Haraway, Donna. 2008. Part 1. When Species Meet, pp. 1-157. University of Minnesota Press.
7 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Donna Haraway strikes again! She's pretty cool.
Haraway is interested in the reciprocal nature of animal connections, calling them knots, and asserting that it is in these relationships that we are social and alive, that we become human. Hence the title- 'When Species Meet.'
I loved her discussion in the first chapter about Derrida and his cat. Haraway sees value in Derrida's consideration of his cat as being capable of making him feel shame at his nakedness, but wishes he took it a step further. By focusing on only his feelings about this encounter, Derrida is ironically ignoring the cat in another way. His shame was getting in the way of their interacting in a 'polite' way. Haraway thinks this is an absolute pity. Cats and other animals have 'face' too. We humans are arrogant to not consider this fact. I loved this.
I found the chapter on laboratory animals to be quite compelling. Her handling of the topic was really tactful, approaching the subject from ethical, theoretical, and practical angles. She takes an especially Latourian position on this subject, arguing that "It is important that the 'shared conditions of work' in an experimental lab make us understand that entities with fully secured boundaries called possessive individuals (imagined as human or animal) are the wrong units for considering what is going on. That means that a particular animal does not matter but that mattering is always inside the connections that demand and enable response." (70) The key to maintaining an ethical relationship with the animals that we work with in laboratories may lie just there- within our relationships with them. We must treat them not as 'killable' disposable, taken for granted for the great good- humanism. We work WITH them and respond TO them- hence our "response-ibility." It is, in fact, an attempt to share suffering. Also Baba Joseph is the man.
Can't wait to discuss this. There is so much in this work. Smart lady. MEGAN
One of the most intriguing parts, for me, was Haraway’s discussion about bioethics, and how she described it as “boring” (136). I don’t think that this is the correct word, but I see what she’s getting at. Essentially, bioethics tries to be the discourse, the overseer of the scientific activity that rules from on high. It seems that we get into the same trouble we had before with Latour—are scientific facts simply out there, and we are just trying to get at them? Or are they a fully integrated part of society? It seems that the problem Haraway (as well as Latour) are having is that people want to purify the realm of the social (bioethics) from the actual science occurring. As if society had nothing to do with making all of the modern procedures and tools available and functional.
However, my worry with this, is that if they become too intermeshed, where does responsibility fall? Can we blame someone who cultivates a deadly virus found in nature? What about one not found in nature? My problem with Haraway doing away with bioethics (at least somewhat) is that… well, that it does away with bioethics.
I found her chapter, “Sharing Suffering” the most difficult and uncomfortable to read (ouch...). Of course, this is part of the ‘Face-to-Face’ responsibility and ‘sharing suffering’ that she argues we adopt. Haraway’s response to her friend Sharon did not convince me until she said, “I act; I do not hide my calculations that motivate the action. I am not thereby quit of my debts, and it’s more than just debts. I am not quit of response-ability, which demands calculations but is not finished when the best animal welfare regulations are followed to the letter.” (88).
I totally agree with Megan that Haraway has in mind a very Latourian proposition. Again, we have an alternative to post-humanism. Reasons and answers—‘god tricks of self-certainty’—are insufficient and neither nature nor culture can be reduced to one another but are naturecultures. She seems to be a bit more direct than Latour however, in the kinds of solutions she proposes.
In response to Samantha's comment about bioethics being 'boring,' I think Haraway might be responding specifically to the morality component of bioethics (in terms of the negative connotations /narcissism implied by the ethical person who judges others from higher moral ground). On (93) she says, "We are face-to-face, in the company of significant others, companion species to one another. That is not romantic or idealist but mundane and consequential in the little things that make lives." Perhaps by repositioning our actions in terms of cause and effect, Haraway hopes that people will act out of practical incentive rather than duty or moral obligation.
I found Haraway’s discussion of ‘ontological choreography’ wonderful for understanding her conception of ‘humanity.’ Haraway writes, “all the actors become who they are in the dance of relating, not from scratch, not ex nihilo, but full of the patterns of their sometimes-joined, sometimes-separate heritages both before and lateral to this encounter. All the dancers are redone through the patterns they enact....the baboons of Eburru Cliffers were redone too, in baboon ways, by having entangled their gaze with that of this young clipboard-toting human female.” (25) This again, seems remarkably similar to Latour’s notion that ‘humanity lies in the cross-over.’
Lastly, I’m not sure how I feel about her chapter, “value-added dogs.” What exactly is Haraway saying here? Can one justify outrageous dog food spending by comparing it to Lipitor sales? I swear, I used to love animals (my mom is a self-proclaimed dog psychic and our old house was full of scary porcelin dogs. But also, I lived a few blocks away from “Chateau Marmutt” where doggy massages were given, ‘paw pedicures,’ and doggy Jenny-craig weightloss programs were offered. Oh, and an onsite doggy dermatologist. This was a time when none of my friends or I could get healthcare. When I read the price list, I seriously wanted to barf or vandalize their sign (of course, I didn’t).
This is a fascinating book - possibly my favorite that we have read this semester. Maybe it was because I had just finished my essay on We Were Never Modern when I started this book, but I kept seeing nodes and crossover, evolution and relationship in Haraway's discussion. The references that Haraway makes to Latour are interesting, because her perspective seems very Latourian in the sense that she locates humanity and reality in the crossover, in the relationships between things - but I wonder to what extent Latour sees Haraway's ideas as agreeing with his. Haraway describes "situated histories" in which "all the actors become who they are in the dance of relating, not from scratch, not ex nihilo, but full of the patterns of their sometimes-joined, sometimes-separate heritages both before and lateral to this encounter. All the dancers are redone through the patterns they enact" (25). In other words, she seems to be finding meaning in the links between nodes - some of whom are the (presumably human or animal) actors? The concept of "when species meet" or "species meeting" seems like an interpolation of a link between nodes when the nodes are different species.
The idea of knots and links also applies to evolutionary relationships. Haraway writes that "ever more complex life forms are the continual result of ever more intricate and multidirectional acts of association of and with other life forms" (31). Another example of this kind of organic symbiotic relationship is the researcher Barbara Smuts who did fieldwork studying baboons in Kenya. When she went into the field, she found that she could not "remove" herself from the context of the baboons simply by pretending that she wasn't there or that the baboons weren't reacting to her. Like Hayles says, an observer can't exist outside of the system it's observing. Smuts realizes the impossibility of being a neutral observer among the baboons, so instead she integrates herself with them, acting humble and communicating in the ways that she observed them communicating with themselves. She knows that she necessarily changes the situation by being in it to observe it - and so she observes the situation as it now includes her, and she instead of trying, pointlessly, to be unnoticed and unobtrusive, she engages with the baboons until they and she understand that they are not threats to one another. I thought this was a good illustration of what Hayles writes about observing systems.
On another tangent, the concept of autre-mondialisation that Haraway talks about was never very clear to me. On pg. 28, she writes that "becoming-animal is not an autre-mondialisation" - what does that mean? If we get around to this concept in class tomorrow, that would be great.
There were many interesting points in how Haraway discusses about the Great Divide between humans and animals. Reading about the domesticated animal, the dog, and exuberant amount of money that humans spend on their dogs was shocking, but at the same time expected. For me, it brought other questions to mind, in that dog grooming, fancy food, and other specialties aimed at (affluent) dog owners is a type or niche market, meaning the market knows that people will pay just about anything to pamper their dog, and makes me question the actually cost of these things. I also thought this in the realm of veterinary care for one’s domesticated animal. Is it because treatments for sick animals is hardly done (except in the cancer case), or is it the business of healing sick animals is another niche market were the capitalist knows they can charge whatever they want? It interesting to think about the amounts of dollars that are spent on the culturally defined domestic animals and how that money could be used to create sanctuaries for animals harmed in laboratory testing.
I found Haraway’s analysis of Derrida’s theories about animal cruelty and the Human very interesting. I think this quote summed up my thoughts perfectly, “Derrida argues that the problem is not human beings’ denying something to other critters—but rather the death-defying arrogance of ascribing such wondrous positivities to the Human.” In other words, the Human places its being on a pedestal that stands over the Animal and thus this action appears to justify the killing of animals as not a murderous act. On that note, as I proceeded to finish chapter two, I felt hat Haraway was going back and forth of agreeing the Derrida and then disagreeing with him. Perhaps, my mind is just overloaded with all this end-of-the-semester-work! I look forward to discussing Haraway’s points in class!
1. The domestication of plants and animals. The story of humanity, according to many archaeologists, takes a turn at domestication. It was symbolic of a step from coexistence to domination. The land was no longer to use, but to manipulate and exploit, and the animals were no longer wild, but selected for their ability to live under the human rules of life and relationships. How did this transition happen? But more importantly, why?
2. Dixie: My mom and I spent the last four months of Dixie’s life laughing at the fact that she would hurl her little eight-pound body towards the couch from a few feet away and go head straight into the side of the couch, tipping over onto her back before recovering and shaking herself off. Over the course of her life, we had called her a million things, even manipulative at times where she would mope right before we left for school and work in the hopes that maybe a sad puppy-dog face would persuade us to stay. When she was a puppy she chased her tail, and when she was older she used to growl at anything in the dark that resembled a human, even if it was an object that she had seen during the day in the exact same spot… did she simply forget?
In When Species Meet, Haraway asks on page 50, “How does a companion animal’s human make judgments about the right time to let her dog die or, indeed, to kill her dog? How much care is too much?” On one hand, I am tempted to share a sense of annoyance at the very least with our system related to companion species. It seems more a system of domination than a system of companionship. Or a system of companionship that only goes one way. We put our dogs on leashes… but don’t some parents put their children on leashes too? Not that I’m suggesting we put all our children on leashes, quite the opposite. I think we need to re-evaluate our relationships with both our own children and our “companion species.” It seems to me that we do spend a lot of time being controlled by our dogs and cats. We come home from work earlier to take them out, and we don’t on a plane without making sure that they have someone to feed and watch over them. I’m interested in comparing the companion species, in particular the dog, with the human parent-child hybrid (helloo Latour). What are the differences? Mainly, I would argue, age. Our children grow up much slower, but we adapt to them based on those incremental growths. Yet our dogs somehow always remain puppies, until the time that they die (or until we take their lives).
I agree that Haraway's conception of Latour in her own writing is excellent. I'm sure by now we're all seeing crossovers everywhere, but it is interesting to think about it in terms of a moment of interaction, in terms of a relationship rather than in the ether, existent. I did find Haraway a bit more specific than Latour, though at times I didn't quite feel on board with her passion or supportive of her arguments. Just an aside, I guess. I don't think I'm sure of what she thinks should be done after acknowledging the crossover in the moment of species interaction. Though she claims to argue on behalf of symmetry, I don't quite see that. I think Latour much more explicitly acknowledged how nonhumans and humans use one another. For me, much of Haraway's good points were a bit lost in a defense that animals do not only react but can also respond. I loved the Derrida discussion, but I wonder what I'm supposed to take from it beyond an agreement that humans are silly and arrogant.
7 comments:
Donna Haraway strikes again!
She's pretty cool.
Haraway is interested in the reciprocal nature of animal connections, calling them knots, and asserting that it is in these relationships that we are social and alive, that we become human. Hence the title- 'When Species Meet.'
I loved her discussion in the first chapter about Derrida and his cat. Haraway sees value in Derrida's consideration of his cat as being capable of making him feel shame at his nakedness, but wishes he took it a step further. By focusing on only his feelings about this encounter, Derrida is ironically ignoring the cat in another way. His shame was getting in the way of their interacting in a 'polite' way. Haraway thinks this is an absolute pity. Cats and other animals have 'face' too. We humans are arrogant to not consider this fact. I loved this.
I found the chapter on laboratory animals to be quite compelling. Her handling of the topic was really tactful, approaching the subject from ethical, theoretical, and practical angles. She takes an especially Latourian position on this subject, arguing that "It is important that the 'shared conditions of work' in an experimental lab make us understand that entities with fully secured boundaries called possessive individuals (imagined as human or animal) are the wrong units for considering what is going on. That means that a particular animal does not matter but that mattering is always inside the connections that demand and enable response." (70) The key to maintaining an ethical relationship with the animals that we work with in laboratories may lie just there- within our relationships with them. We must treat them not as 'killable' disposable, taken for granted for the great good- humanism. We work WITH them and respond TO them- hence our "response-ibility." It is, in fact, an attempt to share suffering.
Also Baba Joseph is the man.
Can't wait to discuss this. There is so much in this work. Smart lady.
MEGAN
Slightly different from her last book!
One of the most intriguing parts, for me, was Haraway’s discussion about bioethics, and how she described it as “boring” (136). I don’t think that this is the correct word, but I see what she’s getting at. Essentially, bioethics tries to be the discourse, the overseer of the scientific activity that rules from on high. It seems that we get into the same trouble we had before with Latour—are scientific facts simply out there, and we are just trying to get at them? Or are they a fully integrated part of society? It seems that the problem Haraway (as well as Latour) are having is that people want to purify the realm of the social (bioethics) from the actual science occurring. As if society had nothing to do with making all of the modern procedures and tools available and functional.
However, my worry with this, is that if they become too intermeshed, where does responsibility fall? Can we blame someone who cultivates a deadly virus found in nature? What about one not found in nature? My problem with Haraway doing away with bioethics (at least somewhat) is that… well, that it does away with bioethics.
~Samantha
I found her chapter, “Sharing Suffering” the most difficult and uncomfortable to read (ouch...). Of course, this is part of the ‘Face-to-Face’ responsibility and ‘sharing suffering’ that she argues we adopt. Haraway’s response to her friend Sharon did not convince me until she said, “I act; I do not hide my calculations that motivate the action. I am not thereby quit of my debts, and it’s more than just debts. I am not quit of response-ability, which demands calculations but is not finished when the best animal welfare regulations are followed to the letter.” (88).
I totally agree with Megan that Haraway has in mind a very Latourian proposition. Again, we have an alternative to post-humanism. Reasons and answers—‘god tricks of self-certainty’—are insufficient and neither nature nor culture can be reduced to one another but are naturecultures. She seems to be a bit more direct than Latour however, in the kinds of solutions she proposes.
In response to Samantha's comment about bioethics being 'boring,' I think Haraway might be responding specifically to the morality component of bioethics (in terms of the negative connotations /narcissism implied by the ethical person who judges others from higher moral ground). On (93) she says, "We are face-to-face, in the company of significant others, companion species to one another. That is not romantic or idealist but mundane and consequential in the little things that make lives." Perhaps by repositioning our actions in terms of cause and effect, Haraway hopes that people will act out of practical incentive rather than duty or moral obligation.
I found Haraway’s discussion of ‘ontological choreography’ wonderful for understanding her conception of ‘humanity.’ Haraway writes, “all the actors become who they are in the dance of relating, not from scratch, not ex nihilo, but full of the patterns of their sometimes-joined, sometimes-separate heritages both before and lateral to this encounter. All the dancers are redone through the patterns they enact....the baboons of Eburru Cliffers were redone too, in baboon ways, by having entangled their gaze with that of this young clipboard-toting human female.” (25) This again, seems remarkably similar to Latour’s notion that ‘humanity lies in the cross-over.’
Lastly, I’m not sure how I feel about her chapter, “value-added dogs.” What exactly is Haraway saying here? Can one justify outrageous dog food spending by comparing it to Lipitor sales? I swear, I used to love animals (my mom is a self-proclaimed dog psychic and our old house was full of scary porcelin dogs. But also, I lived a few blocks away from “Chateau Marmutt” where doggy massages were given, ‘paw pedicures,’ and doggy Jenny-craig weightloss programs were offered. Oh, and an onsite doggy dermatologist. This was a time when none of my friends or I could get healthcare. When I read the price list, I seriously wanted to barf or vandalize their sign (of course, I didn’t).
This is a fascinating book - possibly my favorite that we have read this semester. Maybe it was because I had just finished my essay on We Were Never Modern when I started this book, but I kept seeing nodes and crossover, evolution and relationship in Haraway's discussion. The references that Haraway makes to Latour are interesting, because her perspective seems very Latourian in the sense that she locates humanity and reality in the crossover, in the relationships between things - but I wonder to what extent Latour sees Haraway's ideas as agreeing with his. Haraway describes "situated histories" in which "all the actors become who they are in the dance of relating, not from scratch, not ex nihilo, but full of the patterns of their sometimes-joined, sometimes-separate heritages both before and lateral to this encounter. All the dancers are redone through the patterns they enact" (25). In other words, she seems to be finding meaning in the links between nodes - some of whom are the (presumably human or animal) actors? The concept of "when species meet" or "species meeting" seems like an interpolation of a link between nodes when the nodes are different species.
The idea of knots and links also applies to evolutionary relationships. Haraway writes that "ever more complex life forms are the continual result of ever more intricate and multidirectional acts of association of and with other life forms" (31). Another example of this kind of organic symbiotic relationship is the researcher Barbara Smuts who did fieldwork studying baboons in Kenya. When she went into the field, she found that she could not "remove" herself from the context of the baboons simply by pretending that she wasn't there or that the baboons weren't reacting to her. Like Hayles says, an observer can't exist outside of the system it's observing. Smuts realizes the impossibility of being a neutral observer among the baboons, so instead she integrates herself with them, acting humble and communicating in the ways that she observed them communicating with themselves. She knows that she necessarily changes the situation by being in it to observe it - and so she observes the situation as it now includes her, and she instead of trying, pointlessly, to be unnoticed and unobtrusive, she engages with the baboons until they and she understand that they are not threats to one another. I thought this was a good illustration of what Hayles writes about observing systems.
On another tangent, the concept of autre-mondialisation that Haraway talks about was never very clear to me. On pg. 28, she writes that "becoming-animal is not an autre-mondialisation" - what does that mean? If we get around to this concept in class tomorrow, that would be great.
There were many interesting points in how Haraway discusses about the Great Divide between humans and animals. Reading about the domesticated animal, the dog, and exuberant amount of money that humans spend on their dogs was shocking, but at the same time expected. For me, it brought other questions to mind, in that dog grooming, fancy food, and other specialties aimed at (affluent) dog owners is a type or niche market, meaning the market knows that people will pay just about anything to pamper their dog, and makes me question the actually cost of these things. I also thought this in the realm of veterinary care for one’s domesticated animal. Is it because treatments for sick animals is hardly done (except in the cancer case), or is it the business of healing sick animals is another niche market were the capitalist knows they can charge whatever they want? It interesting to think about the amounts of dollars that are spent on the culturally defined domestic animals and how that money could be used to create sanctuaries for animals harmed in laboratory testing.
I found Haraway’s analysis of Derrida’s theories about animal cruelty and the Human very interesting. I think this quote summed up my thoughts perfectly, “Derrida argues that the problem is not human beings’ denying something to other critters—but rather the death-defying arrogance of ascribing such wondrous positivities to the Human.” In other words, the Human places its being on a pedestal that stands over the Animal and thus this action appears to justify the killing of animals as not a murderous act. On that note, as I proceeded to finish chapter two, I felt hat Haraway was going back and forth of agreeing the Derrida and then disagreeing with him. Perhaps, my mind is just overloaded with all this end-of-the-semester-work!
I look forward to discussing Haraway’s points in class!
-kathryn
1. The domestication of plants and animals. The story of humanity, according to many archaeologists, takes a turn at domestication. It was symbolic of a step from coexistence to domination. The land was no longer to use, but to manipulate and exploit, and the animals were no longer wild, but selected for their ability to live under the human rules of life and relationships. How did this transition happen? But more importantly, why?
2. Dixie: My mom and I spent the last four months of Dixie’s life laughing at the fact that she would hurl her little eight-pound body towards the couch from a few feet away and go head straight into the side of the couch, tipping over onto her back before recovering and shaking herself off. Over the course of her life, we had called her a million things, even manipulative at times where she would mope right before we left for school and work in the hopes that maybe a sad puppy-dog face would persuade us to stay. When she was a puppy she chased her tail, and when she was older she used to growl at anything in the dark that resembled a human, even if it was an object that she had seen during the day in the exact same spot… did she simply forget?
In When Species Meet, Haraway asks on page 50, “How does a companion animal’s human make judgments about the right time to let her dog die or, indeed, to kill her dog? How much care is too much?” On one hand, I am tempted to share a sense of annoyance at the very least with our system related to companion species. It seems more a system of domination than a system of companionship. Or a system of companionship that only goes one way. We put our dogs on leashes… but don’t some parents put their children on leashes too? Not that I’m suggesting we put all our children on leashes, quite the opposite. I think we need to re-evaluate our relationships with both our own children and our “companion species.” It seems to me that we do spend a lot of time being controlled by our dogs and cats. We come home from work earlier to take them out, and we don’t on a plane without making sure that they have someone to feed and watch over them. I’m interested in comparing the companion species, in particular the dog, with the human parent-child hybrid (helloo Latour). What are the differences? Mainly, I would argue, age. Our children grow up much slower, but we adapt to them based on those incremental growths. Yet our dogs somehow always remain puppies, until the time that they die (or until we take their lives).
I agree that Haraway's conception of Latour in her own writing is excellent. I'm sure by now we're all seeing crossovers everywhere, but it is interesting to think about it in terms of a moment of interaction, in terms of a relationship rather than in the ether, existent. I did find Haraway a bit more specific than Latour, though at times I didn't quite feel on board with her passion or supportive of her arguments. Just an aside, I guess. I don't think I'm sure of what she thinks should be done after acknowledging the crossover in the moment of species interaction. Though she claims to argue on behalf of symmetry, I don't quite see that. I think Latour much more explicitly acknowledged how nonhumans and humans use one another. For me, much of Haraway's good points were a bit lost in a defense that animals do not only react but can also respond. I loved the Derrida discussion, but I wonder what I'm supposed to take from it beyond an agreement that humans are silly and arrogant.
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