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Das Manifest für Gefährten: Wenn Spezies sich begegnen - Hunde, Menschen und signifikante Andersartigkeit
Mit der Veröffentlichung des Gefährten-Manifests von Donna Haraway wird ein Text auf Deutsch zugänglich gemacht, der längst zum Kanon feministischer Literatur gehört. Haraways Stärke liegt darin, genre- und diskursübergreifend wichtige persönliche, philosophische und politische Fragen zu verhandeln und dabei leidenschaftlich die Freude am Schreiben und Lesen zu zelebrieren. Durch persönliche Beobachtung und philosophische Analyse, historische Neuerzählung und politische Hinterfragung entwirft das Manifest in erzählerischer Leichtigkeit und Eleganz ein Panorama des Zusammenlebens und Zusammenwerdens der Gefährtenspezies Hund und Mensch, das neue Perspektiven auf Beziehungen und Geschichte/n in lebbareren, zukünftigen Welten ermöglicht.
144 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2003
93 people are currently reading
2385 people want to read
About the author
Donna J. Haraway
80 books1,174 followersDonna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States. She is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies, described in the early 1990s as a "feminist, rather loosely a postmodernist". Haraway is the author of numerous foundational books and essays that bring together questions of science and feminism, such as "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" (1985) and "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective". Additionally, for her contributions to the intersection of information technology and feminist theory, Haraway is widely cited in works related to Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Her Situated Knowledges and Cyborg Manifesto publications in particular, have sparked discussion within the HCI community regarding framing the positionality from which research and systems are designed. She is also a leading scholar in contemporary ecofeminism, associated with post-humanism and new materialism movements. Her work criticizes anthropocentrism, emphasizes the self-organizing powers of nonhuman processes, and explores dissonant relations between those processes and cultural practices, rethinking sources of ethics.
Haraway has taught Women's Studies and the History of Science at the University of Hawaii and Johns Hopkins University. Haraway's works have contributed to the study of both human-machine and human-animal relations. Her works have sparked debate in primatology, philosophy, and developmental biology. Haraway participated in a collaborative exchange with the feminist theorist Lynn Randolph from 1990 to 1996. Their engagement with specific ideas relating to feminism, technoscience, political consciousness, and other social issues, formed the images and narrative of Haraway's book Modest_Witness for which she received the Society for Social Studies of Science's (4S) Ludwik Fleck Prize in 1999. In 2000, Haraway was awarded the Society for Social Studies of Science's John Desmond Bernal Prize for her distinguished contributions to the field of science and technology studies. Haraway serves on the advisory board for numerous academic journals, including differences, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Contemporary Women's Writing, and Environmental Humanities.
Haraway has taught Women's Studies and the History of Science at the University of Hawaii and Johns Hopkins University. Haraway's works have contributed to the study of both human-machine and human-animal relations. Her works have sparked debate in primatology, philosophy, and developmental biology. Haraway participated in a collaborative exchange with the feminist theorist Lynn Randolph from 1990 to 1996. Their engagement with specific ideas relating to feminism, technoscience, political consciousness, and other social issues, formed the images and narrative of Haraway's book Modest_Witness for which she received the Society for Social Studies of Science's (4S) Ludwik Fleck Prize in 1999. In 2000, Haraway was awarded the Society for Social Studies of Science's John Desmond Bernal Prize for her distinguished contributions to the field of science and technology studies. Haraway serves on the advisory board for numerous academic journals, including differences, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Contemporary Women's Writing, and Environmental Humanities.
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February 3, 2011
Donna Haraway loves dogs.
October 27, 2008
With this manifesto, Haraway moves away from the figure of the cyborg (which made her famous) and toward the figure of the companion species--specifically, the dog. She attempts to do much the same thing with dogs that she did with cyborgs, saying:
"Cyborgs and companion species each bring together the human and non-human, the organic and technological, carbon and silicon, freedom and structure, history and myth, the rich and the poor, the state and the subject, diversity and depletion, modernity and postmodernity, and nature and culture in unexpected ways" (3).
Unfortunately, Haraway's new manifesto lacks the depth and complexity of her mid-1980s manifesto. Although she claims that the story of the relationship between dogs and humans, companion species, is one "of biopower and biosociality, as well as of technoscience," she does little to illustrate this fact's greater significance for either species.
She does, however, present a valuable counterbalance to common elements among some branches of animal rights and ecocritical movements, including the use of animals as metaphor, the habit of anthropomorphizing animals, and the tendency to assign rights to animals on the same basis that we assign rights to humans. She says, first,
"Dogs, in their historical complexity, matter here. Dogs are not an alibi for other themes; dogs are fleshly material-semiotic presences in the body of technoscience. Dogs are not surrogates for theory; they are not here just to think with. They are here to live with" (5).
In other words, dogs are not mere metaphor; they carry weight and meaning of their own. Regarding the other tendencies, Haraway argues that we must remain "alert to the fact that somebody is at home in the animals [we] work with" (50) but that the way to do this is not through "the kind of literalist anthropomorphism that sees furry humans in animal bodies and measures their worth in scales of similarity to the rights-bearing, humanist subjects of Western philosophy and political theory" (51). Following the ideas of Vicki Hearne, Haraway endorses the idea that "dogs obtain 'rights' in specific humans. In relationship, dogs and humans construct 'rights' in each other, such as the right to demand respect, attention, and response" (53).
In these ways, Haraway's manifesto provides interesting ways of thinking through companion species relationships, but it falls short of the theoretical rigor I had hoped for based on her earlier work.
"Cyborgs and companion species each bring together the human and non-human, the organic and technological, carbon and silicon, freedom and structure, history and myth, the rich and the poor, the state and the subject, diversity and depletion, modernity and postmodernity, and nature and culture in unexpected ways" (3).
Unfortunately, Haraway's new manifesto lacks the depth and complexity of her mid-1980s manifesto. Although she claims that the story of the relationship between dogs and humans, companion species, is one "of biopower and biosociality, as well as of technoscience," she does little to illustrate this fact's greater significance for either species.
She does, however, present a valuable counterbalance to common elements among some branches of animal rights and ecocritical movements, including the use of animals as metaphor, the habit of anthropomorphizing animals, and the tendency to assign rights to animals on the same basis that we assign rights to humans. She says, first,
"Dogs, in their historical complexity, matter here. Dogs are not an alibi for other themes; dogs are fleshly material-semiotic presences in the body of technoscience. Dogs are not surrogates for theory; they are not here just to think with. They are here to live with" (5).
In other words, dogs are not mere metaphor; they carry weight and meaning of their own. Regarding the other tendencies, Haraway argues that we must remain "alert to the fact that somebody is at home in the animals [we] work with" (50) but that the way to do this is not through "the kind of literalist anthropomorphism that sees furry humans in animal bodies and measures their worth in scales of similarity to the rights-bearing, humanist subjects of Western philosophy and political theory" (51). Following the ideas of Vicki Hearne, Haraway endorses the idea that "dogs obtain 'rights' in specific humans. In relationship, dogs and humans construct 'rights' in each other, such as the right to demand respect, attention, and response" (53).
In these ways, Haraway's manifesto provides interesting ways of thinking through companion species relationships, but it falls short of the theoretical rigor I had hoped for based on her earlier work.
February 17, 2024
"I yearn for much more reflection in dogland about what it means to inherit the multi-species, relentlessly complex legacy that crosses evolutionary, personal, and historical time scales of companion species." (94)This is the basic idea of Donna Haraway's Companion Species Manifesto, tortured across 98 pages. Okay, maybe I'm being a little harsh there, but much of this manifesto—especially the first twenty pages—is obnoxious and positively off-putting in the way that it's written. It's also wildly uneven. There are no sustained arguments, which I suppose is fine for a short manifesto that aims to be suggestive and provocative rather than convincing. But the bits of theory that you do get, especially near the beginning, are not only vague, but they're also presented lopsidedly against long descriptions of dog histories later on that are barely connected to the inchoate arguments earlier in the manifesto. One is left with the impression that it would have been better to read 1) one of the more extensive books about the history of dogs that Haraway alludes to, and/or 2) a more substantial book about the philosophy and ethics of non-human animals and their relation to human beings, the significance of shared environments, etc. Interest in the latter is why I picked up this book in the first place. I wanted to read it alongside Martha Nussbaum's work on animal flourishing and capabilities, Christine Korsgaard's Kantian approach to animal ethics, and so on. I, especially, could have done without the adolescent "Notes of a Sports Writer's Daughter."
For what it's worth, there are some interesting bits, and if Haraway's aim was merely to spark discussion, the manifesto seems to have succeeded on those grounds (it's quite influential in some academic circles). I still think that, if a book raises many more questions than it even tries to address, and leaves many gaps along the way, then it falls short in some significant way.
Yes: it is interesting and probably important in some cases to look carefully at the tangled history of dogs—to at least sometimes look beyond the individual dog/animal in front of us. But does that mean that every individual with a dog must trace the dog's entire naturalcultural history in order to be able to interact with her? Or that we need to do this in order to treat dogs—and other (companion) animals—better than we have done and do? I doubt it.
October 3, 2024
This book seeks to question how we view dogs today and in the past. Rather than assume that we simply love them like children, and replace our human progeny with them in acts of gender-norm deviance, this book aims to consider dogs with agency and as "partners in crime." Dogs then are a way to understand things like biopower and biopolitics. I will admit that I likely only understood a portion of this book, it's complex and the language is dense, academic, and theoretical. Yet like Judith Butler's early works, if you stick with it you're bound to get something useful out of it.
September 14, 2017
half theoretical, half a dog lover.
July 1, 2025
il passaggio che mi ha colpita emotivamente di più del manifesto cyborg dice qualcosa come “parte di queste considerazioni le ho elaborate passeggiando con i miei cani”. DOVEVO sapere di più. allora. trovo che a volte questo testo sia un po’ tendente al delirio e il linguaggio? tortuoso e ipersorvegliato. ovviamente si tratta pur sempre di una bomba!!! non cita flush di virginia woolf… sono sconcertata... comunque sia in certi casi vibes > words and language. insomma tre stelle… donna haraway che scrive letteralmente di cani… dichiarando che farlo corrisponda a un modo femminista di stare al mondo… le premesse potrebbero avermi fatto maturare aspettative irrealistiche. da “fare parentele, non figli” a “desiderare cani, non bambini” un pochino ci si declassa. forse dovrei scriverlo io un libro sui cani come lo vorrei… senza troppi ambaradan e senza le gare di agility
April 9, 2025
-i love dogs so easier to get thru for me than theory usually is
-certain tidbits i really liked--like the part about unconditional love bc I'm currently on a bender about how i hate the narrative of love being easy etc
-i facetimed my dog yesterday and i was reading cyborg manifesto then today read companion species and its funny bc u could see my phone as my companion or me+phone as a cyborg and i was talking to my dog as my cyborg self
-overall it seemed a little meandery tho. i guess i like that its a good example of different species coexisting and interacting. But the human-dog relationship is definitely not gonna mirror any other kin relationship imo, plus there's the fact that she clearly fucking loves dogs. I'm about to read the cthulucene book for a class tho so maybe that will clarify more about Kin.
-how do i not think about furries and stuart little and the dolphin-sex man while reading this
-i am really surprised that disability didn't show up as a huge topic in either this or the cyborg manifesto. (there was some vague biotech stuff in CM i guess). sic fi cyborgs in movies are often in existence because they were "repaired" from an injury. service dogs are one of the first things i think of when human-dog relationships are discussed. Im just surprised since there is so much to unpack there
-the part about loving a "kind" of dog rather than individual dogs... my aunt got the same type of dog as the one she had had for several years and i was appalled. i will never do that because to me it feels like replacing a member of the family.
-idk i maybe need to think on this some more. i don't know a lot about dog training pedagogy aside from a youtube channel that convinced me about bite chains being a good idea. this book had opposite ideas on training dogs. when i think about humans I'm against prisons and shit & want restorative justice yet I was very convinced by the punishment framework from the youtube channel. hm. maybe i will have to read haraways "birth of the kennel" lecture.
-my dog didn't have a professional training situation and she is the sweetest most obedient thing and its just her personality and i don't give a shit if I'm anthropomorphizing her and seeing "love" in a way that isn't real/good
-certain tidbits i really liked--like the part about unconditional love bc I'm currently on a bender about how i hate the narrative of love being easy etc
-i facetimed my dog yesterday and i was reading cyborg manifesto then today read companion species and its funny bc u could see my phone as my companion or me+phone as a cyborg and i was talking to my dog as my cyborg self
-overall it seemed a little meandery tho. i guess i like that its a good example of different species coexisting and interacting. But the human-dog relationship is definitely not gonna mirror any other kin relationship imo, plus there's the fact that she clearly fucking loves dogs. I'm about to read the cthulucene book for a class tho so maybe that will clarify more about Kin.
-how do i not think about furries and stuart little and the dolphin-sex man while reading this
-i am really surprised that disability didn't show up as a huge topic in either this or the cyborg manifesto. (there was some vague biotech stuff in CM i guess). sic fi cyborgs in movies are often in existence because they were "repaired" from an injury. service dogs are one of the first things i think of when human-dog relationships are discussed. Im just surprised since there is so much to unpack there
-the part about loving a "kind" of dog rather than individual dogs... my aunt got the same type of dog as the one she had had for several years and i was appalled. i will never do that because to me it feels like replacing a member of the family.
-idk i maybe need to think on this some more. i don't know a lot about dog training pedagogy aside from a youtube channel that convinced me about bite chains being a good idea. this book had opposite ideas on training dogs. when i think about humans I'm against prisons and shit & want restorative justice yet I was very convinced by the punishment framework from the youtube channel. hm. maybe i will have to read haraways "birth of the kennel" lecture.
-my dog didn't have a professional training situation and she is the sweetest most obedient thing and its just her personality and i don't give a shit if I'm anthropomorphizing her and seeing "love" in a way that isn't real/good
April 28, 2024
i will be the first to admit that i am the very niche target audience for this work but that being said. this really has it all. so excited by the content and the formal stringing-together and the way of looking and thinking and making place. everything is interconnected nothing comes from a void like kamala harris said you think you fell from a coconut tree? you exist in the Context!!! and so does your pet!
January 24, 2022
not what i expected or wanted, not sure why i read it lol
September 7, 2021
TL;DR: This type of book is a shining example of the self-absorbed verbal masturbation that drives reasonable people to resent academia.
For the record, I love dogs and enjoy a more academic, critical read every now and again. But while Haraway’s manifesto may be enough to pass muster in the academic world, its supposed desire to be “boots-on-the-ground” with the subject of dogs made something snap inside me (I think it was a blood vessel). Verbose claim after verbose claim, Haraway wears away at your patience, daring you to keep reading because this has to be going somewhere. Alas, you discover after turning the last page that this could’ve (and should’ve) been a Facebook update: “Love my dogs! Oh, if only we spoke the same language.” I guess she needed to reach her quota for uses of “semiotic,” “metaphysical,” and other vomit-inducing academic buzzwords. Again, it’s the “dogs are real, not vessels for theory” attitude she claims to have, followed by the exact opposite in execution, that bothers me most. If you don’t want people to hate academia any more than they already do, stop playing into all of its stereotypes to a tee. Now I think I’ll go watch Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 at half-speed just to cleanse my palate after recalling this book to mind.
For the record, I love dogs and enjoy a more academic, critical read every now and again. But while Haraway’s manifesto may be enough to pass muster in the academic world, its supposed desire to be “boots-on-the-ground” with the subject of dogs made something snap inside me (I think it was a blood vessel). Verbose claim after verbose claim, Haraway wears away at your patience, daring you to keep reading because this has to be going somewhere. Alas, you discover after turning the last page that this could’ve (and should’ve) been a Facebook update: “Love my dogs! Oh, if only we spoke the same language.” I guess she needed to reach her quota for uses of “semiotic,” “metaphysical,” and other vomit-inducing academic buzzwords. Again, it’s the “dogs are real, not vessels for theory” attitude she claims to have, followed by the exact opposite in execution, that bothers me most. If you don’t want people to hate academia any more than they already do, stop playing into all of its stereotypes to a tee. Now I think I’ll go watch Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 at half-speed just to cleanse my palate after recalling this book to mind.
March 27, 2011
(5/10) Okay, let's get this out of the way: I'm not a dog person. Hate 'em. But even putting that aside, I didn't really see the point to this book. Haraway wants to position the companion species as a kind of new model for humanity, and I think it's an idea worth looking at. But instead of doing that, Haraway spends most of the book simply reeling off facts about various dog breeds and training techniques. The value of this book is that it opens up a question that could help lead us to a more ecological way of living, but it refuses to really answer that question. As it is, it's mostly just evidence that once you're an Academic Name you can get any pet project (sorry) published, even if it's just going on about your hobbies for a hundred pages.
December 20, 2008
Interesting book. It suffers from writing that at times approaches the panicked hyperventilated utterances of a creative twelve year old with a technical vocabulary
February 21, 2023
Så cringe at det gør ondt i hele min krop. Dette såkaldte "manifest" bør censureres.
May 12, 2025
Doğa tarih müzesinin hediyelik eşya dükkanından köpekler üzerinden feminist analiz yapan kitabı nasıl bulmuşum aq.
January 10, 2016
Haraway is a titan of feminist studies of science and technology but did you also know that she's a crazy dog lady? The Companion Species Manifesto is a love letter to Canis familiaris in general, and Cayenne Pepper, an Australian Shepherd, in particular.
This brief volume is a sequel-parody of her famous Cyborg Manifesto (may we all write something so wildly interpreted), but focusing on dogginess, the love of dogs, the intense awareness and trust of human/dog agility competition, domesticity, significant otherness, knotty prehensions and technobiopolitics. It is 100% Haraway, and totally weird and incomprehensible. Meditations on feminist approaches to science studies intertwine with descriptions of dog training methods, and the ongoing conflict between AKC 'purity' and working dog hybridity.
I can't say what I got out of this book. Honestly, I tend to take Haraway as performance art, an academic version of Lord Buckley. It's cool, well-researched, and very flashy, but almost impossible to follow.
This brief volume is a sequel-parody of her famous Cyborg Manifesto (may we all write something so wildly interpreted), but focusing on dogginess, the love of dogs, the intense awareness and trust of human/dog agility competition, domesticity, significant otherness, knotty prehensions and technobiopolitics. It is 100% Haraway, and totally weird and incomprehensible. Meditations on feminist approaches to science studies intertwine with descriptions of dog training methods, and the ongoing conflict between AKC 'purity' and working dog hybridity.
I can't say what I got out of this book. Honestly, I tend to take Haraway as performance art, an academic version of Lord Buckley. It's cool, well-researched, and very flashy, but almost impossible to follow.
May 16, 2020
This is probably the first 'academic' book I have read from beginning to end, and for a reason. If there is anything I take from this read is to approach human-animal interactions from a levelled point to avoid the mistakes of those first anthropologists that viewed their subjects 'from above'. It has left me pondering about the differences between nature and culture, but also with a deep respect for the history of all animals and the differences between them. Definitely this is a relationship worth studying.
May 8, 2019
4 words:
Relation
observe
naturalcultural
Imbalance
Relation
observe
naturalcultural
Imbalance
November 21, 2021
Wonder what she'd have to say about "doge"
June 22, 2024
Es el primer libro que leo directamente de Donna Haraway, lo cual creo que fue un error, pues hay que comenzar con otras obras y no precisamente con esta. Aunque he leído muchos trabajos que citan, reseñan y analizan a Haraway, algunos conceptos no me parecieron tan sencillos al momento de leer, por ello mi recomendación de comenzar con otras obras, quizá con el manifiesto cyborg.
El libro me parece buenísimo pues nos concede la oportunidad de resignificar el cómo percibimos nuestro vínculo con los animales, específicamente a los que llamamos mascotas. Precisamente la autora va más allá del espectro de percibirlos como mascotas o "perrhijos". El libro va específicamente de perros.
Lo que no me encanta es que el libro hable casi exclusivamente de perros de raza. Al principio también le critiqué el hecho de que me parecía muy "sesgada" la percepción de Haraway de los perros, pues en México el panorama es muy desalentador. Sin embargo recordé que precisamente Haraway siempre habla de los "conocimientos situados", y creo que es algo que ella siempre ha hecho muy bien: reconocer el lugar desde el cuál se enuncia, que en algunos casos suele ser desde el privilegio de ser mujer blanca estadounidense. Pero más que un desacierto es un punto positivo, pues ella no niega que se enuncia desde allí. Al final me quedé más satisfecho pues incluye un capítulo sobre el caso de los perros en Latinoamérica, pero el cuál también siento que está muy sesgado.
En fin, Haraway nunca decepciona y es lo máximo.
El libro me parece buenísimo pues nos concede la oportunidad de resignificar el cómo percibimos nuestro vínculo con los animales, específicamente a los que llamamos mascotas. Precisamente la autora va más allá del espectro de percibirlos como mascotas o "perrhijos". El libro va específicamente de perros.
Lo que no me encanta es que el libro hable casi exclusivamente de perros de raza. Al principio también le critiqué el hecho de que me parecía muy "sesgada" la percepción de Haraway de los perros, pues en México el panorama es muy desalentador. Sin embargo recordé que precisamente Haraway siempre habla de los "conocimientos situados", y creo que es algo que ella siempre ha hecho muy bien: reconocer el lugar desde el cuál se enuncia, que en algunos casos suele ser desde el privilegio de ser mujer blanca estadounidense. Pero más que un desacierto es un punto positivo, pues ella no niega que se enuncia desde allí. Al final me quedé más satisfecho pues incluye un capítulo sobre el caso de los perros en Latinoamérica, pero el cuál también siento que está muy sesgado.
En fin, Haraway nunca decepciona y es lo máximo.
May 19, 2022
Did I understand everything Haraway said? Absolutely not. Did I understand enough to love this pamphlet? Absolutely yes.
Haraway uses dogs to theorize on significant otherness, and living/loving/bonding/being with significant otherness/companion species. The messy, bad, and beautiful past & present (on various scales; evolutionary, historical, and face-to-face) of a couple different dog breeds/types are discussed to highlight;
“Dog people need to learn how to inherit difficult histories in order to shape more vital multi-species futures.”
BEAUTIFUL, RESONATED WITH MINE OWN SOUL. And that applies to more than just dogs, it applies to any and all significant otherness we coexist with. Also, I learned a lot of cool stuff about dogs. Also, I definitely need to read Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto because when she talks about cyborgs I have no idea how to conceptualize that, but it only gets brought up a bit in the beginning of the read.
Haraway uses dogs to theorize on significant otherness, and living/loving/bonding/being with significant otherness/companion species. The messy, bad, and beautiful past & present (on various scales; evolutionary, historical, and face-to-face) of a couple different dog breeds/types are discussed to highlight;
“Dog people need to learn how to inherit difficult histories in order to shape more vital multi-species futures.”
BEAUTIFUL, RESONATED WITH MINE OWN SOUL. And that applies to more than just dogs, it applies to any and all significant otherness we coexist with. Also, I learned a lot of cool stuff about dogs. Also, I definitely need to read Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto because when she talks about cyborgs I have no idea how to conceptualize that, but it only gets brought up a bit in the beginning of the read.
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March 7, 2017Harraway undergoes an exploration of Being with – Being with dogs as companion species. Central to this text is an emphasis on the ability to tell the stories of ourselves and our companion species, to be honest about where we came from, and how we got to where we are now, so that we might be able to participate in conversations about how to go forward. By mapping the breeding stories of Great Pyrenees, Australian Shepherds and Puerto Rica's Satos in the second half of the book, we can understand the lived material condition of Being with human and dog which led to the development of these species as well as their breeding and adoption practices. In the training stories, Harraway at the ways in which the lived experience with dogs can take shape – through a training and relational mix of creation of both human and dog.
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July 13, 2022Con mucha historia sobre perros interesante solo a ratos entre medias, este Manifiesto es una obra capital de la filosofía contemporánea y los estudios multiespecies. Su mensaje de coevolución y coconstitución entre las distintas especies nos obliga a la humildad ontológica. Fente a cualquier historia que se centre solo en el ser humano en solitario es preciso insistir en el anudamiento constante en el que vivimos. Somos lo que somos gracias a especies como los perros, protagonistas indiscutibles de esta obra, los gatos, el trigo, el arroz o las bacterias de nuestra flora intestinal. Nuestra labor en la Tierra debe consistir en cultivar las otredades significativas de este enredo que es la vida orgánica y cuidar al otro humano y no humano, cercano y lejano en el proceso.
October 26, 2022
This book is a little more scatterbrained than the usual manifesto, and I think some of her linguistic choices make the book unnecessarily hard to read and, therefore, less accessible to people from a non-academic background.
Apart from that, I found myself agreeing with most of the points Haraway makes— Here's one in particular that I've wanted to articulate but couldn't find the right words:
'I resist being called the "mom" to my dogs because I fear infantilization of the adult canines and misidentification of the important fact that I wanted dogs, not babies. My multi-species family is not about surrogacy and substitutes; we are trying to live other tropes, other metaplasms.' pp.95-96
Apart from that, I found myself agreeing with most of the points Haraway makes— Here's one in particular that I've wanted to articulate but couldn't find the right words:
'I resist being called the "mom" to my dogs because I fear infantilization of the adult canines and misidentification of the important fact that I wanted dogs, not babies. My multi-species family is not about surrogacy and substitutes; we are trying to live other tropes, other metaplasms.' pp.95-96
August 17, 2023
Worse than mid to say the least. Ms. Donna Hathaway certainly has something worth saying about treating animals or anything we work so closely with, like dogs and computer and robots and co workers, with lots of respect referees of species or category. Very true. But, it only took me ~30 words to tell you that. With some, to me unintelligible, philosophical introduction that included Christianity (in my mind completely nullifying any logical conclusion you may be trying to get at) Hathaway took 100 pages. Just couldn’t spit anything out on to the page concisely which ended up in the chapters just being a collection of stuff she thought she needed to tell you to get her point across. *soft zombie noise*
July 30, 2017
Summary: duh and huh. Dogs are our kin. Duh. "one made possible by the concrescence of prehensions of many actual occasions." Huh?
Dogs and humans have shaped and formed each other, carry records of our interactions in their genomes. Uh huh.
And yet, "[Dogs] are not a projection, nor the realization of an intention, nor the telos of anything. They are dogs, i.e., a species in obligatory, constitutive, historical, protean relationship with human beings. The relationship is not especially nice; it is full of waste, cruelty, indifference, ignorance, and loss, as well as of joy, invention, labor, intelligence, and play. I want to learn how to narrate this co-history and how to inherit the consequences of co-evolution in natureculture." (12). Sure, and your point is?
She does have some interesting things to say about the dangers of pet relationships: "Loving dogs . . . is not incompatible with a pet relationship . . . being a pet seems to me to be a demanding job for a dog, requiring self-control and canine emotional and cognitive skills matching those of good working dogs . . . play between humans and pets, as well as simply spending time peaceably hanging out togheter, brings joy to all the participants . . .nevertheless, the status of pet puts a dog at special risk . . . -- the risk of abandonment when human affection wanes, when people's convenience takes precedence, or when the dog fails to deliver on the fantasy of unconditional love . . . [there is] importance to dogs of jobs that leave them less vulnerable to human consumerist whims . . . many . . guardian dogs are respected for the work they do. Some are loved and some are not, but their value does not depend on an economy of affection . . . rather, the dog has to do his or her job, and . . . the rest is gravy." Though this ignores the fact that those who don't do their jobs are not valued -- there is a story of my farmer-grandfather who took a stupid dog out to the field and shot it. No place on the farm for a dog that didn't do its job. I'm surprised that Haraway doesn't seem to mind the "special risk" of dogs in a society where dogs might be judged by their ability to do a herding job versus a being-a-pet job. Both depend on human convenience.
She seems to want to draw attention to the kind of communication and attention that are necessary to have a relationship with a dog. Ok. "All ethical relating, within or between species, is knit from the silk-strong thread of ongoing alertness to otherness-in-relation. We are not one, and being depends on getting on together." Dogs' survival depends on their ability to read human cues. Of course. "Would that humans respond[ed] better than chance levels to what dogs tell them. Well, sure. Of course, the oppressed are always better at reading those in power than those in power are at knowing/reading the oppressed. They have to be. And yet, the subaltern does have power. The weak resist. And exert a curious power -- dogs just mean something to us, even if they no longer provide us the evolutionary advantage needed to survive. Or maybe they do and we just don't have ways to talk about/understand it.
Working with dogs helps us learn to attend to and understand the other. Perhaps. (61)
The world is complicated. Love and desire and oppression and abuse of power are all interfolded together. Or, in regard to telling the story of street dogs in Puerto Rico rescued, rehabilitated, and shipped to forever homes in the US, "I am interpellated into this story in mind and heart. I cannot disown it by calling attention to its racially-tinged, sexually-infused, class-saturated, and colonial tones and structures . . . I need to learn to inhabit histories, not disown them, least of all through the cheap tricks of puritanical critique." (89).
Yup. Life is messy. We're all implicated. None of us is without sin. Apparently this was news to Haraway, and she needed to articulate it for herself and others who are apparently so ensconced in academic realms of theory that this was news to them. I hope it was helpful news.
To be fair, two insights were helpful to me: "I resist being called the 'mom' to my dogs because I fear infantilization of the adult canines and misidentification of the important fact that I wanted dogs, not babies. My multi-species family is not about surrogacy and substitutes; we are trying to live other tropes, other metaplasms. We need other nouns and pronouns for the kin genres of companion species, just as we did (and still do) for the spectrum of genders. Except in a party invitation or a philosophical discussion, 'significant other' won't do for human sexual partners; and the term performs little better to house the daily meanings of cobbled together kin relations in dog land"(96). This struck me because -- it's true that we don't have a good way to talk about what dogs mean to us; this shows up whenever someone's dog dies, and that person is devastated, and yet even to those of us who have experienced it ourselves and take it seriously, it doesn't seem like a serious form of grief.
The one odd nugget I took with me: "This is a family made up in the belly of ht emonster of inherited histories that have to be inhabited to be transformed. I always knew that if I turned up pregnant, I wanted the being in my womb to be a member of another species" (97). There's a story there.
Dogs and humans have shaped and formed each other, carry records of our interactions in their genomes. Uh huh.
And yet, "[Dogs] are not a projection, nor the realization of an intention, nor the telos of anything. They are dogs, i.e., a species in obligatory, constitutive, historical, protean relationship with human beings. The relationship is not especially nice; it is full of waste, cruelty, indifference, ignorance, and loss, as well as of joy, invention, labor, intelligence, and play. I want to learn how to narrate this co-history and how to inherit the consequences of co-evolution in natureculture." (12). Sure, and your point is?
She does have some interesting things to say about the dangers of pet relationships: "Loving dogs . . . is not incompatible with a pet relationship . . . being a pet seems to me to be a demanding job for a dog, requiring self-control and canine emotional and cognitive skills matching those of good working dogs . . . play between humans and pets, as well as simply spending time peaceably hanging out togheter, brings joy to all the participants . . .nevertheless, the status of pet puts a dog at special risk . . . -- the risk of abandonment when human affection wanes, when people's convenience takes precedence, or when the dog fails to deliver on the fantasy of unconditional love . . . [there is] importance to dogs of jobs that leave them less vulnerable to human consumerist whims . . . many . . guardian dogs are respected for the work they do. Some are loved and some are not, but their value does not depend on an economy of affection . . . rather, the dog has to do his or her job, and . . . the rest is gravy." Though this ignores the fact that those who don't do their jobs are not valued -- there is a story of my farmer-grandfather who took a stupid dog out to the field and shot it. No place on the farm for a dog that didn't do its job. I'm surprised that Haraway doesn't seem to mind the "special risk" of dogs in a society where dogs might be judged by their ability to do a herding job versus a being-a-pet job. Both depend on human convenience.
She seems to want to draw attention to the kind of communication and attention that are necessary to have a relationship with a dog. Ok. "All ethical relating, within or between species, is knit from the silk-strong thread of ongoing alertness to otherness-in-relation. We are not one, and being depends on getting on together." Dogs' survival depends on their ability to read human cues. Of course. "Would that humans respond[ed] better than chance levels to what dogs tell them. Well, sure. Of course, the oppressed are always better at reading those in power than those in power are at knowing/reading the oppressed. They have to be. And yet, the subaltern does have power. The weak resist. And exert a curious power -- dogs just mean something to us, even if they no longer provide us the evolutionary advantage needed to survive. Or maybe they do and we just don't have ways to talk about/understand it.
Working with dogs helps us learn to attend to and understand the other. Perhaps. (61)
The world is complicated. Love and desire and oppression and abuse of power are all interfolded together. Or, in regard to telling the story of street dogs in Puerto Rico rescued, rehabilitated, and shipped to forever homes in the US, "I am interpellated into this story in mind and heart. I cannot disown it by calling attention to its racially-tinged, sexually-infused, class-saturated, and colonial tones and structures . . . I need to learn to inhabit histories, not disown them, least of all through the cheap tricks of puritanical critique." (89).
Yup. Life is messy. We're all implicated. None of us is without sin. Apparently this was news to Haraway, and she needed to articulate it for herself and others who are apparently so ensconced in academic realms of theory that this was news to them. I hope it was helpful news.
To be fair, two insights were helpful to me: "I resist being called the 'mom' to my dogs because I fear infantilization of the adult canines and misidentification of the important fact that I wanted dogs, not babies. My multi-species family is not about surrogacy and substitutes; we are trying to live other tropes, other metaplasms. We need other nouns and pronouns for the kin genres of companion species, just as we did (and still do) for the spectrum of genders. Except in a party invitation or a philosophical discussion, 'significant other' won't do for human sexual partners; and the term performs little better to house the daily meanings of cobbled together kin relations in dog land"(96). This struck me because -- it's true that we don't have a good way to talk about what dogs mean to us; this shows up whenever someone's dog dies, and that person is devastated, and yet even to those of us who have experienced it ourselves and take it seriously, it doesn't seem like a serious form of grief.
The one odd nugget I took with me: "This is a family made up in the belly of ht emonster of inherited histories that have to be inhabited to be transformed. I always knew that if I turned up pregnant, I wanted the being in my womb to be a member of another species" (97). There's a story there.
April 17, 2025
I think that, while Haraway's points are salient and worth considering, her prose (which can be lyrical and beautiful, at times) is lacking. As a reader, I feel like I get lost in the weeds a bit --- especially toward the last thirty or so pages.
I am terribly interested in Haraway's cyborg musings, though, so I think I'll continue to explore her authorship.
I am terribly interested in Haraway's cyborg musings, though, so I think I'll continue to explore her authorship.
May 22, 2025
I found this fascinating and just brief enough in terms of critical theory and its more dense language to be comprehensible. Packed with fun and juicy ideas about the interrelation between dogs and humans and our responsibility toward them as co-evolved companions.
August 13, 2024
best way to read this is in a kitchen with your friend while she is cooking
Read
June 4, 2025Finally finished
August 31, 2025
I think this is super interesting but it’s incredibly inaccessible. Thanks for the 84 on my PowerPoint tho! 💖
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