Care as a political concept

Much of the exciting and original work in feminist political theory has begun as critique. Feminists have explored the terrain of traditional political theory and have found many of the traditional concepts laden with sexist and masculinist biases. Nevertheless, as valuable as this work has been, we cannot move forward from negative critique to constructive theory unless and until we entertain the possibility that not all relevant concepts that we shall need to offer a feminist political theory already appear within the lexicon of political theory. We must expand the terrain to include concepts that are traditionally excluded from politics in order to see how their inclusion changes the contours of political life. I propose in this essay to explore how the shape of political theories might change were we to think of care as a political concept.