Marianna Fotaki, 'Against compulsive consumerism and toxic attachments: a proposal for an ethics of relationality and compassionate care'

There is a notable shift in public policy under the neoliberal ideology. The multiple ways in which it has colonized public institutions produces toxic attachments that corrupt the institutional and moral fabric of organizations. Specifically, I discuss the shifts in public health care where the discourse of consumerism has replaced the notion of dependency. The application of consumerist market-based solutions in health care obscures the real issue of reduced availability of care for those who need it and introduces perverse incentives for health professionals to manage their emotions in accordance with commercial or performance targets set by the organization; self-preservation then often causes them to detach from their patients to avoid emotional burnout. 

    As a means of counteracting these problems I offer an ethics of relationality that acknowledges and brings back love, compassion and identification with the other into our thinking about social practices and public policies. In elaborating why and how relatedness and relationality is the foundation of our existence I draw on ethics of psychoanalysis and the work of Judith Butler, who argues that to be fully human we have to be recognized by others. I propose that the realization of shared vulnerability is indispensable for acts of care and for making ethical relations in society possible.