“Public Hospitals in Critical Condition”: Death and Love as Embodied Care and Political Mobilization

Les hôpitaux en condition critique: La mort et l'amour comme vecteur de soin et de mobilisation politique

Ludivine Perray-Redslob (), Nathalie Clavijo and Agathe Morinière
Additional contact information
Agathe Morinière: MRM-SANTE - Management de la Santé - MRM - Montpellier Research in Management - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - UM - Université de Montpellier, MRM-ORGA - Montpellier Research in Management - Organisations - MRM - Montpellier Research in Management - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - UM - Université de Montpellier

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This article examines how hospital workers engage in embodied mobilizations drawing on the life-affirming power of death and love to resist the demise of the French public hospital system. Drawing on Butler's work on "What is a livable life" (2022a, 2022b) and Notes toward a performative theory of assembly (2015), the study analyses a four-year data collection of Facebook posts, from two activist collectives of hospital workers. Our findings highlight three forms of ethical resistance. First, hospital workers mobilize the symbolism of death to denounce the erosion of public healthcare infrastructure and to urge the public to help save it. Second, they use this symbolism to shed light on the precariousness of their working conditions and to elicit compassionate care from citizens. Third, they make the symbolism of love for public healthcare visible, prompting reflection on the importance of public service values in a society rooted in solidarity and mutual care. This work contributes to the literature at the intersection of social mobilization and ethics of care: first, it brings to the front death and love as symbols that illuminate the radical political potential of care in social movements; second, it advances the theoretical construct of "ethics of publicness."

Keywords: Ethics; &; political; responsibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09-15
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Business Ethics Quarterly, 2025, pp.1-31. ⟨10.1017/beq.2025.10081⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05416975

DOI: 10.1017/beq.2025.10081

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().