A Political Oikos
摘要
The common oikos that emerges from this account —one that is continuously constructed through a plural care practice towards different beings, looking for a tied flourishing and enabled by a delicate web of contrasted limits— would be possible by the reference to an underlying proximity or attachment that offers motives for certain practical responses. The question of reasons for ecological action has been a guiding thread of this research, one of the controversial questions that the anthropocentric and ecocentric dualisms would not convincingly address. In contrast with the abstract simplifications of motives around the notions of conflicting interests or disinterest, the agents’ perspective coming from the field would offer a view in which these dichotomies are overcome through practical deliberation based on a certain sense of coexistence, of common belonging, that would not cancel the tensions and conflicts that frequently appear in practical life, but seems to provide reasons for facing them. Now then, could the shared hybrid space of relationships actively constructed by agents be considered in any sense political? The idea of a “political oikos” would be a paradox in classical political categories, but it seems to be worth exploring in the attempt at an ecological politics of dependence. Approaching Quepi’s communal life from the perspective offered by Cecilia gives the possibility of inquiring into the dynamics of belonging and community construction, and the connections between the pre-political and the political scopes in this process.