Notes on an extract from: Haraway,
D. (2003?) The Companion Species Manifesto:
Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness.
Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
[Extract from
http://xenopraxis.net/readings/haraway_companion.pdf]
Dave Harris
Haraway wants to explore how ethics and politics
of otherness might be learned from 'taking dog –
human relationship seriously' (1), and how stories
about dogs can persuade us that 'history matters
in naturecultures'. This is a personal document, a
story in which she is 'passionately engaged'. She
considers 'dog writing to be a branch of feminist
theory, or the other way around' (3). She thinks
it might be as fruitful as a figure of the cyborg:
both bring together human and nonhuman. Cyborgs
were 'appropriated' (4) to do feminist work in the
mid-80s, but were inadequate for later enquiries.
She wants to write about 'biopower and
biosociology as well as of techno-science' (5).
[Very poetic stuff leads to] a long history of
evolution of man and companion animals, especially
dogs. We should both think with them and live with
them they are 'partners in the crime of human
evolution'.
She draws on 'process philosophies' including
Whitehead on '"the concrete" as a "concrescence of
prehensions"' (6). For her this means that
'reality is an active verb' as pretensions, or
grasping, is constitute each other. 'Beings do not
preexist their relatings'. Determinism is
'misplaced concreteness'— the categories can only
ever be provisional and local representations of
the world, and foundations are only particularly
potent consequences. 'There are no pre-constituted
subjects and objects'. She cites Butler [!] on how
bodies that matter are only contingent
foundations. It follows that we can talk about a
whole 'bestiary of agencies, kinds of relatings,
and scores of time' — especially 'companion
species'.
She loves Whitehead as a feminist, refusing
binaries and relativisms and offering many
approaches to emergence and process difference and
contingency. It is not just about constructing a
feminine world, more about understanding how
things work, and 'how worldly actors might somehow
be accountable to and love each other less
violently' (7).
Verran discovered '"emergent ontologies"' studying
schools in Nigeria and Australia. She rejects
cultural relativism on political and moral grounds
as well as epistemological, and asks how different
knowledge practices might relate. The answer lies
only in 'vulnerable, on-the-ground work' which
cobbles things together, and 'that is what
significant otherness signifies'. Thompson refers
to '"ontological choreographies"' (8 )in her study
of reproduction processes and conservation
sciences in the USA and Africa. She rejects
conventional examinations of bodies both human and
nonhuman via 'either humanist or organicist
ideology'. Strathearn working in Papua New Guinea
and England rejects nature and culture as
opposites and as universal, and says we need other
typologies drawn from modern geometry — for
example '"partial connections", i.e. 'patterns
within which the players are neither wholes nor
parts'. This is an ethnography of naturecultures.
We need to examine companion species in 'storied
deep time' [at the level of DNA and cells] and in
more recent times, where we can advance a kinship
claim based on Whitehead 'concrescence of
prehensions of many actual occasions' to reveal
the 'contingent foundations' of companion species
(9). We will end with a network like a trellis or
Esplanade where 'you can't tell up from down and
everything seems to go sidewise' [a rhizome!].
'Multidirectional gene flow — multidirectional
flows of bodies and values' is basic to life on
earth. We can see this in the genomes of dogs
which represent 'ecologically opportunistic,
precariously social… Couplings and infectious
exchanges'. There are no purebred dogs, even after
experiment. Dogs are even better than cyborgs to
understand 'technobiopolitics' (10)
The Cyborg Manifesto had a trope to help
us live within techno-culture without ignoring its
permanent war apparatus and its 'transcendent,
very material lies' (11). Cyborgs help us live
within contradictions and remain alert to
'emergent historical hybridities' which actually
exist. However she now sees them as only 'junior
siblings in the much bigger, queer family of
companion species'. It might look more playful,
but it is just as useful as a field to examine
'reproductive biotechnopolitics'. She is not
supportive of how 'dangerous and unethical
projection in the Western world makes domestic
canines into furry children'. Dogs should not be
seen as a projection of oneself, but rather a
species in a particular relationship with human
beings, not always a particularly nice
relationship. The relationship with us is
'co-constituive' (12) and emergent — 'there is no
foundation'.
The term companion animal emerged after some
biological research showed us that dogs have
health benefits for us. In other cultures, they
were always seen as more than pets — food, or a
source of skins, weapons, trackers. Schwartz
writes the history of dogs in the early Americas
showing that some of them were given hallucinogens
or prepared for hunting via rites, unlike other
useful animals like horses. Dogs can live
'parallel lives among people' (14). Yet in the
USA, companion animal tends to show the relation
between techno-science and 'late industrial pet
keeping practices', implying 'biosociality',
especially something that is not to be eaten
[hence the revulsion for cultures who do eat dogs]
There are also companion species, which include
anything that makes life for humans what it is
[her examples include 'rice, peas, tulips, and
intestinal flora' (15)]. They show four 'tones'
combining in a music. We can grasp the first one
through evolutionary biology touching on the
controversies about what a species is — a real
entity or taxonomic category. More recently,
biology has had even more problems with its
categories, and we now know that 'the machinic and
the textual are internal to the organic and vice
versa'. Secondly, there are philosophical
dimensions based on difference and different
notions of causes. Thirdly there is her Catholic
heritage of real presence and 'transsubstantiated
signs of the flesh', the join of the material and
the semiotic still unacceptable to Protestants
including American academics. Fourth, inspired by
Marx and Freud, 'the species' means something of
financial worth [via a pun on 'specie', and the
connection between gold and shit]. That connects
with dogs and their commodity culture, the kit you
have to buy, including pooper scoopers [Haraway
sees them as a joke]. The four characteristics
combine in 'co-constitution, finitude, impurity,
historicity and complexity' (16), the 'implosion
of nature and culture'.
We can use the term interpellation as in Althusser
to show how subjects are constituted from concrete
individuals via hailing. Animals also hail us and
we hail them and there are major consequences for
both. There also ways of living together that are
not exhausted by ideology.
You can see this from a true story she has while
writing as a sportswriter's daughter. She saw her
father write and file the game stories, using
particular tropes and vivid prose, writing the
story not just describing the game. She is also
influenced by both the Church and the Press, both
scorned by science and yet nevertheless
'indispensable' in the hunger for truth. So signs
in flesh, stories, and facts were always
considered together, as a kind of prelude for
culture and nature imploding later. We can even
see the term companion species as an example of
what St John called '"the Word was made flesh"'.
She also studied science and realised that that
also has to couple story and fact despite all the
positivist claims. In biology, for example
accounting for evolution 'was not so different
from getting a game story filed or living with the
conundrums of the incarnation' (19). Biologists
have to stick to their story even if it has
discordance and contradictions.
The etymological differences between facts and
performance, something done and over, simply means
making 'the deadlines for getting into the next
edition of the paper'. Fiction also refers to
action, but also forming and occasionally
feigning, something still in process. [I think
she's saying both are required to tell the story
of living with dogs, where '"the relation" is the
smallest possible unit of analysis' (20). She
makes a living with these stories.
All stories have tropes — 'figures of speech
necessary to say anything at all' — but from the
Greek also a notion of swerving or tripping.
Language never offers direct meaning but always
has tropes. Her favourite trope for dog tales is
'"metaplasm"', changing a word to add or invert
letters, syllables or sounds, intentional or
unintentional. We find these in the way in which
dog and human flesh and their codes of life are
remodelled. There is also a biological connotation
in the plasm bit. Metaplasm can be a mistake or
stumbling, or something that 'makes a fleshly
difference'. Substituting bases in nucleic acid
can be seen as a metaplasm which alters the course
of a life. Deliberate crossbreeding among dog
breeders also affects population and diversity.
The whole purpose is to invert meaning, transpose
communication, remould and remodel — 'swervings
that tell the truth' (21).
Dogs and people 'figure a universe' which can
include cyborgs, which also raise questions of
history's politics and ethics, and involve 'care,
flourishing, differences in power, scales of time'
(21) — for example they can change the temporal
scale of labour systems or consumption patterns,
and can affect the work of human scavengers for
toxic waste.
We need both art and engineering, couplings of
humans and landscapes, for example. [There is a
photo of a sheep herding dogs, for example, 22, —
'a cyborg composite' it turns out, offering an
ironic reversal of the usual understanding]. A
sculptor, Goldsworthy, shows scales and flows of
time through various objects including ice
crystals, rock canyons, stone walls. One of his
works in the 1990s involved tracing 'an ancient
drovers' sheep route'(23), taking photos and then
assembling and disassembling a red sandstone arch
across various places. The sculpture addressed
among other things the story of the enclosures and
the 'fraught ties between England and Scotland',
'geography, history, and natural history'. There
have also been popular British TV shows about
sheepdogs — border collies and the sport they
engage in [apparently now known as the sport of
agility], which has led to people buying them for
pets and then abandoning them. This shows the
importance of the labour of the shepherd and the
sheep in producing the dog. Ethical issues are
also raised by Goldsworthy — 'the art of
naturecultures', of relations of significant
others — and that's what we need to understand the
relations of peoples and dogs. A series of 'shaggy
dog stories' (25) ensue — both 'idiosyncratic and
indicative rather than systematic, tendentious
more than judicious and rooted in contingent
foundations'. Parts do not add up to wholes. The
idea is to identify partial connections, including
counterintuitive and incongruent ones. These are
'necessary to getting on together '.
Stories about the origin of dogs are perhpas too
significant for their fans, 'high romance and
sober science all mixed up together', touching on
human migrations, scales and intelligence, the
development of breeds, separating out genetic and
environmental factors, establishing origins,
relations between modern dogs and wolves are all
at stake. A news item told of some new research on
dog evolution and the history of domestication
which attracted widespread attention and 'florid
consumption' (27). Is also highly controversial
with no account unchallenged. That's clearly
because what is at stake is what counts as nature
and culture, and what and who counts as an actor.
Dogs are supposed to be the first domestic
animals. One story says that humans also made
themselves through the creation of their tools —
'a dogsbody version of onanism'(28). Domestication
of dogs made civilisation possible, despite Hegel
or Freud. Dogs stand for all species which have
been subjected to human beings. The ususal story
is of a fall from nature into culture. There are
now remodelled versions that say dogs made the
first move, and since then there is been 'an
unending dance of distributed and heterogeneous
agencies'. Some of this is based on a study of
mitochondrial DNA showing that dogs diverged from
wolves as recently as 15,000 years ago, initially
in East Asia before spreading over the whole earth
accompanying humans. It might have been because
wolf dogs saw the 'calorie bonanzas' in human
waste dumps, and behavioural and genetic
adaptation followed leading to eventually 'more
confident parallel occupation' (29). Apparently
Russian fur foxes also display many of the traits
associated with domestication and have become a
kind of proto humanised dog. The course of human
intervention has shaped the different sorts of
dogs that appear, but 'flexibility and
opportunism' is the game played by both species.
This story questions sharp divisions of nature and
culture — differential reproduction cannot be seen
as either artificial or natural, behavioural
ecology might play as big part as actual human
'intentions'. Biotechnology is clearly
appropriate, but some people see dogs as somehow
more active in their adaptation and co-evolution.
As a result, we have to rethink domestication and
co-evolution, seeing them as emergent processes
rather than some sort of Fall. Cohabiting is not
just a sentimental matter — it is 'multiform, at
stake, unfinished, consequential' (30).
Co-evolution means both biological and cultural
change. There may even be some molecular sharing
in genomes, shared immune systems, for example.
Some people have argued that even the capacity for
speech emerges only after dogs take over jobs that
require scent and sound, but she is 'sceptical' of
the specifics. More promising are recent ideas in
'ecological developmental biology'as in Gilbert's
work based on 'developmental triggers and timing',
drawing on new molecular techniques and many other
disciplines. 'Differential, context specific
plasticities are the rule, sometimes genetically
assimilated and sometimes not' (32), with no split
between environment and genetic factors. Generally
the world is full of life — squids developed light
sensing organs only if their embryos have been
colonised by particular bacteria. Human guts
require bacterial flora. Diverse animal forms
emerge from 'salty bacterial soup'. Bacteria are
crucial to all life histories. Overall, this shows
that Earth's beings are always opportunistic,
ready to form partnerships and develop
symbiogenesis. Co-constitutive species and
co-evolution of the rule not the exception. We can
take these as tropes which 'make us want to look
need to listen for surprises that get us out of
inherited boxes'.
Dogs also feature in love stories. They apparently
offer unconditional love. They are treated as
children. This is a form of abuse for Haraway.
There have always been 'a vast range of ways of
relating'. Humans tend to realise their intentions
in their tools and animals — 'humanist
technophiliac narcissism' (33), which may extend
to canines. There are other accounts of living
with dogs — e.g. Ackerley ['an important novelist,
famous homosexual, and splendid writer'] who
decided to find out what his dog needed and
desired. There is no unconditional love but a
genuine attempt to 'inhabit an intersubjective
world that is about meeting the other in all the
fleshly detail of a mortal relationship' (34) — so
for example he set out to find an adequate sexual
partner for his dog. He pursued 'unswerving
dedication to his dog's significant otherness'. He
and his dog mattered to each other. They also
misrecognised each other. It was 'worldly,
face-to-face love' (35), a permanent search for
knowledge with inevitable unintended consequences,
just like love between humans [Haraway extends it
as a possibility even to inanimate objects]. Other
dog people [Weisser] use the word love sparingly.
They show responsibility, and caring for dogs,
which might even involve killing aggressive ones
to rescue the reputation of the breed, and they
learn about science and medicine. They tolerate
occasional bad behaviour, and see the pleasure in
sharing life with the different being, not a kind
of child. She knows there are language barriers so
that any contact is bound to be brief and
different.
Haraway sees being a pet as 'a demanding job for a
dog, requiring self-control and canine emotional
and cognitive skills matching those of good
working dogs' (38). It is obvious that play with
humans brings joy to all, but there are special
risks of abandonment or inconvenience. Lots of
'serious dog people' recommend that dogs have jobs
as well, and do not depend on a perception of
love. Another memoir from a sheepdog trial also
shows respect and trust, occasionally for the
dog's better judgement, but not love, 'a
problematic fantasy' (39). We need these
understandings of working dogs because 'otherwise,
love kills, unconditionally, both kinds and
individuals'.
Training stories are also popular [and she quotes
one of her own drawn from her earlier work Notes
of a Sportswriter's Daughter].
She has a dog called Cayenne and notes the
relationship it formed with her godson. The dog
was a quick learner. The child saw her as like a
machine. Haraway wanted proper communication. She
was the only adult. 'Intersubjectivity does not
mean "equality"' (41), especially with dogs, but
rather 'significant otherness'. She got through by
persuading the child to think of the dog as a
partner in a martial art of obedience [the child
was into martial arts], requiring training of the
kind that he had had.
There are behaviorist learning theories in the dog
training world, some of them 'informed by bio
behavioural research' (43), aiming to
produce relationships 'of energetic attention'
that reward both humans and dogs. She suspects
that her godson has had a similar pedagogy
nowadays. The desired behaviour is instantly
rewarded. There is wholesale replacement of the
old '"discipline and punish" iceberg'. There is no
permissiveness, but rather 'near total control'
(44) necessary for teamwork, knowledge of the
other and trust. Dogs have to be trained first to
see human beings as the only source of anything
good — no romping or release except as a reward.
Humans keep detailed records of response rates.
Dogs find compensation in receiving regular
rewards, and learn to learn. They do not just
'morosely comply' (45). The dogs have to enjoy and
humans must enjoy playing in an appropriate way —
they must see what dogs are actually like, develop
'otherness-in–connection'. There is no 'room for
romanticism'. Instead there is 'disciplined
attention and honest achievement'. There is no
violence. The techniques aim at eliminating
training mistakes which can be both painful and
dangerous. This is still 'a severely limited
discourse and a rough instrument' but it is enough
to critique 'success oriented, individualist
America'. Taylorism finds a place in dog training,
although generalising it would be unwarranted, and
claims must not be inflated or decontextualised
into general praise for positive training. Using
the techniques -- 'pedagogy of positive bondage'
(46) — at least stops inconsistency and dishonest
evaluations. It does offer dogs 'serious,
historically specific kind of freedom', making
them safe in our environment. 'I think my dogs
rather like ruff tough love' (47), although her
godson 'remains more sceptical'.
Another animal trainer [Hearne] is more sceptical
and also opposes animal-rights. However, she also
shares an interest in what dogs might be telling
us in all their complexity and particularity, and
how this is needed if we are to relate to them.
Differences over methods could be resolved by
further research, including on the
'incommensurable tacit knowledges in diverse
communities of practice' (49). The point is
communication across 'irreducible difference',
'partial connection' based on respect. One point
she discusses is the use of ordinary language.
Anthropomorphism is acceptable to her, found for
example in 'linguistic practices of circus
trainers, equestrians, and dog obedience
enthusiasts', but its main role seems to be
keeping humans aware 'that somebody is at home in
the animals they work with' (50).
We can never know animal others, but we can treat
them with respect. Again there is a theological
commentary referring to the negative way of
knowing God — we have to first of all reject
projections based on our own self. All ethical
relations involve 'ongoing alertness to
otherness–in–relation' (50). We are obliged to
attend to the other. Dog survival indicates that
they are good at reading humans as well. At least
ascribing intention to animals stops 'literalist
anthropomorphism' that sees animals literally as
humans — this is inherent in animal-rights
discourses for Hearne. Instead, the main
achievement follows from 'the hierarchical
discipline of companion animal training… Action
[which is] beautiful, hard, specific, and
personal' (51), no general or abstract
comparisons.
Some writers equate the Holocaust with butchery of
animals, or liken domestication of animals to
slavery, but Hearne insists on specific linguistic
and ethical responses. She advocates 'ontological
choreography' where skilled humans converse with
skilled dogs, as the key for animal happiness —
those satisfactions 'that come from striving, from
work'(52). Again there is no room for abstraction
— there are specific happinesses, especially
flourishing as a conjoined being. This might even
replace conventional humanism with 'Jeffersonian
caninism', because the origin of rights for Hearne
is in 'committed relationship', not separate
identities. In relationships like animal training
dogs and humans 'construct "rights" in each other'
— owners also have to learn to obey their dogs.
The point is to enter into an appropriate
relationship involving rights 'rooted in
reciprocal possession'. This replaces the old
ideas of slavery, or even ownership — it will
develop moral understanding and achievement for us
as well as dogs. It also means we are obliged to
do more than just relieve the suffering of animals
— we need to help them flourish. [Incidentally,
Hearne citing political theorists like Jefferson
is seen as an example of metaplasm].
Back to a story about agility training based on her
own work. One of her dogs did not find much
satisfaction in ordinary retrieving, but developed
'meta-retrieving' (55), watching retrievers
intently and wanting to interfere playfully —
retrievers become like sheep the sheepdogs.
A letter she writes to a fellow dog trainer mocks
the 'cosmic arrogance of US culture (in this case,
ourselves)' (57) in seeing the things that go
wrong in agility contests as their mistakes.
A history of the 'sport of dog agility' developed
out of training by the police and the army in
Britain. Men were the early enthusiasts.
Competition and commercialisation produced more
variability in terms of gender and class. It
spread from Britain around the world and to the
USA and by 2000 there were thousands of
participants. There are accompanying videos and
magazines. The sport is increasingly technically
demanding. Dogs have not seen the course until
they run it and are steered by human signals,
voice and body. It can be an expensive hobby it is
'not trivial for dogs or people' (16). It is still
amateur. She feels guilty about participating,
although she sees them as acts of love which can
breed other acts of love like caring about other
worlds. This is the 'core of my companion species
manifesto' (61). Dog training is good in itself
and it also makes us more alert to 'the demands of
significant otherness at all the scales'
principles of relating to dogs with trust applied
to other relationships, and coaches showed
trainers exactly 'what gestures, actions and
attitudes block trust', even if they seem small or
insignificant. 'The goal is the oxymoron of
disciplined spontaneity' (62), to be coherent
enough in an incoherent world. The trick is to try
to live like that at every scale.
She sees her work as akin to Latour's. She has
worked at both the evolutionary level and the
specific, working 'fractally, re-inscribing
similar shapes of attention, listening, and
respect' (63) but there is another larger scale —
historical time. King works on recognising
emergent forms of consciousness in globalisation,
distributed agencies made of locals and globals.
'Dogland' is similar. A feminist anthropologist
[Tsing] investigates what counts as the global in
transnational financial dealing. There were
activities of '"scale making"' rather than
activities focused on existing entities like
frontiers and centres. Tadiar describes living
historical labour which locates subjects in
systems of power. They are not just raw material.
Haraway wants to include dogs and sees dogs that
guard livestock or herd, and their emergent
'institutionalised breeds' as shaping a worldly
consciousness, an 'imagined community' even if it
is one that can only be negatively named as above.
This is why she tells 'declarative stories' of
different kinds, based on the 'breed history', a
combination of 'lay and scientific... Oral
experimental and experiential evidence' (65)
[And then there is a bit that apparently leads to
following stories — so this must be the intro?]
social theory page
|
|