of care from an “I” to “We.” They move beyond a critique of oppression against the self into the ethical challenges of interdependence. Ultimately, each paper in its own way demonstrates that well-being and survival are not achievable in isolation, but are contingent upon ethical relationality. The papers focus on “we-care” as opposed to “self-care.”

Reiheld’s musing “Can we Ever Say ‘No’ to Caregiving” directly challenges the boundaries of the autonomous self when we are plunged into complex dilemmas regarding relational responsibility. How can we negotiate the moral demands of caregiving when there’s the necessity of self-preservation? Despite care work being an essential feature within our society, it is undervalued. Reiheld notes a distinction between an ideal theoretical approach to caregiving, which is the dominant view of caregiving, and non-ideal caregiving. Ideal theory often views marginalized caregivers as owing an “almost unlimited debt of care.” Given imbalances of expectations placed upon marginalized caregivers, an ideal theory notion of caregiving fails to account for the real world. Instead of unlimited caregiving, Reiheld advocates for a “robust” conception of self-care, which focuses on the caregiver’s worthiness of a flourishing life. In our non-ideal world, the option to refuse caregiving is not open to everyone. Whoever possesses the ability to say no leverages systems of oppression and privilege. In framing self-care as refusal, caregivers can justify saying “no” to care work as a way of resisting the logic of depletion. However, this is not without its limitations. Again, Reiheld recognizes that one’s ability to say “no” may be dependent upon another’s exploitative “yes.” Reiheld gives an example of such a case regarding moving her mother to an assisted living facility after engaging in many months of care work that deteriorated Reiheld’s own health. However, the transition to an assisted living facility was only possible due to “intergenerational accumulation of financial resources and Mom’s own farsighted purchase of long-term care insurance.” As well as the labor of often poorly paid assisted living care staff members.

Reiheld interrogates the ethical problems associated with saying “no” along with the logics of depletion. Sak’s article “Where I End and you Begin: Irigarayan Reflections on Women’s ‘Boundary Issues’” raises the question to an ontological inquiry. Rather than focusing on choosing where to draw the line of boundaries (i.e., saying “no”), Sak explores the nature of said line. Utilizing Irigaray, Sak argues that the self, especially the female subject, is historically constructed as a being endlessly porous and thus defined by the needs of the Other. Boundary issues are not simply psychological failings, but a product of patriarchal frameworks which have failed to adequately conceptualize the female subject as an autonomous and relational being. This is in direct contrast to popular self-help literature stipulating that the difficulty in saying “no” indicates an inability to establish boundaries that protect one’s desires; however, the popular narrative relies on conceptions of masculine subjectivity. Regarding situations like care burnout or affective burdens, emphasizing setting boundaries is problematic. This is especially the case where an individual’s well-being is tied to others. Sak articulates that healthy boundaries are not a fortress for the individual. Rather, they are a dynamic ethically negotiated interface which allows for genuine mutual care. Instead of boundary setting, Sak argues Irigaray’s concept of “dwelling” to be a more fruitful alternative. In this conception, dwelling refers to the cultivation of a rhythm of sensibility. It is being at home with one’s inner difference and multiplicity. Reframing caretaking in the sense of dwelling allows one to welcome others without losing oneself. The language of boundaries exemplifies a crisis of misrecognized relationality. Dwelling offers protection by helping women embrace their inner differences while nurturing their desires as opposed to defining a rigid identity or set of needs.

Berdini, Silva, and Liebow thrust the notion of a fluidly bounded self into the reality of systemic injustice. In “Coping in an Unjust World: Affective Injustice and Liberatory Coping,” they argue that the need for coping is not random, but it is structurally generated and thus unequally distributed. This constitutes affective injustice and seems as though the solution is “Liberatory Coping,” which is inherently collective. The article introduces “coping double bind,” illustrating the tension between choosing individual strategies for personal well-being (which risk complicity or political quietism) versus fighting for structural change (which risks personal depletion). The former Berdini et al. view as “maintenance coping.” This is typically the standard conception of coping, which focuses on an individual’s well-being via emotional regulation. Not only does the fight for social justice stall, but “maintenance coping” carries with it affective injustice since there now is a disproportionate burden placed upon oppressed agents to regulate apt emotions. On the other hand, liberatory coping promotes collective liberation via social transformation. This coping mechanism also comes with its own problems. On this side of the double bind, Berdini et al. stipulate that we can experience moral harms such as self-sacrifice to the extent that it significantly impedes one’s flourishing. Interacting with the double bind can induce alienation and “affective injustice apt of ambivalence.” Berdini et al. conclude that neither maintenance nor liberatory coping can unequivocally solve the issues faced with self-care. Ultimately, they suggest that liberatory coping may better be viewed as a supererogatory duty.

While “Coping in an Unjust World: Affective Injustice and Liberatory Coping” theorizes on collective coping strategies, Yiu’s musing “We Do This for Each Other: Migrant Chinese Massage Workers” illustrates collective coping in the flesh. This musing moves the discussion away from abstract tensions into day-to-day mechanisms of mutual aid and collective care amongst migrant Chinese massage workers. Yiu signals the coping double bind Berdini et al. name. Nevertheless, Yiu’s work highlights the persistence of survival for a collective of marginalized people. Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork, Yiu focuses on how the migrant workers care for one another in an exploitative world. The case study illustrates self-care as relational. Moreover, the mutual network of care is a necessary form of relational self-care for these migrant women to sustain themselves abroad. Yiu highlights “English Parties” and “Massage Trains” as such acts. “English Parties” are to help fellow coworkers develop more proficient English skills to yield better job prospects. The parties also function as occasions of joy and celebration, but in a networking-style setting where workers can discuss which clients to avoid or find affordable lawyers. There are also the “Massage Trains” where workers sit in a circle and physically massage one another alleviating some of the physical toll of their work. These events also serve another educational function as discussions on various massage techniques are held. Both of these types of communal care challenge capitalist logic which characterizes Chinese massage workers’ bodies as strictly care-giving rather than care-receiving. Additionally, the mutual care is freely exchanged based on willingness as opposed to deservingness.

From Yiu’s empirical demonstration of collective care, the issue transitions to a theoretical critique concerning the ways in which marginalized care work is even categorized. In Gawel’s article “Holding Contradiction: Self-Care, Political Healing, and the Social Reproduction of Struggles,” the argument bridges the intimate politics of self-care with a Marxist feminist framework of social reproduction. Gawel cautions against the reductive pull to classify care, especially within the networks cultivated by sex workers and precarious care workers, as merely being about class struggle. In focusing solely on the labor aspect, the lived experiences of said workers are depoliticized and disembodied. Gawel argues that we must hold the contradiction of seeking healing via the very capitalist systems that harm us. Such a politicized care of the communal self is not merely about the reproduction of workers. Rather, the assertion is made that the politicized care of the self and community is inextricably linked to the social reproduction of emancipatory movements.

Our final paper shifts from demonstrations of collective (we) care to an epistemological reflection. Ashour’s musing “If I Call My Spirituality a Form of Self-Care” moves the discussion of self-care or we-care beyond practices to an interrogation on the language and knowledge systems we use to validate these conceptions. Ashour questions whether practices as personal as spirituality are truly individual or if they are rooted in shared meaning-making. Put another way, “whose knowledge counts as ‘care’?” Since the postmodernists avoid aligning with the spiritual, Ashour argues that this forces humanity into a “spiritual closet.” Since spirituality is closeted, there is then an “epistemological separation between knower and known.” This results in modes of care practice by spiritual people as “illegible or untranslatable to Western hegemonic thought.” Ashour critiques the inescapability of Western epistemology, where non-Western knowledge is often parochialized, especially concerning notions of self-care and the self. Can self-care be self-care if the practices do not seek to transcend the self? For Ashour, they will continue to make spirituality and religion their methodological practice because the call for truth must come from outside of Western thought.

The contemporary discourse surrounding self-care is fraught with paradox as it is an industry that promises liberation while often delivering individualistic burden. This collection of writings offers a profound journey beyond this limited framework. As a whole, it posits well-being not as a solitary endeavor but a project that demands a fundamental transformation of our political and epistemological assumptions about the self. If a practice must be stripped of its spiritual or cultural meaning to gain “self-care” legitimacy, then the collective strategies are incomplete. This special issue demonstrates that the answer to an unjust world is not to take better care of the self, but to commit to taking relational care, be it of others, the environment, our being with others, spirituality, technology, or our emotional well-being.