This chapter addresses the covert capacity of autonomy — the goal of moral-political life in liberal-democratic societies — to oppress women and others who fail to fulfill its requirements. Taking the collapse of the welfare state as a locus of analysis, it shows how ecological citizenship and collective responsibility work toward reconfiguring the inequalities and injustices enacted under the aegis of a too-rigorous veneration of autonomy. One of the projects of the chapter is to reevaluate practices of advocacy in knowledge: a point that arises in chapter three with reference to medicine and is further developed here, both in connection with medicine and across a wider range of examples. Contrary to entrenched conceptions of epistemic self-reliance, the contention is that advocacy often makes knowledge possible: indeed, more radically, that without advocacy certain knowings are not possible. Trust is important to good advocacy, and testimony again plays a central part.
Keywords: autonomy, advocacy, oppression, ecological citizenship, knowledge, testimony, trust