Needs, Desires, Struggle. Queer mutual aid in Italy amidst a pandemic

Abstract

This thesis explores queer mutual aid networks in Bologna, Italy, during the Covid-19 pandemic as an example of collective queer care. It highlights the subversive and political dimensions of care emerging from marginal positionalities, as well as the ambivalent emotions, slippages, and difficulties that arise from collective attempts at care. The thesis examines care as social reproduction from a queer perspective, reflecting on the political meaning and implications of interdependency, fragility, and precarity. It does so by looking at issues of queer care and value extraction, of different needs tackled by queer mutual aid, and of issues of consent.