Caring to deny, confront, shiver: negativity as a critique of the “natural caregiver” stereotype in nursing

Abstract

To discuss, based on Adorno’s philosophy, the negativity of care in confronting the “natural caregiver” discourse in the profession and exercise discursive analysis of this stereotype based on the negative trihedron of care (deny, confront, shiver). Theoretical study that articulates negative dialectic with the biopolitics of caring for the body. Negativity of care, as an immanent criticism that emerges from the dialectic between help and power, aims to shiver at bodily suffering, a residue of nature violated by cultural discursive practices. We applied the methodological framework of care to deny, confront, and shiver in label analysis to highlight non-identity between nursing reality and natural caregiver affirmation. We confronted the injustices made invisible in the prejudice that women are naturally predestined to provide for others’ well-being. We reflected on the contradictions and suffering of women, nurses or not, invisible in the vaunted loving care. We proposed shiver as a metaphor for deny, a critical negativity that opens to the strange coerced and mutilated in the human body.