Care ethics’ focus on the satisfaction of human needs has led its literature to overlook the concept of desire. This theoretical gap enables the construction of an approach to care ethics that brings it together with relational theories of desire. The goal of this project is to argue that linking these two traditions can produce a meaningful contribution to care ethics. To do so, the project engineers the concept of desire intervention to show how consideration for desire can augment care ethical praxis. Desire intervention is a caring action, aimed at changing a desire that harms the flourishing of the cared-for. Desire intervention has been developed by bringing together a capability-based care ethical approach with Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s theory of desiring production. The project’s care ethical framework brings together Thomas Randall’s values of care with the consequentialist flourishing conception of the capability approach. This combination provides the ethical framework of desire intervention, while Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theory contributes a dynamic, relational, and situated theory of desire change. The concept of desire intervention ameliorates care ethics by shedding light on an underanalysed aspect of it and contributing to an expansion of its praxis.
Fulvio Maina is an MA-student at IFIKK.