Philosophy of Care, Feminist Care Theory and Art Care

Abstract

Drawing on the epistemological tradition of feminist care theory and care ethics, this article analyzes Boris Groys’s contribution to the philosophy of care in order to highlight the implications of care issues in the context of art, which is an important reference point for both his and my own investigation. After an introductory overview of the problematic and conceptualization of care, I address Groys’s position. I then provide insights into feminist care ethics and the philosophy of the body, care aesthetics and care work, before turning to art care. In a concluding synthesis, I argue for a different philosophy of care in the light of a reorientation of our understanding of care work in general and in the art world in particular. Methodologically, I combine philosophical exegesis and critical theory, referring to the feminist critique of the Western philosophical tradition as expressed in Groys’s work. I remain at the discursive level of the philosophical study of care and its dialog with the broader field of feminist theory and care ethics, including in relation to care work and art care in the contemporary museum economy.

1. Introduction

Care has not often been the subject of philosophical inquiry, although Groys’s recent treatise on the subject in his Philosophy of Care (2022) shows that it has been more or less implicit in some important philosophical positions in the Western history of thought [1]. I reconstruct his work in three steps: first, I outline his general framework for the topic in terms of the distinction between self-care and care; second, I trace a lineage from Plato through Heidegger to Bogdanov, showing that philosophical self-care culminates in modern institutions that museumify bodies and artworks alike; third, I read Groys’s hospital–museum analogy as evidence that late-modern culture functions as a regime of “total protection, total care” [1] (p. 91). What is missing in this genealogy is a feminist philosophical perspective that highlights the gendered and corporeal connotations of the topic of care—this is the aspect that I would like to place in a critical dialog with Groys’s treatment of care in the context of the history of philosophy as well as contemporary philosophical thought. Catherine Malabou has reminded us that “the European philosophical tradition is a tradition based on the exclusion of woman […]. Women do not do ‘women’s’ philosophical work” [2] (pp. 100–102). I can add that this exclusion also goes along with the exclusion or marginalization of care in relation to women’s reproductive labor in society, in general, and in a museal and curatorial context of art in particular.

The historical background of the philosophically motivated self-care that Groys observes is, as the philosopher of art Bojana Kunst emphasizes [3], the labor of women (and slaves), which in the words of Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, is “inseparable from the material continuation of life” [4] (p. 155). It is precisely this often invisible material practice, which is otherwise the key to social reproduction, that has been emphasized by feminist-Marxist authors since the early 1970s. Neoliberalism has further exacerbated the invisibility and exploitation of this work, and much like domestic work, which has been naturalized as feminine, artistic work and art care are often devalued as labor due to their invisibility.¹

Otherwise, the philosophical conceptualization of self-care has become part of the techniques of the contemporary domination of subjects with the commodification of care under the conditions of the general precariousness and vulnerability of existence. For the contemporary care system, all bodies are simultaneously intimate and public (political). This new identity of the physical body and the symbolic body, the intimate and the public, is well illustrated in social media by emphasizing self-design as a form of self-care. According to Groys, here too “the human body becomes an artwork—analogous to a museum item” [1] (p. 91). In relation to this argument, some historical parallels can be drawn between a physician and a curator, and a hospital and a museum, since both aim to care for and protect—human bodies or things—as Groys shows in several places in his study on the philosophy of care.

By discussing key references and blind spots within Groys’s framework, I aim to point to a certain historical invisibility of care as a form of persistent epistemic violence that has largely excluded care from the knowledge system of Western traditions of thought. Based on the claim that Western philosophy has systemically erased the labor of care, I deduce that any plausible philosophy of care must emphasize material, gendered reproduction. While Groys’s philosophy remains distant from the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of care, the main issue here is how a focus on these dimensions, their corporeal and relational foundations, can help us rethink the subject by linking it to questions of art care in the contemporary context of the crisis of care (Fraser). Although the gendered aspects of care are absent in his study, some useful implications emerge not only for feminist critiques of the philosophical tradition, but also for contemporary philosophical approaches to care in terms of care work and art care. In this essay I am particularly interested in the latter.

2. Care (Concept)

Given the growing interest in the idea and practice of care in the humanities and social sciences, especially in the last decade, a number of different conceptualizations have been circulated. The political scientist Joan Tronto sees one of the main problems for all theorists of care in defining the term itself, because “‘care’ is a complicated term, with many meanings and connotations in English” [7] (p. 18), although it may be added that this is also the case in other languages. As we shall see, Groys points to the double meaning of the term in German when he considers Heidegger’s Sorge (care), to which I return below. According to Groys, the word has at least two different but related meanings: it means “to be worried about something” and “to care about something” [1] (p. 69). It is therefore necessary to first extract the meanings that provide a suitable basis for research in the field of the philosophy of care and its connections to art. Berit Fischer summarizes how dictionaries define the notion of care “in relation to protective guardianship and the provision of what is needed for health and well-being, along with the notion of attentiveness and consideration” [8] (p. 94). To define the term, it is helpful to examine the etymology and historical genealogy of the word care. More specifically, the term is defined in the context of art museums and curatorial practices in contemporary art, which should be explained in more detail. When we think about the practices of creating and preserving art, we inevitably come across the dimension of care. The Latin word curare, the etymological root of curating, means in the broadest sense “to treat, to cure, to look after, to edit, or to organize” [9] (p. 4). The genealogy and historical semantics of the term testify to the dual nature of care: on the one hand, it means attention, responsibility, also healing, and refers to a relationship with someone or something that needs help, support and care; on the other hand, aspects of fear and anxiety were later added to this original meaning of care. With reference to Sarah Ahmed, Krasny and Perry point out that there is not only a Latin root but also an Old English term, and thus that “[t]he word care derives from cearu suggesting sorrow, anxiety, grief” [9] (p. 7). According to Puig de la Bellacasa, the affective tensions of care are present in its very etymology, which includes notions of both “anxiety, sorrow and grief” and “serious mental attention” [4] (p. 92). A politics of care looks towards an involved knowledge that is “about being touched rather than observing from a distance” [4] (p. 93). There are thus also emotional and moral connotations, which are particularly characteristic of the Western cultural tradition and its attitude to the mental states of mourning and melancholy. As Kunst states in her summary of feminist theory and critique of the concept of care, “from the beginning, this concept was linked to social, sexual and bodily relationships” [3] (p. 65).

Before we look at feminist care theory and art care with a focus on musealization and curating and place it in a dialog with Groys’s philosophy of care, I briefly introduce Groys’s most important statements. I highlight various aspects and controversies as prerequisites for analysis and critical interpretation, focusing on uncovering the meanings, arguments and implications of his ideas. I include a contextual understanding and an examination of the philosophical tradition to clarify the meaning and relevance as well as the shortcomings of his work.

3. Groys on the Philosophy of Care

According to Groys, “[t]he different philosophical teachings suggest the different types of relations between care and self-care” [1] (p. 10). Drawing on ancient Greek philosophical thought, Groys notes that the philosophical care requires the elimination of bodily desires and personal interests. In the progressive movement of history towards the Hegelian “end of history” as “the revelation of human freedom,” the philosopher becomes “a guardian of post-historical state,” while post-historical society is “the society of total protection, total care” [1] (pp. 22–23). Furthermore, Groys agrees with Foucault that the main task of the modern biopolitical state is to take care of physical well-being of its population [10,11]. In this context, the symbolic body has become a “documented […] and bureaucratically situated soul” [1] (p. 24). Groys points out that the Hegelian dialectics is based on the work of care, which is the care of symbolic bodies. The collection and preservation of these symbolic bodies is not possible without institutions of public care such as cemeteries, libraries and museums. He also discusses Nietzsche’s philosophy of “great health” in the context of poetic inspiration, the so-called “Dionysian forces” associated with it, and the promise of the new, which advocates a move away from care towards self-care and marks the birth of the ideology of creativity that still prevails in our time. Although Nietzsche did not elaborate a coherent theory of the body itself, he frequently refers to the body in his writings, from which we can infer his seminal contribution to the Western tradition of thought by understanding the body (also in relation to art) as the source and locus of the will to power. In relation to the latter, he invented the figure of the Übermensch who rejects social care in the name of great health, but Groys argues that this in fact still relies on institutional care for symbolic bodies. In Kojève, Groys finds the Sage as “a permanently working machine of discourse and care.” For him, “[t]he emergence of the Sage signals the transcending of the opposition between care and self-care” [1] (p. 41). Groys selected the authors who, as he himself says, sought “direct, unmediated access to the totality of the world, the Universe, Being” [1] (p. 55). He argues that when one has such access, one loses one’s dependence on the institution of care—and can practice self-care. Living inside the institutions of care also means working for them, which is “an exhausting type of work” [1] (p. 55). As this is a topical issue both for Groys and for the feminist concept of care work, I will examine the issue of care work in more detail below.

Groys devotes particular attention to Heidegger’s philosophical discourse, in which the concept of care occupies a central place for the first time in the history of philosophy. He sees the conflict between self-care and the institutions of modern care at the center of Heidegger’s thought. For Heidegger, care becomes the central ontological mode of human existence. He defines the human being as Dasein (being-there)—as being-in-the-world [12]. Moreover, he assumes the intelligibility of the world as we encounter it [13]². Our relationship to our world has the character of care (Sorge) and thus also of self-care. Accordingly, self-care is the fundamental mode of being of Dasein. Self-care presupposes a struggle for the specific, authentic mode of existence of a Dasein and against becoming a thing in the world controlled by others. In the context of medical care, for example, Dasein no longer exists in the mode of self-care and has thus lost its original ontological status. Becoming a thing here means becoming an object of care. One sign of the “turning” in Heidegger’s thought is an increased attention to the role that artworks play in disclosing being [13,14]. Heidegger has pointed out the ontological connection between human beings and artworks. Here I follow Groys’s interest in Heidegger’s philosophy of art insofar as it has contributed to the understanding of the materiality of things, including art objects in the modern museum.

Thus, according to Heidegger, the unconcealment of being takes place through art. In his essay The Origin of the Work of Art (1935), he states that artworks are on the one hand “a happening of truth at work” (unconcealment), while on the other hand are treated by our society as mere things [14] (pp. 294, 285). For him, shippers or charwomen in museums can operate with this second way of looking at art. Groys wonders why Heidegger rejects the perspective of shippers and charwomen by assuming the predominance of the conception of art as the object of an art business. According to Thomas Ebers, the art business as part of a broader cultural management can be seen as “an alienated activity” [16] (p. 63). One can argue for a critique of business as an approach to art that becomes part of the “culture industry” already defined by Horkheimer and Adorno [17] (pp. 94–136) and its commodity logic. Today, this industry is dominated by those economic intentions that essentially obey an economy of attention and thus a logic of constant increase and improvement in digitalized media societies. On the otherhand, Groys suggests to consider more closely the gaze of a charwoman as “a worker in the system of technological care, maintenance and restoration of artworks as material objects” [1] (p. 75). Her care work is also part of an institution of care or an “art business.” At this point, I particularly miss the recognition of the gendered dimension of care work in art institutions, which is at the center of feminist considerations.

Starting from the meta-premise that Groys’s genealogy erases gender, I connect feminist care ethics and phenomenological body theory to Groys’s framework, arguing that an embodied perspective exposes the epistemic violence implicit in his supposedly universal account. With this expanded framework, I argue for a reconceptualization of art institutions as sites of politicized, relational care that requires a reassessment of feminized reproductive labor.

4. Feminist and Body-Centered Perspectives on Care

Feminist philosophy is not so much based on a particular method, but on the premise that gender is an important lens for analysis [18]. In general, feminist philosophers shake up the social and symbolic construction of gender, reality and truth, arguing that epistemological and ontological claims are always embodied and therefore never neutral [19,20]. I am interested in the contribution of feminist philosophy and theory, which focus on the material conditions of women’s bodies and lives and, in conjunction with Marxism, also question the conditions of work. First and foremost, it is a critique of neutral views of the body. Feminist care ethics challenges the values of neoliberalism by offering an alternative perspective that emphasizes our shared corporeality, vulnerability and interdependence. This is also highly relevant to art care.

4.1. Care Ethics

The framework of care ethics is largely based on feminist theory and critique and has been adopted by a variety of disciplines, including philosophy and the arts. Care ethics is thought to have its origins in the work of psychologist Carol Gilligan and philosopher Nel Noddings in the mid-1980s as an alternative to the masculinist “justice perspective” of liberal human rights theory. This alternative view forms the basis for a care ethics that stands in an adversarial relationship to a number of prevailing theories of justice and the philosophical mainstream [21]. Virginia Held, Eva Kittay, Sara Ruddick, and Joan Tronto are some of the most influential among the many subsequent contributors on this topic. I join in particular Tronto, who referred to a long series of discussions on the nature of care and its possible relationship to moral theory as the basis for the large international corpus on the ethics of care [7]. In 1990, Tronto and her colleague Berenice Fisher, offered the following broad and widely cited definition of care:

On the most general level, we suggest that caring be viewed as a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web [7] (p. 19. Italics in original).

Following Puig de la Bellacasa, we need to reformulate Tronto’s definition of care ethics behind this “we”: “care is everything that is done (rather than everything that ‘we’ do) to maintain, continue, and repair ‘the world’ so that all (rather than ‘we’) can live in it as well as possible” [4] (p. 161)—thus recognizing the need for care in more-than-human relationships. From this general level, some narrower definitions of care are useful in narrower contexts, as in the case of James Thompson’s “careful” art and care aesthetics [22]. Thus, the broad definition of care offered by Fisher and Tronto suits a particular general account of the place and meaning of care in human life. Care needs to be further specified in a particular context, and one way to distinguish a particular kind of care is its purpose, as in the case of this study of art care.

Caring, as conceptualized by Tronto and Fisher, is also a complex process. They identified four steps in the processes of care: 1. caring about; 2. caring for; 3. care-giving; and 4. care-receiving. In order to think about democratic care, which is not on this level of generalization but is a more particular kind of care, Tronto identified a fifth phase of care: 5. caring with: “This final phase of care requires that caring needs and the ways in which they are met need to be consistent with democratic commitments to justice, equality, and freedom for all” [7] (p. 23). Tronto not only recognizes the importance of addressing care needs at a broader societal level, but also argues that care is always political, since the relationship between a care-giver and a care-receiver is a power relationship [23]. Thompson adds a sixth phase to Tronto’s proposed definition of care, namely witnessing care that “needs to be included as an important aspect of contemporary care” [22] (p. 66). This approach to witnessing is embedded within an embodied practice that follows a feminist line by emphasizing the centrality of the body and affectivity. I can also mention here Hardt’s reflections on so-called “affective labor” as “immaterial,” “invisible” labor, referring to feminist work on gendered forms of labor “that involve the affects in a central way—such as emotional labor, care, kin work, or maternal work” [24] (p. xi). Such care work is always relational and based on the complex dynamics of interhuman relations and the need for a more social or collaborative practice [22].

The ethical relationship between subject and society is only briefly mentioned by Groys, in relation to religion and its connective role in the past [1] (p. 91). However, he does pay some attention to the relational dimension of care. The tendency towards collaborative, participatory practice is also one of the main characteristics of contemporary art. Its genealogy reaches back as far as modern art itself—according to Groys, to Wagner’s participatory Gesamtkunstwerk or total (universal) artwork as a primarily social, even political project [25]. Groys addresses Wagner’s project that questions the relationship between the spectacle and the people (Wagner’s Volk) also within the framework of institutions of care, in which “the supreme caretaker is the public” [1] (p. 63). Groys implicitly points to the importance of care for the field of socially engaged arts, particularly those that involve participatory processes. The latter are explored in more depth within the newer subfield of care aesthetics and are also at the center of contemporary museum economies.

4.2. Care Aesthetics

According to James Thompson, care aesthetics draws on the two supporting arguments: first, human relations can be considered for their aesthetics; second, care is an important source of ethics, which can also be understood as embodied or sensory practice, i.e., in aesthetic terms. Furthermore, care aesthetics can be located in both art projects and care services, as well as in those initiatives that blur the boundaries between the two [22] (pp. 9–10; 65). As care aesthetics is a broader field that should not be equated with art, this is another reason to refer to Groys’s approach of using art as an analogy for the care of one’s own body and health, overlooking the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of both self-care “as art” and the care of artworks in the context of art institutions.

Groys does not think much of aesthetic issues when it comes to art in his philosophy of care: he is interested in Fedorov’s understanding of art as a “technology of preservation and revival of the past”—and “not as a matter of taste or generally, aesthetics” [1] (p. 80). He becomes more explicit when he explores art in a figurative sense, when the subject of self-design, his body, becomes “an artwork—analogous to a museum item” [1] (p. 91). According to Thompson self-care is a form of body-oriented aesthetics in which care and aesthetics are explicitly linked [22] (p. 36) For Groys, the subject of self-design as a contemporary form of self-care “escapes Kant’s famous distinction between disinterested aesthetic contemplation and the use of things guided by interests” [1] (p. 91). With this statement, he draws the line for further elaboration of aesthetic dimensions of care. One of the best-known characterizations of aesthetic experience is disinterestedness (disinterested aesthetic contemplation), as proposed by Kant—a counterpart is the use of things guided by interests. The Kantian position has generated several interpretations and critique, including a focus on social dimensions and aesthetic engagement, with aesthetic experience instead being “performative” and “participatory” [26] (p. 44). Recently the subject matter of aesthetics has expanded from the narrow focus on conventional forms of Western arts to encompass a wide range of human activities, objects, environments and cultures. Heteronomy of aesthetic experience points to what was called social aesthetics. For Thompson, care aesthetics is a form of “social aesthetics” [22] (p. 25), while Saito also explores “expressions of care in social aesthetics” [26] (pp. 77–119). The newer field of everyday aesthetics has also expanded the field of traditional philosophical aesthetics to include issues of care, as seen in Saito [26].³

For Groys, the central question of his philosophy of care revolves around the issue of the care inherent in bodily existence and its health. He therefore devotes particular attention to the body and its analogy with an artwork on the one hand and with a museum item on the other. In this context, I miss the inclusion of the contribution of aesthetic and phenomenological thinking (alongside/instead of Heidegger’s existential phenomenology) and feminist philosophy to the rehabilitation of the body within the Western humanist tradition with regard to the recognition of care. In feminist theory and critique, the concept of care is essentially linked to social, sexual and bodily relations. Care as a practice needs to understand more explicitly the role of the body and the aesthetic qualities of care—this is the path from embodied care to care aesthetics. Placing the body at the center of aesthetic experience has led to new sub-disciplines of aesthetics, such as Shusterman’s somaesthetics [27]. James Thompson, who follows a similar line in aesthetic theory, takes a critical perspective on this field by criticizing the individualistic focus on body care in somaesthetics. In particular, he considers phenomenological (e.g., Merleau-Ponty and Hamington) [28,29] and feminist work on embodiment and the ethics of care (e.g., Tronto) [7] in his care aesthetics [22]. I also follow this line of phenomenology and feminist philosophical perspectives on the body (e.g., Grosz, and Lennon and Fischer) [19,20] and propose a body aesthetics as well as a feminist and queer aesthetics as important aspects of care aesthetics [30]. Thompson uses the turn to embodiment as a link to his argument that care ethics also needs to recognize that the sensory actions of the body have an important connection to aesthetics. For him, care aesthetics “seeks to reaffirm the practice of care as a preeminent location for ethical concerns, but then extends this to argue that it can also be a powerful source of aesthetic experience” [22] (p. 7). In her study, Saito touches on the role of care aesthetics in the overall perception of well-being and quality of life, which are also at the center of care ethics: “Care ethics and aesthetic experience thus both define our mode of existence as relationality and interdependence” [26] (p. 46). In considering the implications in Groys’s work, I examine care aesthetics, which is evidently informed by recent feminist discourses and relates equally to art practices and care processes (in the world of the arts, health and social care and everyday life), as well as participatory approaches to audiences in contemporary art museums. I should mention here the importance of the infrastructural support of aesthetic objects, that coincides with the social support of caring systems—this integration of the aesthetic and the social is crucial for a “careful” art and care aesthetics [22].

Care as practice or, more precisely, as work (labor) in the context of care aesthetics, goes far beyond the realm of art—health and social care also operate in an aesthetic register and raise questions about power and caring labor [22]. Care aesthetics offers a mode of analysis of care work alongside other related modes, including perspectives brought in through concepts such as affective or emotional labor as broader analytical categories [22] (p. 11). Care aesthetics thus encompasses care work that does not focus exclusively on art, because while art is part of the field of aesthetics, it is not synonymous with it, which offers a new perspective for analyzing art care as work.

4.3. Care Work

Following Foucault [10], Groys addresses the connection between revolution and health: “The revolution is understood here as the liberation of the human body from hard work. The society of work is replaced by the society of care—care by institutions and self-care” [1] (p. 83). But what can be said about the value of care work? To find an answer, Groys turns to Hannah Arendt, who claims that care work is traditionally valued less than productive work. Referring to the ancient Greek tradition, Arendt distinguishes between “work,” understood as a productive process, and “labor,” understood as unproductive work of care: The latter “leaves nothing behind,” but “life itself depends upon it” [31] (p. 87). She pointed out that it was precisely Marx who subjected productive work to unproductive labor. Arendt also sees so-called “intellectual work” as a variant of care work.

From Arendt’s consideration of “labor” and Groys’s consideration of “care work” (also in relation to the charwoman within an institution of art care), it is only a step to the feminist recognition of the gendered dimension of care work and the understanding of reproductive labor, which deals with the distinction between productive and reproductive labor in modern neoliberal capitalism. The feminist cultural theorist Elke Krasny notes that feminist (spatial) practices of care propose “other scales to organize and pay fairly for reproductive labor that restores space” (of the museum, etc.) [32] (p. 186). Feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser pays particular attention to the gendered dynamics of social reproduction/production, which characterizes capital as “a guzzler of care” [33] (pp. 53–74). Accordingly, the essential epistemic shift is from commodity production to social reproduction—“the forms of provisioning, caregiving, and interaction that produce and sustain human beings and social bonds” [33] (p. 9).

Feminist reflections on social reproduction from the perspective of redefining the proximity of art and care work concern the history of conflicts in social reproduction itself. The division between productive and reproductive labor in modern capitalism is still relevant today, although the nature of work, including reproductive labor, has changed significantly since the late 1960s. This has been driven by a neoliberal turn in the capitalist mode of production and the political management of the public sector, which means that the field for feminist action has also changed. The continuity of life, including human and planetary survival, is inconceivable without care work.

Since the early 1970s, feminist Marxist authors and activists such as Silvia Federici have been calling for the recognition of women’s reproductive work, especially in the household, in order to make it visible [34]. These demands are both a prediction of conflicts in the field of social reproduction and an increase in analyses of its value for the functioning of capitalism. As Federici has shown, one of the main causes of the current crisis is the widespread definition of reproductive work as non-work that falls within the domain of the private sphere and of women [34]. The focus here is on feminized and invisible domestic work, which forms the basis of social reproduction. Federici also shows how the invisibility of this work is closely linked to the development of capitalist accumulation [35]. The reproduction of oneself and of others is necessary for the daily renewal of one’s own labor power, but also for the restoration of fundamental social ties. Care work for social reproduction, on the other hand, is characterized by conflicts within feminism itself, which have to do with the extreme inequality of reproductive opportunities and the crisis of care and sustainability of life [3]. The neoliberal ideology of constant productivity has a number of detrimental effects on the self-sufficiency and care work necessary to maintain the foundations of society. It is always social reproduction that drives the capitalist economy.

Artistic labor and maintenance or care labor are sources of the same mechanism of exploitation and economic oppression [3,5,6]. Therefore, Krasny argues, the urgent aspects of reproduction must be transferred from the economic sphere to the broader social sphere, including participation in cultural and political life [36]. While the focus of Marxist-feminist analysis in the field of social reproduction has been on the category of gender, Krasny emphasizes the need to recognize the racialization of reproductive labor [36]. Today’s social conditions lead to the feminization and racialization of a large part of the workforce, especially the reproductive workforce. The historical conditions of modern slavery and current labor migration related to the service industry (with a focus on care work) have led to growing inequality on a global scale. Feminist analysis also focuses on the problematic nature of the automatic association of care work with women. Groys also refers to labor migration (of women) as an existential necessity: “Heidegger’s charwoman was probably a peasant woman before an economic crisis brought her to the city, where she found her new job.” He speaks here of the “defunctionalization of many human bodies” as a consequence of a technological or political revolution in analogy to the defunctionalization of artworks as a consequence of an artistic revolution [1] (p. 82). Groys’s allusion to the gendered dimension of the charwoman’s work in museal care remains implicit, as do the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of her care work. His reference to Heidegger’s remarks on a charwoman’s Dasein further obfuscates the problem. The feminist origins of care ethics should not be overlooked here: they teach us that women still make a disproportionate contribution to care work in many areas. Tronto posed the question of how care can be taken out of the home or household [7] (p. 6), while Krasny argued for the visibility of care work in the cultural and political sphere [36]. Artists themselves also make an important contribution to the visibility of care work through their artistic research.⁴

Among the reasons to turn to care that go far beyond the realm of art is resistance to exploitative working conditions in the cultural sector, and the fact is that care is often an act of struggle and a means of change in the face of a particular crisis situation. The COVID pandemic as a global crisis of care has led, as Thompson claims, to the need for “a new kind of politics, and that is a politics of care” [22] (p. 4)—a similar idea is shared by Krasny [39]. The call to turn to care reminds us that it has been structurally relegated to invisibility, marginalized, feminized, racialized, denied or outsourced. Care in its broadest sense (domestic care labor, healthcare, childcare, elder care, etc.) is embedded in the political and economic systems that structure society, with differences in care resulting in highly stratified and inequitable conditions [9]. Or, as Fraser points out, today’s crisis is multidimensional, encompassing not only the official economy, including finance, but also such “non-economic” phenomena as global warming and “care deficits” or the so-called “crisis of care” rooted in the structural dynamics of financialized capitalism [33] (pp. 2, 71), [40] (p. 117). The system’s contradictions incline it not only to economic crises, but also to crises of care, ecology and politics: “Where production butts up against social reproduction, the system incites conflicts over care, both public and private, paid and unpaid” [33] (p. XVI).

5. Groys and Feminism on Art Care: A Conversation

When Groys addresses Heidegger’s aforementioned Sorge (care) he draws an analogy between Dasein and the artwork—between the human corpse and the artwork as a mere thing: “In the museum, one sees not the artworks but their dead bodies, as material things that are taken care by the art industry” [1] (p. 74). He maintains, however, that the world revealed by the artwork remains open if people continue to live in and care for this world:

That is why the preservation of a particular artwork does not mean its mere conservation and restoration in a museum. Rather, it means preservation of the way of life that became unconcealed in this artwork. In this sense, creation and preservation of the artwork belong together. [1] (p. 74)

Groys raises an important question about the minimal requirements for a work of art to be recognized as a work of art—and “as such, as a continuation of an art tradition that deserves the work of care” [1] (p. 76). At this point, he refers to the historical moment of the French Revolution, when a new type of thing was introduced: defunctionalized tools from the past that were understood as artworks and cared for by curators in a museum (originally the Louvre) just to be looked at. Under these historical circumstances, Groys recognizes an obvious parallel between the hospital and the museum, as both have the aim of care and protection.

Another related question is how art care as a modern philosophical concept has evolved in the process of the musealization of art, which resembles the musealization of objects from a broader spectrum of cultural heritage. Groys’s main focus is on the transformation of objects of the past into objects of care, which at the same time brings up the figure of the (male) curator. Some other scholars, such as Bennett, have noted that the opening of the Louvre to the public during the French Revolution led to a celebration of citizenship through culture [41]. Following this premise, Krasny emphasizes in her feminist analysis that women were included in the public space of the museum, although not as free women, and not as citizens. They were included as spectators, as witnesses to the celebration of androcentric citizenship culture, which was characterized by the exclusion of women as citizen-subjects [42]. Feminist thinkers show that the deep structure of the political–philosophical idea of citizenship as developed during the French Revolution, was gendered and based on the exclusion of women.

Groys believes that if “we take care of a certain tradition and begin to practice it here and now with the goal of helping this tradition survive, our mode of care should change according to the way in which the world has changed” [1] (pp. 75–76). Since the early days of museum history, museum education in particular has achieved a great deal when it comes to successfully conveying art and cultural heritage didactically and shaping the experiential character of museum visits. Museums today are also places of learning and stimulation: we are talking about participatory and experimental museums as places of care aesthetics. However, according to Ebers, it is questionable whether their potential “as places of thinking” [16] is fully utilized. Museums as places of thinking can be regarded as Foucauldian heterotopias [43]. Not only the spatial separation of the museal setting, but also the de-functionalization of the artifacts on display, which are largely removed from their former context, and the presentation of art that appeals to different senses, can direct and expand these possibilities for reflection. However, this is only one part of the larger system of museal care.

I find Groys’s reflections on the role of a charwoman and a curator in the art museum particularly interesting. He introduces the topic through Heidegger’s brief mention of the role of a charwoman in relation to the artwork in his discussion of “the origin of the work of art” [14].⁵ I then follow Groys’s discussion of the distinction between the productive work and the unproductive labor of care, where he refers to Arendt’s topical analysis of the problem of this distinction [31]. This leads me from the work of a charwoman in the museum, who contributes to the reproduction of the clean museum architecture as part of a globalized care force, to Krasny and Perry’s consideration of the widespread exploitation of care delivered by underpaid and overworked, predominantly female curatorial staff and independent curators in the contemporary art system [9].

Groys associates a curator with an exhibition maker who uses the artworks in an artificially created context. Historically, the curator takes care of the artworks with the goal of keeping them visible and accessible for contemplation. Groys also refers to the Latin cura as the etymological root of the term curator [1] (p. 77), which originally meant guardian, custodian, (legal) representative. Centuries later, in the long historical process of the emergence of modern institutions, it came to mean the person who supervised the exhibition space in the museum, until it became established in the contemporary context. The various uses of the word point to the bond of care and control and to the implications of the power of exhibiting attributed to the curator. The insistence that curating can be a practice of care requires, according to Krasny and Perry, a reformulation of established forms of curatorial practices that are increasingly identified with the interwoven histories of colonialism, racism, capitalism and patriarchy [9]. Care should resist the historical violence of curatorial power that imposes sexist and racist structures through the imperial and colonial collecting practices from which modern museum culture emerged. The expansion of the issue of care in the art context (with a focus on museums and curating) is understood by various authors as a response to a double crisis: a crisis of social and ecological care, and a professional crisis under the pressure of the increasing commercialization of culture [44].

The selection of care concepts in Groys’s philosophy of care includes ideas from Russian cosmist philosophy and its radicalization of the analogy between the human body and the artwork [1,45]. Fedorov’s promise to realize immortality and resurrection by technological means as “a radical museumification of life” culminates in Bogdanov’s cosmist-immortalist ideas [1] (pp. 79–80, 93–100). Based on Bogdanov’s concept of care as “revolutionary care,” Groys discusses a specific utopian politics of care. In the contemporary context of sustaining life, however, care becomes a particular and necessary form of struggle and thus politicized. Various definitions of care follow the appeal that the techniques of care must also be understood in terms of the consequences for other living beings and the environment—and at this point feminist approaches to care are close to indigenous concepts of care in terms of the connection between the human and the more-than-human. In defining the concept of care, it is also necessary to point out the need to shake up the geopolitical context of the relationship between the crisis of care and the crisis of sustainability of life from the viewpoint of the consequences for functioning and global dynamics, including the field of art, which is of particular interest to us here.

6. Conclusions

In this article, representative conceptualizations of care proposed by Groys are reviewed and critically analyzed to identify dimensions of care from the perspective of philosophy and a broader theory of care, particularly feminist theory and care ethics, that should be addressed for a comprehensive examination of concepts of care in the arts. To this end, a philosophical approach to the significance of art care in the museal context and in curating is briefly touched upon. Today we are highly dependent on our culture as a system of care (care of cultural heritage, artworks, books, films, etc.). Through the analysis of Groys’s contribution to the philosophy of care, the article points to the historical exclusion or marginalization of certain aspects of care in the Western tradition of thought, which have been rehabilitated through feminist theory and critique. Care as knowledge is always embodied or corporeal, and as such forms the basis for various philosophies of care that have remained unconnected—this is also shown by Groys in his study. Thus, I connect feminist care ethics and phenomenological body theory to Groys’s framework, arguing that an embodied perspective exposes the epistemic violence implicit in his supposedly universal account. This study follows a feminist philosophical line by emphasizing the centrality of the body in the discussion of Groys’s approach to the philosophy of care. He pays particular attention to the body, which he treats through a division into subject/object or physical/symbolic body—divisions through which he interprets existing culture as a system of care and self-care. For Groys, the central question of philosophy of care revolved around the issue of care inherent in bodily existence and the question of health. Despite the emphasis on the body, however, it is treated as neutral, from the point of view of a kind of universal humanity that often favors the mind and the symbolic body at the expense of the physical body. This is also evident in his interest in analogies between a human body and an artwork, between a physician and a curator, and between a hospital and a museum. Groys’s philosophical position on care, like philosophy in general, remains separate from practical ethical, aesthetic and/or artistic issues, and perhaps, as some feminist authors suggest (Krasny et al.), curating offers the opportunity to practice “the art of careful connections” [46] (p. 20). Drawing on the long history of feminist scholarship (epistemological tradition of feminist care theory and care ethics) and activism, I critically analyze Groys’s philosophical framework to highlight the implications of gendered care issues in the context of art and its institutions. The main blind spot in this framework is the feminist recognition of the gendered and also racialized connotations, the feminization and racialization of care work within the exploitative mechanisms in the cultural sector. My aim is to re-evaluate philosophical discourse and aesthetic consciousness, and to revise the way we perceive care work in the art world by foregrounding embodied forms of knowledge production and focusing on the politically charged experience of being in the world. Curatorial and artistic practice is an example of the interplay between different discourses, social and material relations and embodied subjectivities. The extension of Groys’s framework through a feminist and embodied standpoint supports my assertion that art institutions need to be reconceptualized as sites of politicized, relational care, which requires a reevaluation of feminized reproductive labor.