Donna J. Haraway: The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003)

“The Companion Species Manifesto is about the implosion of nature and culture in the joint lives of dogs and people, who are bonded in “significant otherness.” In all their historical complexity, Donna Haraway tells us, dogs matter. They are not just surrogates for theory, she says; they are not here just to think with. Neither are they just an alibi for other themes; dogs are fleshly material-semiotic presences in the body of technoscience. They are here to live with. Partners in the crime of human evolution, they are in the garden from the get-go, wily as Coyote. This pamphlet is Haraway’s answer to her ownCyborg Manifesto, where the slogan for living on the edge of global war has to be not just “cyborgs for earthly survival” but also, in a more doggish idiom, ‘shut up and train.'”

Publisher Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003
ISBN 0971757585, 9780971757585
112 pages

Author’s lecture (video, Sep 2003), (2)

Reviews: Heidi J. Nast (Cultural Geographies, 2005), Rebecca Cassidy (Theory, Culture & Society, 2006), Cristina Pauli Monguilod (Athenea Digital, 2006), Katie Williamsa (Women’s Studies in Communication, 2007).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2022-12-22)

Donna J. Haraway: When Species Meet (2008)

“In 2006, about 69 million U.S. households had pets, giving homes to around 73.9 million dogs, 90.5 million cats, and 16.6 million birds, and spending over $38 billion dollars on companion animals. As never before in history, our pets are truly members of the family. But the notion of “companion species”—knotted from human beings, animals and other organisms, landscapes, and technologies—includes much more than “companion animals.”

In When Species Meet, Donna J. Haraway digs into this larger phenomenon to contemplate the interactions of humans with many kinds of critters, especially with those called domestic. At the heart of the book are her experiences in agility training with her dogs Cayenne and Roland, but Haraway’s vision here also encompasses wolves, chickens, cats, baboons, sheep, microorganisms, and whales wearing video cameras. From designer pets to lab animals to trained therapy dogs, she deftly explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal-human encounters.

In this deeply personal yet intellectually groundbreaking work, Haraway develops the idea of companion species, those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion. “A great deal is at stake in such meetings,” she writes, “and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no assured happy or unhappy ending—socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace.”

Ultimately, she finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal-human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism.”

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2008
ISBN 0816650462, 9780816650460
360 pages

Reviews: Margrit Shildrick (Society and Animals, 2008), Ivan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. (Humanimalia, 2010).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-7-31)