Difference that matter: On love in the kennel of life

Cristina Pallí

doi:10.5565/rev/athenead/v1n10.305

Abstract

About dogs? Well yes, indeed! Donna Haraway, amply known in feminist theory and technoscience studies, famous for her Cyborg Manifesto, published a book which, as the subtitle makes explicit, deals with dogs, humans and significant otherness. And not just any book of modest ambition, but nothing less than a second manifesto. To find the author of the stories on cyborg-transgressions, vampire-frankensteinian monstrosities and transgenic oncomice busy with ‘dog writing’ surprised all, amazed many, and disappointed some. Granted, the work is less surprising when one knows that human-animal relationships is a thriving topic in US academic landscape nowadays. Still, the unexpected work of the person who gathered collective enthusiasm around the figure of the cyborg provoked, above all, disorientation.

Highlights

What is this astonishment due to? There can be no doubt that, on reading this book, we enter Haraway’s universe; recognisable theoretically and methodologically, the tool-box is known: figurations, partial connections, insistence upon the union of flesh-sign or fact-story, and, especially, the prominence of the notion of ‘natureculture’, that becomes a major theme in this book
Difference that matter: On love in the kennel of life Cristina Pallí Monguilod be aware that her new proposal was not as ‘shinny’ as her previous ones: no intelligent machines in the age of information society, neither biotechnological implants under the skin, not even sophisticated research on modest mice tidily confined in their experimental cages
We find ourselves in woods, fields and gardens, inhabiting stories which mix the personal and the public, private loves with theoretical passions, and daily, apparently trivial worries with the search for political articulations

Summary

Introduction

What is this astonishment due to? There can be no doubt that, on reading this book, we enter Haraway’s universe; recognisable theoretically and methodologically, the tool-box is known: figurations, partial connections, insistence upon the union of flesh-sign or fact-story, and, especially, the prominence of the notion of ‘natureculture’, that becomes a major theme in this book. These reactions have not caught Haraway by surprise. In some conferences this springtime in Barcelona[1], she herself ironically anticipated the possibility that readers think she’s growing old –not finding a better theme that the pet with which she spends winter evenings in the sofa...

Results

Conclusion