DONNA HARAWAY on Staying with the Trouble [ENCORE] /269
Artwork titled, Donna Haraway, (Vanitas Series), 2017, depicting a sculptural cyborg holding a gaming control handset with lifeless animals strewn on a table. A dog with remote control in his mouth is in the foreground and ruins overgrown by an ancient tree loom in the background; Courtesy of artist Joe Meiser.
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Donna Haraway, originally aired in August of 2019. Since her 1985 essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” scholar Donna Haraway has transformed how theorists, academics, and artists think about humans’ deep and entangled relationships with technology, beyond-human kin, and each other. We know that our planetary community is intimately linked, though, as Donna writes, “[Certain dualisms] have all been systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of colour, nature, workers, animals — in short, domination of all constituted as others, whose task is to mirror the self.“ Through an ongoing practice of thoughtful and curious investigation, Donna continues to unravel the myth of human exceptionalism, the hyper individualism of capitalist culture and Western traditions, and the rigid binaries we so often construct between the self and others.
“It is possible and indeed necessary to open up the imagination and to open up the practices for a world which can yet be, but is not yet.”
Photo of Donna Haraway via Alchetron.
Attending to the intersection of biology, culture and politics, Donna Haraway is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California Santa Cruz. She earned her PhD in Biology at Yale in 1972 and writes and teaches in science and technology studies, feminist theory, and multispecies studies. At UCSC, she is an active participant in the Science and Justice Research Center and Center for Creative Ecologies and has served as a thesis adviser for over 60 doctoral students. Haraway’s most recent works include Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene; a feature-length film by Fabrizio Terravova, titled Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival; and Making Kin Not Population, a publication co-edited with Adele Clarke that addresses questions of human numbers, feminist anti-racist reproductive and environmental justice, and multispecies flourishing.
Ayana and Donna’s fascinating conversation this week winds through topics like the reclamation of truth and “situated knowledge,” the importance of mourning with others, the etymology of “Anthropocene,” the place of forgiveness in movement building, and the urgency of making non-natal kin. Donna invites us to wander in the colorful worlds of science fiction, play with story, and dig through the compost pile, offering up powerful tools and practices needed for humans and nonhumans alike to “live and die well together” on Earth. With spirit and bold defiance, Donna leaves us with a resounding message: Show up and stay with the trouble!
♫ The music featured in this episode is “Release Technique I” by Jeremy Harris.
Episode References
Sandra Harding, Patricia Hill Collins, Karen Barad, and Nancy Hartsock on Feminist Standpoint Theory
Anna Tsing, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
Marshall Sahlins, David Schneider, Marilyn Strathern, and Dr. Kim TallBear on theories of kinship
Eric Stanley on “forced life”
Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime
Isabelle Stengers
H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Mary Louise Pratt on “contact zones”
Vinciane Despret’s methodological principle “working by addition”
Susan Harding and Marco Harding
Ursula Le Guin, The Word for the World is Forest
Sue Burke, Semiosis
Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human
Hannah Arendt
Donna’s Publications (from this episode):
“A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (Haraway, 1985)
Making Kin not Population: Reconceiving Generations (Clarke & Haraway, 2018)
Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival (Terranova, 2016)
“Staying with the Manifesto: An Interview with Donna Haraway” (Franklin, 2017)
Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Haraway, 2016)
The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Haraway, 2003)
For The Wild is a slow media organization dedicated to land-based protection, co-liberation, and intersectional storytelling. We are rooted in a paradigm shift away from human supremacy, endless growth, and consumerism. As we dream towards a world of grounded justice and reciprocity, our work highlights impactful stories and deeply-felt meaning making as balms for these times.