Review of Counter-Pedagogies of Cruelty: A Guide to Care and Everyday Life for Art Production and Research, coordinated by Raquel Mercado Salas

Abstract

Drawing on Rita Segato's thinking on the pedagogies of cruelty, the authors propose a series of reflections aimed at identifying the conditions that necessitate a counter-pedagogy of cruelty in the fields of research and artistic production. The text expands the notion of artistic production beyond conventional frameworks, incorporating everyday practices and care work as spaces for creation and transformation. Furthermore, through reflective exercises and practical proposals, it contrasts the logic of cruelty with a commitment to building relational projects that encompass food, clothing, bodies, inhabited spaces, ways of naming ourselves, modes of social belonging, and relationships with others. This guide is an invitation to collectively imagine and construct strategies for living and creating from an ethic of radical tenderness.