Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Flakne, April

Keywords

Feminism, Community Development, Queer, Ethics, Spanglish

Area of Concentration

Philosophy

Abstract

Our boundaries and responsibilities evolve as our communities and ecologies change. We generate value (and capital) from our active and creative connections but we often fail to recognize how our collective prosperity is proportional to our capacity to care for/about each other. All of us can blossom, but we need to learn how to help each other to flourish. If we care about our lives, (which we should/must learn to do) our becoming must be resourceful and resilient. We are all vulnerable because we are living creatures, although some of us experience more environmental injustices than others. It is necessary for us to ask ourselves and listen to each other to fully comprehend how we ought to care. This thesis weaves narratives of a radically feminist cariño to describe why and how an applied queer feminist virtue ethics of caring forms the roots of practical solutions for transformative social engagement, educación, and restorative justice, finding nourishment for new blossomings from a dire and critical re-valuation of the margins, in which mestizaje and borderlands identities, wisdom, and community support are constantly becoming, through praxis, a cultivation of social flourishing both in nuestras familias y nuestras tierras. As it is transformative, cariño already plays an instructive role and its virtues infiltrate dynamic spaces, possibly reaching all levels of our common condition. Theoretically, propping up cariño as an indispensible feminist virtue wanders away from paths previously taken by philosophical and psychological theories of care and conventional readings of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. I present analyses of literary contexts, feminist scholarship regarding care and intersectionality, and theories of radical pedagogy, as well as personal narratives, Spanglish, and word play to advocate for the generative power of cariño as the creative, playful, dynamic force and rhythmic heart of sustainable social development. Through cultural examples of becoming and my own experience with the Compeciné Youth Academy (CYA), I characterize different forms of self and community development con cariño, as the basic building blocks for teaching, learning, participant action research (PAR) and Conscientização, vital toward future discussions of applied philosophy of education and ultimately to generating hope for our future.

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