Donna Haraway’s latest book, When Species Meet, is a stunning
meditation on the ordinary. Tying together questions of
interspecies encounters and alternative practices of world
building, Haraway explores how contemporary human beings interact
with various critters to form meanings, experiences, and worlds.
The text effortlessly slides between theory and autobiography; one
of the driving connections in this regard is Ms. Cayenne Pepper, an
Australian sheepdog whose “darter-tongue kisses” compel Haraway to
look closely at what biologist Lynn Margulis calls “symbiogenesis,”
a process that explains how life forms continually intermingle,
leading to ever more “intricate and multidirectional acts of
association of and with other life forms.” From lab animals to
interspecies love to breeding purebreds, Haraway ensures that her
readers will never look at human-animal encounters of any sort in
the same way again.
While those familiar with Haraway’s oeuvre will find numerous
connections to her earlier work, she does an excellent job of
narrating how she came to the questions at the heart of When
Species Meet and (perhaps most importantly) what is at stake for
her in these questions, politically and otherwise. Of particular
interest to philosophy buffs are Haraway’s gratifying critiques of
Gilles Deleuze and FÉlix Guattari’s well-known writing on
“becoming-animal”; these critiques arise as part of Haraway’s
overall challenge to the boundaries between “wild” or “domestic”
creatures. Similarly, her response to Jacques Derrida’s ruminations
on animals reveals the provocations that can arise from work that
pokes holes in conventional disciplinary engagements with any given
topic. Haraway’s willingness to take on both biology and
philosophy, to cite only two of her resources, results in
suggestive insights on a number of issues, but especially (with
Derrida, et. al.) regarding the question of what it means to take
animals seriously.
I found Haraway’s considerable enthusiasm and knowledge in When
Species Meet to be invigorating. This book should appeal to a broad
audience including animal lovers, scientists and their allies,
theorists, and people who love random and little known information
(e.g., the history of imported North American gray wolves during
South African apartheid). While Haraway emphasizes that her desire
to look more carefully at companion species, those “who eat and
break bread together but not without some indigestion,” does not
come with any guarantees, she infectiously believes that there is a
good deal at stake in the mundane and extraordinary details of the
co-shaping species she documents across these pages. Given her hope
for the worldly orientations, such as curiosity and respect, that
might be cultivated by looking at companion species differently, it
is appropriate that she begins and ends the text by reminding us
that “[t]here is no assured happy or unhappy ending - socially,
ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for
getting on together with some grace.”
Review by Marie Draz, Feminist Review Blog
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