Outsider Affects and Ordinary Care: Radical Love as Shelter

Care is one of those words, like “use” (Ahmed) and “community” (Bauman) that gets imbued with all sorts of associations, the majority of which are positive. And yet, as Maria Puig de la Bellacasa observes, care is sometimes about the right amount of distance. Puig de la Bellacasa’s work is concerned with de-centring human subjects when thinking about “more-than-human webs of care.” Her aim in part is to recalibrate modes of relationships in service of non-exploitative forms of existing alongside one another. Caring, here, is more binding than simply being attentive. It demands active and ongoing engagement that has the potential to radically reshape love, and in so doing, the world. With this outrageous possibility in mind, I want to ask: what is the right amount of distance between a person and shelter when that person is a mother and that shelter is the house and child she herself built? Claudia Dey's novel Heartbreaker will be the text of focus for this inquiry.