| ASC Speakers Series Season 6#8: Emergent Territoriespresents: |
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| Distortions of Care
In this talk, Mercer Gary will critically assess the “distortion narrative” that has arisen as caregiving becomes increasingly mediated by advanced technologies. |
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| Sunday, Apr 19, 2026 12:00 PM EDT |
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| Abstract As caregiving becomes increasingly mediated by advanced technologies, there is growing concern that the moral value of care will become distorted as a result. This is especially concerning for the healthcare sector, which is both highly technologized and which at least aims to provide morally meaningful care. I critically assess this narrative through feminist care ethics. There are reasons to doubt the “distortion narrative.” First, we might be unclear as to why the “distorted” version of care is an objectionable kind of change, rather than a positive or value-neutral one. Are there not cases where human-robot caregiving relationships could improve upon human-human caregiving relationships? Second, given the insistence of many care theorists that the practice of care is thoroughly political, the suggestion that there is such a thing as context-independent true care capable of being distorted might seem to appeal to a reactionary view of care––a view of an imagined past practice defiled by contemporary life. If we accept that actually existing care is often highly imperfect, against what sort of standard can we judge distortion? I argue that feminists can meaningfully judge certain changes to the practice and value of care as distortions without misrepresenting care themselves. Although distortion narratives tend to suggest that the object being distorted is unaltered itself, I argue that this need not be the case and is not in the case of care. Instead, we can identify distortions by examining the distorted representation and clarifying the kind of manipulation that produced it.
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| Participants' Bios:
Dr. Mercer Gary is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Drexel University, where she is also affiliated with the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Center for Science, Technology, and Society. She is a feminist philosopher studying care from several different angles: as the basis of a distinctive approach to moral philosophy, as a social practice fraught with domination, and as a site of technological innovation. Her first book, At the Limits of Care: Feminist Ethics and Technology Relations is under contract with Oxford University Press.
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