The first book on our reading list for the Humans & Non-Humans class is Donna Haraway’s (2003) “Companion Species Manifesto.” This short book is comprised of a long essay considering the culture and politics of dog keeping, dog training, and dog breeding. As always, Haraway is at pains to show the interrelatedness of human and non-human worlds and she uses the evidence of this interrelatedness to make her case for the conceptual work done by the category ‘naturecultures’.
Meaning that she looks at humans and dogs as mutually constitutive beings, as we have evolved over time to be companions, and to consider not only the history, but also the politics of that entanglement, and, crucially, she wants to help us see how we often reproduce gender power and patriarchal ideology through those relationships. She wants to call for interspecies feminist solidarity and the recognition of our mutual love and need for each other as an ethical question that can guide our action towards the natural world that includes, but is not only the province of the human. Check out the three videos below, where I respond to student comments and questions about this reading.
Have you also read this text? If so, please leave the class a comment below and share with us your favorite quote or how this book has shaped your relationship to non-human others. Thanks!
3 replies on “Companion Species”
These videos were very helpful for further understanding and contextualizing the Haraway reading. I have read the Cyborg Manifesto before and have been confused by it, but your explanation and the connection to the Companion Species Manifesto helped clarify a lot. I was also excited by the connection to Making Kin Not Population. I am very excited and intrigued by Haraway’s definitions of feminism and kin-making, as these are concepts that have leaked into my life and relationships that I’m trying to practice. These readings have shown me that these practices extend to my dog and every being I interact with.
Yes, I like her notion of ‘odd-kin.’ Forging unexpected, untraditional, and non-biologically based families is a feminist project! I’m glad the videos helped and thanks for the comment.
Yes, as a feminist and a queer project! I’m interested in how this conversation also relates to concepts of queerness and “chosen family,” which I guess fits more into other classes but perhaps will align more with our future conversations in this class.