| Thursday, June 26, 2008 11:13AM | | | | Post-Human and Post-Animal | Posted By: Boria Sax
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| Tags: Posthuman, Donna Haraway, cyborg, When Species Meet, | Donna J. Haraway. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. x + 423 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, notes, index. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8166-5046-0.
Reviewed by: Boria Sax, Independent Scholar.
Published by: H-Nilas (April, 2008)
Human and Post-Animal
In When Species Meet, Donna Haraway describes the rapport of a trainer with her dog as a model of how animal and human may be joined, almost as a single being, by bonds of shared purpose, understanding, and concern. In her view, the relationship between human beings and technologies is not one of exploitation but of mutual adaptation, and human beings and animals who work together intimately, in a bond that she calls one of "companion species," therefore must also change one another.
In Haraway's previous work, especially "A Cyborg Manifesto," her abstractions are often so detached from any practical context that, to me at least, they seem to conceal more than they explain.[1] Realizing that theory is not enough to communicate her impressions, in this book she supplements theory with personal experience. Haraway writes movingly not only of her dog, Cayenne, but also, for example, of her father, a sports writer, who inspired her. She tells about her initiation into the world of dog shows, and the tribulations, triumphs, and frustrations that she and her canine companion have shared.
But Haraway writes almost nothing about how the activities of dog fanciers have come under intense criticism for the past several decades. According to critics, the division of dogs into breeds mirrors, and sanctions, the division of society into classes.[2] The emphasis of pure breeds, extended to human beings, has provided important rationalizations for Nazism and other racialist agendas.[3] Furthermore, critics maintain, canine breeds are unhealthy, since inbreeding renders the dogs subject to genetic diseases. Breeds are not even authentic, since they cannot be maintained without continual and intensive human intervention. The routines that dogs are trained to do are a symbolic affirmation of human dominance over the natural world. And, perhaps most pragmatically, humane organizations object to the idea of breeding more dogs, when mutts in shelters are continually being euthanized by the thousands for lack of homes.[4]
I would not necessarily expect Haraway to pedantically respond to all of the criticisms of dog breeding and training, for one thing because such debates seldom convert people of opposing views. But the sort of apotheosis that she finds in training would seem not only more plausible but also more precious if she acknowledged that there might be a substantial price to pay, for both the animals and the human beings. As it stands, When Species Meet is often a touching book and sometimes a wise one, but it is usually not a very probing one....
Continued at:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=244481209656592
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