How not to become fascist: ‘Care-with’ and the politics of micro-encounter

This commentary starts from an unfashionable proposition: perhaps anti-fascism is less a matter of targeted resistance and eternal struggle than it is of learning how to co-exist and thrive with strangers. Drawing on Chan and Ho's notion of ‘care-with’ and Bratich's account of microfascism, it argues that fascism is cultivated through everyday desires for productivity and control. Against these dispositions, queer dancefloors, feminist birdwatching collectives, and the Chinese practice of ‘pushing hands’ offer fleeting but significant interruptions. These micro-encounters do not necessarily promise liberation. They do something that is less grand yet more difficult: they cultivate bodies capable of sharing a world. Before there were movements, there were moving bodies.