Exploring Canine Psychology: Unveiling the Thought Processes of Man's Best Friend
In a world grappling with ecological crisis and social injustice, philosopher and eco-feminist theorist Donna Haraway offers a unique perspective on kinship. Haraway, the subject of the documentary "Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival," views "making kin" as a deliberate, ethical process of forming relationships that extend beyond traditional family ties, encompassing multispecies and ecological connections.
Haraway's interpretation of kinship is not limited to biological relationships but includes consequential connections to the more-than-human world. For her, kin can be cousins, dogs, or any entity that shares a mutual, obligatory, non-optional relationship that carries consequences. This perspective emphasizes response-ability—the active capability and responsibility to respond and care for others within an interconnected, often damaged earthly environment.
In human-animal relationships, "making kin" signifies cultivating bonds that recognize mutual dependency and shared existence across species boundaries. Haraway stresses the importance of these kinship ties as a way to counter fragmentation in a world marked by ecological crisis and social injustice. It involves recognizing animals, technologies, and even non-human entities as part of one's kin network, fostering ethical entanglements and cooperative relations rather than domination or separation.
This concept is central to Haraway’s posthuman and multispecies thought, where kinship is not fixed but dynamically made through ongoing interactions (“becoming-with”) among diverse beings. It challenges anthropocentrism by proposing kinship practices that embrace difference, companionship, and collaborative survival in the "Chthulucene"—her proposed epoch of multispecies co-evolution and responsibility.
An interview between Haraway and Steve Paulson, discussing topics ranging from octopus eggs and skinny-dipping in the phosphorescent ocean off Woods Hole to the urgent need for care across generations, was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The interview was also the subject of the aforementioned documentary.
Haraway's work underscores the importance of forming ethical, sustaining relationships with animals and other nonhumans, fostering a shared commitment to living and thriving together on a fragile planet. By encouraging us to expand our understanding of kinship, Haraway invites us to reconsider our place in the world and our responsibilities to the environment and its inhabitants. If one considers the Monterey Bay area as kin, it implies accountabilities, obligations, and pleasures different from other places. In this way, Haraway's "making kin" is significant because it encourages humans to form ethical, sustaining relationships with animals and other nonhumans, fostering a shared commitment to living and thriving together on a fragile planet.
[1] Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. [2] Haraway, D. (2008). When Species Meet. Prickly Paradigm Press. [3] Haraway, D. (2016). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. Simian Mobile Dispatch. [4] Haraway, D. (2016). The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Prickly Paradigm Press. [5] Haraway, D. (2016). The Promise of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others. Duke University Press.
[1] In the realm of personal-growth and education-and-self-development, Donna Haraway's books such as "A Cyborg Manifesto" and "The Companion Species Manifesto" offer insights on kinship and collaboration, encouraging readers to extend their relationships beyond traditional boundaries into the realm of pets, other animals, and the environment.
[2] Embracing Haraway's ideology of "making kin," one might reconsider their lifestyle choices, prioritizing the well-being of their pets, the community, and the environment, thereby fostering ethical, sustaining relationships and promoting personal-growth in the face of ecological crisis and social injustice.
