Self-care as resistance : Lorde, Foucault, and playfulness
Holdo, Markus LU
(2025)
In Feminist Theory
- Abstract
Self-care has emerged as a critical practice of resistance in the current era of far-right resurgence. Building particularly on Audre Lorde’s insights, scholars, activists, and cultural workers conceptualize self-care as an act of political defiance and a strategy of collective survival. This article brings three different views of self-care into conversation. Beginning with Lorde's vision and contrasting it with Michel Foucault's ethics of the self, I show that both thinkers illuminate political dimensions of care that have long resonated in queer and feminist thought. Lorde emphasizes self-care as survival and solidarity; Foucault foregrounds non-domination and the cultivation of freedom. Both confront the paradoxical relationship... (More)
Self-care has emerged as a critical practice of resistance in the current era of far-right resurgence. Building particularly on Audre Lorde’s insights, scholars, activists, and cultural workers conceptualize self-care as an act of political defiance and a strategy of collective survival. This article brings three different views of self-care into conversation. Beginning with Lorde's vision and contrasting it with Michel Foucault's ethics of the self, I show that both thinkers illuminate political dimensions of care that have long resonated in queer and feminist thought. Lorde emphasizes self-care as survival and solidarity; Foucault foregrounds non-domination and the cultivation of freedom. Both confront the paradoxical relationship between withdrawal and engagement, solitude and community, availability and self-knowledge – not as problems to be solved but as constitutive ambiguities of radical politics. Building on these insights, I propose a third approach: self-care as playfulness. This approach foregrounds moments of forgetting oneself – of ‘being no one’ temporarily – while sustaining mutual recognition and responsibility for justice. Together, these three approaches reveal how the political significance of self-care crystallizes not in clarity or resolution but in the capacity to affirm and inhabit ambiguity as part of a reflective, engaged way of being in the world.
(Less)
- author
- Holdo, Markus
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- in press
- subject
- keywords
- ambiguity, ethics, feminism, Foucault, Lorde, prefiguration, queer theory, self-care
- in
- Feminist Theory
- publisher
- SAGE Publications
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:105025898069
- ISSN
- 1464-7001
- DOI
- 10.1177/14647001251398021
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- additional info
- Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
- id
- 9f0c92b3-1fb3-46db-97d9-01640167215e
- date added to LUP
- 2026-02-23 12:57:55
- date last changed
- 2026-02-23 12:59:07
@article{9f0c92b3-1fb3-46db-97d9-01640167215e,
abstract = {{<p>Self-care has emerged as a critical practice of resistance in the current era of far-right resurgence. Building particularly on Audre Lorde’s insights, scholars, activists, and cultural workers conceptualize self-care as an act of political defiance and a strategy of collective survival. This article brings three different views of self-care into conversation. Beginning with Lorde's vision and contrasting it with Michel Foucault's ethics of the self, I show that both thinkers illuminate political dimensions of care that have long resonated in queer and feminist thought. Lorde emphasizes self-care as survival and solidarity; Foucault foregrounds non-domination and the cultivation of freedom. Both confront the paradoxical relationship between withdrawal and engagement, solitude and community, availability and self-knowledge – not as problems to be solved but as constitutive ambiguities of radical politics. Building on these insights, I propose a third approach: self-care as playfulness. This approach foregrounds moments of forgetting oneself – of ‘being no one’ temporarily – while sustaining mutual recognition and responsibility for justice. Together, these three approaches reveal how the political significance of self-care crystallizes not in clarity or resolution but in the capacity to affirm and inhabit ambiguity as part of a reflective, engaged way of being in the world.</p>}},
author = {{Holdo, Markus}},
issn = {{1464-7001}},
keywords = {{ambiguity; ethics; feminism; Foucault; Lorde; prefiguration; queer theory; self-care}},
language = {{eng}},
publisher = {{SAGE Publications}},
series = {{Feminist Theory}},
title = {{Self-care as resistance : Lorde, Foucault, and playfulness}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/14647001251398021}},
doi = {{10.1177/14647001251398021}},
year = {{2025}},
}