The research project is entitled, "Justice and interdependence. Feminist Ethics of Care from the perspective of Derridian ethics."
Dr. Gabriela Caviedes, a researcher at Signos Center, has been awarded a Fondecyt Initiation 2025 grant for her research project entitled,"Justice and Interdependence: Feminist Ethics of Care from the Perspective of Derrida's Ethics."
The academic explains that "the project is based on the fact that, during the last decades, the thought of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida has served queer feminist theory to argue against sexual duality in favor of the deconstruction of the binary." Given this premise, Gabriela elaborates her research question: since Derrida's philosophy is very broad, is it possible to link it with other traditions of feminist thought that do not consider themselves postmodern, that do not seek to deconstruct the sexual binary, but even seek to affirm it?
Her hypothesis is that this is possible through the ethics of care. As she argues in her project, certain aspects of Derrida's philosophy are compatible with feminist care ethics. In addition to being compatible, integrating Derrida's perspective makes it possible to resolve some tensions experienced by different branches within the ethics of care. While some emphasize the need for dyadic interdependence between caregiver and the person being cared for, others think that this vision is too restricted and are in favor of a social justice that integrates care policies at the state level.
The integration of Derrida's vision offers two fundamental contributions: identifying which practices do not constitute true care and to understand the basis of the justice/interdependence tension. This work opens new avenues for the application of Derrida's thought in feminist theory, at a time that seems to mark the beginning of the decline of queer theory. Simultaneously, it provides a theoretical unity to branches of care feminism that today seem divided by their premises.