In this paper, we address two gaps of existing care research: the thinly understood meaning of ‘the political’ in care and the erasure of the material body from care. In our (bio)political analysis of care and commodification, we follow the post-structuralist tradition and distinguish between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, where the former stands for narrowly defined, bureaucratic conduct of politics, and the latter provides a broader, more enabling and more open concept of the political. Through a reading of Foucauldian biopolitics we define commodification as a central logic in the present-day (bio)politics of care. In the midst of the neoliberal processes of global restructuring, the logic of commodification is closely linked with the hegemonic political discourses and thus appears as over-arching and insurmountable in the day-to-day political decisions on care. Yet, following Annemarie Mol, we argue that there is also another, equally persistent but largely unrecognized and subaltern logic that constantly challenges and disrupts the logic of neoliberal commodification. This is the logic of care that never fully bends under the logic of commodification or other requirements of neoliberalism. Towards the conclusion thus, we argue that ‘the political’ in the present day governance of care is exactly the interplay, or struggle, between these two logics – the logic of commodification and the logic of care. In this struggle, the logic of care never truly surrenders: for care, its need and the responses that the need invites create corporeal relatedness that continues to open up spaces for ‘the political’. As such, care itself continues to challenge the existing order. It continues to reorganize ‘politics’. This, like the governance of care, takes place through the body.
