%0 Journal Article
%T The ephemeral politics of feminist accompaniment networks in Mexico City
%A Amy Krauss
%J Feminist Theory
%@ 1741-2773
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1464700118755660
%X This article examines the tension in Hannah Arendt¡¯s thought between the creativity of political action and the worldlessness of labour in light of fieldwork with feminist activists in Mexico City. Drawing from my ethnographic research, I explore how labour and action are knitted together in the feminist practice of accompanying women who seek safe abortion in the city. Bringing Arendt¡¯s thought into dialogue with anthropologies of illness experience as well as the reflections of my interlocutors in the field, I shift from an approach to the situation of abortion as a decision-making event, to ask other questions about autonomy and dependency, freedom and necessity, mortality and political life. I argue that what is interesting about Arendt¡¯s conceptualisation of the labouring body is not that she separates ¡®bare life¡¯ from the political sphere of ¡®men¡¯, but rather that it alerts us to the uncertain way our life is implicated with others. In conclusion, I argue that feminist accompaniment networks foster an ephemeral relation of care between activists and women in situations of abortion, one that invites us to re-imagine the temporality of political action and to ask, again, what it is to make a new world versus make this world livable
%K Abortion
%K affective labour
%K ethics of care
%K feminist activism
%K freedom
%K Hannah Arendt
%K mortality
%K political action
%K world-making
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1464700118755660