Companion species and comrades: a critique of ‘plural relating’ in Donna Haraway's theory manifestos

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores Donna Haraway's manifesto writing, focusing on the ethical prescription of how to relate with human and nonhuman others. Haraway prescribes a compass, however broad, about how the human species should connect with nonhumans, foregrounding unexpected kinships, multispecies flourishing, mutuality and the ability to respond to significant others. I call this an ethics of ‘plural relating’, a relating that regards potential partnerships with all existence on earth, irrespectively of their biological and cognitive status, from insects to dogs and bacteria to pigeons. I argue that while useful for opening affective bridges with nonhuman others, plural relating may end up advancing a loose and problematic figure of bonding that mirrors neoliberal ‘fluid’ relationalities. By discussing my own ethnographic research on an ‘invasive species’ and paying attention to the intensity of bonding and the agency of bonding parts, I hold that plural relating runs the danger of obscuring processes of social antagonism and reproducing structures of domination. I argue that the question should not just be how we relate with beneficial or harmful animal others but a more overall one: how do we relate with those others who share the same desire for changing or abolishing repressive institutions in a socio-economic context that favours partial relating? For this end, stronger figures of bonding, such as the comrade, have to be embraced.