Care has become the watchword for institutional accountability in a post-pandemic era. Biological precariousness coupled with socio-political uncertainty have demanded institutional care in several forms. The demand for care has seen the emergence of the ‘affective institution’ which appropriates the language and policy of care and positions itself as a care-giver to its communities. In this talk I look at how care is being weaponised in this emergence of ‘affective institutions’ and lay out the mechanics and consequences of buying into these new politics of disaffection that are being couched as care. In identifying the problem, I also offer touchstones that draw from feminist theory, critical media studies, and institutional structures to resist and reframe the need for care.

We live in polarised worlds. The digital distancing and pandemic alienation of the last years seem to have produced seemingly insurmountable conversations. Ossification of positions, opaqueness of politics, and the blackbox of misinformation seem to have foreclosed the possibility of dialogue and respectful debate. Through filter-bubbles and echo chambers constructed by networked algorithms and computational cultures, we seem to either only talk to people like us, or shout at people who disagree with us.

Empathy is often given as a solution to these situations. If only we think like the other, feel like the other, put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes, it seems, we will resolve this virulent deadlock that has become the status quo of our times. I propose that while empathy is an affective state, it needs materiality, labour, and intention that has to go beyond ‘ feeling like the other’.

In this workshop, we explore what ‘embodied empathy’ looks like, by producing a gallery of paranoid objects, and learning through collective care, to diffuse and take care of these objects and subjects of paranoia. Through the articulation of our paranoias, and acceptance of critique without dismissing it as paranoid, we might be able to find new forms of generating, holding, and expanding the scope of empathy as an antidote to the condition of only speaking to ourselves.