Towards a shared re-signification of space: the ethics of care in feminist commoning

Abstract

By adopting a conception of care that transcends the reproductive and domestic dimensions to invest the public and political ones, the article aims to highlight the relevance of care practices in feminist commoning experiences, in order to demonstrate how they can represent an alternative way of inhabiting public and private space, subverting the capitalist system that increasingly erodes the right to the city. After a critical discussion of the systemic characteristics that define contemporary cities - dominated by visions and logics that increase the complexity of sharing spaces and accessing primary resources - the experiences of commoning are presented. These experiences, conceived as the territorialisation of care practices, allow us to imagine strategies to respond to the current crisis also through the creation of threshold places, in which the private and public dimensions are hybridised. In this context, the experiences of Lucha y Siesta and Plaza Las Pioneras, located in a transformative horizon that appeals to the need and not the demand for space, are taken as models for re-inhabiting the city in alternative ways, based on social and economic equity, as well as interdependence and networking.