CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - Alejandra Bello Tenderness as Critical Category: Rethinking Subjectivity in Apocalyptic Contexts
This project proposes to conceptualize tenderness as a feminist critical category for analyzing political subjectivity in contexts of crisis, collapse, and systemic violence. Building on my previous research on care and tenderness in conditions of war, migration, and structural violence, I argue that tenderness should be understood as the transformation of the desire to harm into the desire to care. Within the thematic framework of CAPAS 2026–27, the project situates tenderness as a counterforce to cruelty and necropolitical orders (Mbembe 2006), revealing how precarious lives—migrant workers, racialized communities, and queer bodies—can be recognized not only as worthy of survival but also of love.
The originality of the project lies in extending feminist debates on care to include tenderness, a politically significant yet neglected affect. While care has been theorized ethically (Gilligan 2024; Tronto 2018), politically (Fraser 2016), and in relation to social reproduction (Federici 2018), tenderness has largely been dismissed as a feminized emotion. From Latin American feminist and queer traditions, however, practices such as radical tenderness (Dani & Daniel 2015) and women’s survival strategies under necropolitical violence (González-Arango et al. 2022; Valencia & Herrera Sánchez 2021) demonstrate its political force.
Methodologically, the project is a theoretical, sensory-dialogical, and comparative inquiry centered on a critical review of Latin American, Anglophone, and Francophone feminist debates. It combines systematic reading, comparative interpretation, and dialogical approaches inspired by sensitive queer pedagogies (Planella 2014) and Latin American feminisms of "thinking in conversation" (Segato 2023).
Expected outcomes include a manuscript suitable for submission to a peer-reviewed journal, the organization of interdisciplinary discussions at CAPAS, and an annotated bibliography on global feminist approaches to tenderness and care.