Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Care package

You might know that I'm an advocate of the "ethics of care," and have had some experience in seeing the difficulty of translating it into other languages (German, where it struggles against Sorge; and French, where it rubs up unhappily against souci and soin; Japanese, it's rendered phonetically as ケア). I've been part of such conversations as a friend of mine is a leading theorist of care, and I've met the French translator of her book, and tried to find a Japanese one. The particular conceptual richness of the word care (a verb and a noun) seems unique - even as the ethics and politics of care are understood better abroad than here!

The latest word is that care - in English - seems to have found its way to the platform of the French Socialist Party! This from an article in Le Monde about PS leader Martine Aubry:

C'est sur un rappel "aux valeurs de la gauche" que la première secrétaire a fondé son retour en grâce. Dans un entretien au site Internet Mediapart, diffusé vendredi 2 avril, elle brosse la perspective d'une "société du "Care"" ("soin mutuel"), où ... la société prend soin de vous, mais vous devez aussi prendre soin des autres et de la société."