Paper short abstract:

Matters of care involve partaking in struggles to make other worlds possible - not knowable, visible, countable but possible. Studying philosophy's involvement in changing primary education, I explore how attending to the work of matters of care complicate matters of capitalisation and factisation.

Paper long abstract:

Matters of care involve (feminist) partaking in struggles to make other worlds possible (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017) - not knowable, visible, countable, evidenceable, measurable, valuable, but possible; as well as possible. Through observations from a larger project 'Achieving Good Science', in which we study the everyday scientific work of five disciplines, I ethnographically explore how philosophy is getting involved in changing primary education. The philosophers I study are committed to shifting such education from a didactics of training individuals to one that fosters the collective development of relational skills. They draw on Deleuzian-Guattarian concepts such as 'dividu' which for them are not fancy concepts to theorize with in high-ranked journals but notions to situate back "into the mud of the world" they emerge from. Philosophy then becomes getting involved in teaching children to cultivate food, cook together, programme applications, practice aikido, produce theatre/music performances; children also take philosophy classes. This theoretically sophisticated and deeply pragmatic approach comprises involving and convincing municipalities, schools and industrial philanthropists of the importance of such philosophy for deprived and radicalising neighbourhoods. It requires factisation (better individual test scores per pupil) and capitalisation (long-term economic development of the neighbourhoods), which are commonly seen as the opposites of matters of care. I specify how attending to the work of matters of care of such philosophy in the mud complicates the relationship with matters of factisation/capitalisation, and thereby might inspire struggles to serve 'urgent need for democratic capacity building' (Verran 2017); as well as possible.