Three valuable points to take away from this interview:

1. Respect animal Otherness

"[dogs and other companion species] are beings of another species in deep encounter with us and are Not furry children, and they are NOT givers of this thing called unconditional love--which is really a terrible fantasy; that they are beings with real needs and agendas and ways of being-in-the-world that are in interaction with us... So for me companion species is a place to inhabit, to try to figure out how to live well with the crowd that we all are."

"[I]nstead of terms like humanism, or post-humanism, or anti-humanism, or whatever-humanism...the debates of humanism, that I think still consider to regard us as uniquely exceptional, human exception as such that what counts as human by expelling everything else...everything that is expelled from that which is human, makes the human that is what's left...for example mind and language are often become what is left. For me the notion of companion species walks right around that debate..."

2. Reconceptualize human identity

"[W]e have never been human; we and everybody else are always already a crowd of intra- and interrelations... that no matter where you hold still... what you find are relations in process, and what you find are that the actors are the products of those relations, not pre-established, finished, closed-off things that enter into relationship, but rather we are what come out of relating and go into the next relating..."

"[We must] become much smarter about how that category [of the human] is made, what kind of tool it is, who lives and dies inside that category, what kind of work that category should still be doing, when that category should be interrupted..." -*-

3. Toward a process-relational ethic (and avoiding dualism)

"Animal rights law and thinking...pays way too little attention to the flourishing, important, precious, long history of human and other critter interrelationship...very little honoring the working, playing, living relationships...rather humans are either protectors or violators and never really partners...We don't necessarily set the terms of our discourse, BUT I think we must be much more creative about inventing new categories that are close enough to ones that are already legible, already usable, but also move away and move towards something more livable..."

"I really do think...that there is a MAJOR disdain for working relation with animals...that protection of animals from people is the goal. And I think that this is an outrage; so that it isn't just the rights discourse, its the actual caring about, loving, living with, figuring out how to make flourish, the relationships with human being and other domestic animals, and considering us a domestic animals...I want to try to think through how to live better from inside that knot and not from a position that we are either protectors or violators..."

-*- Favoite quote

Can working animals go on strike?

"Animal rights law and thinking...pays way too little attention to the flourishing, important, precious, long history of human and other critter interrelationship...very little honoring the working, playing, living relationships...rather humans are either protectors or violators and never really partners.."

Donna Haraway makes a lot of fascinating, thought-provoking points in this interview, and I wholeheartedly agree with her about animals being "other" in a true sense, not infantile versions of human beings, and I also cheered at the part where she takes apart the notion of animals granting "unconditional love" to human beings.

However, I think that in promoting the idea of humans as "companion species" in "partnership" with non-human animals, she is ignoring the real power imbalance that exists in human beings' "working, playing, living relationships" with other species. It is wonderful that she thinks of her own dogs as partners in this way, but nevertheless it is her choice to have a "working relationship" with the dogs in her life. The dogs who participate in the agility sport may do so willingly and even joyfully, however they do not have an equal say as to the terms of their "work." (Work is really a human idea anyway... when we talk about "working" animals we are really talking about animals we use in accomplishing OUR work, aren't we? )

In the example of the ethical ranchers she cites who are dog breeders as well as raising cattle, the disparity is even more stark. Surely if it were up to the cows, they would not choose to be shipped to a slaughterhouse, killed and eaten by their "companion" species.

We are, in fact, the ones with the power to decide the fates of non-human animals and even of entire species, and that is the reality we have to grapple with. While Haraway may be right to criticize the current discourse of animal rights as being too dualistic in seeing humans as protectors or violators, I think that her celebration of the "flourishing, important, precious, long history of human and other critter interrelationship" glosses over worlds of pain and misery inflicted on animals for the sole benefit of humans.

As for animal "husbandry" practices becoming a museum exhibit in the future, well... I don't think that the fact that human domination of other species has a long history is a convincing argument to keep it going any more than it would now be considered a convincing argument for preserving the "working relationship" between slave owners and their human slaves. That has a pretty long history too.

Am I missing something? The woman is fine with killing animals for her dining pleasure, punishes her dog for not performing to her expectations and thinks dogs are of another world and should not be forced into the human world but supports breeding them? Lauren, I don't understand why you admire her. She makes many self-contradictory statements, wasn't insightful and her writing is painfully academic. Case in point: "When Species Meet is about the entanglements of beings in technoculture that work through reciprocal inductions to shape companion species." I found her comments not worthwhile.

Despite my praise for this interview and admiration of Donna Haraway's ingenuity in general, I very much agree with Alexandra's criticism of Haraway's asymmetrical relation with her companion animals. I think the conception of companion species is very clever and useful in disrupting imperialistic humanistic identity, but I am also very concerned with Haraway embracing institutional mechanisms of colonizing animal Others' bodies and genomes.

Haraway is not alone in her praise for the rich "history" of human-animal relations. Michael Pollan is also a supporter of "humane" animal agri-culture because it is a celebration and conservation of domestic animals who are, according to him, both beautiful human artifacts as well as coevolutionary partners (Pollan Food, Ethics, and Environment Conference). The major difference between Haraway and Pollan is the formers' technophilism and the latter's techno-sceptisism. Both, though, seem to follow what I'd call an "eco/trans-humanism"--despite Haraway's noteworthy suggestion that we abandon humanist discourses.

Concealing Domination: A Hidden Humanist Agenda?
I think Lauren brings up a really important point, that just as identity politics became instrumental to gaining recognition and privilege, postmodernism came along and proclaimed that identity was BS. In this sense, by abandoning humanist discourse *and* accepting reproductive and psycho-social coercion of animal Others, Haraway veils the humanist ideology behind her privileging such a humanist project. As anti-immigrationists hide their racism behind discourses of economics and civil rights and many libertarians want to dissolve borders to allow for cheaper labor (and exploitation of foreign people), it seems as if Haraway (unintentionally/indifferently) does the same in the case of legitimatizing power over "companion species."

As animals can be instrumentalized and conformed to human will, reconceptions of identity do not become so much liberating as they are oppressive and dominating. As Hariet Ritvo explored in Animal Estate, dog breeding was related to class affirmation and privilege over mixed breeds and foreign nationalities. Boria Sax, in rebuttles to his review of When Species Meet, comments
"..it is very hard to tell whether Haraway is fighting human dominance, concealing it, or expressing it. Take, for example, her work in dog training. When a trainer gives commands and the dog is expected to follow them exactly, this can certainly appear to be the ultimate extreme of dominance. One might reply (as I believe Haraway does) that impression is only predicated on the idea that the dog is something separate from the human being, but if human identity is expanded to include the dog that dominance disappears. But is this just an elaborate rationalization?... Experience suggests that we may be able to expand our definitions of "humanity" indefinitely, yet the drive toward dominance will remain at least as strong... Expanding the human realm is not the same thing as limiting human dominance" (Sax "Haraway's Technophilia" I, "Haraway's Technophilia" II)

Wildness and Domesticity
Ironically, technophilic post-structuralists like Haraway and mythopoetic, quasi-(bio)essentialists like Paul Shepard (see The Others) share something in common. Although Haraway's transhumanism (though, she'll never call it that) and Shepard's deep ecology seem at first radically different in their advocacy--one oriented towards the future, the other towards the past--, they converge in their applications. Both ideologies result in an instrumentalization of animals through relationship where human identity shifts as they come into contact with their Others. Though Shepard shuns domesticity and domestic versions of wild animals, he does so out of a pity for their supposed diminished being. Haraway seems to suggest the inverse: she welcomes wild species to fuse into human civilization/identity through imposing human deliberation upon their being to perhaps make them better or more privileged than those in the wild by bringing them closer. (Sax Review of When Species Meet)

"Killing Well": Who's at the end of the waiting line?
Haraway also insinuates, like Shepard, that animals can be killed well ("killing well"). Instead of categorizing a being as "killeable," one recognizes the subjectivity and desires of the animal Other. This may sound all fine and good, but it seems more insidious to me. Killing another "subject" well may be more honest, however, to frame the killing of another who enjoys living and acting in his/her world as something that can be made acceptable if done "well" opens up more doors than most would feel comfortable opening up. For instance, if "we have never been human" and non-human animals can be killed well, then why not kill H. sapiens well. Perhaps eliminating certain genes and cultures and breeding improved and better ones, the eugenics project, is a noble goal. How can one ever justify killing one well and the impossibility of killing another well. Although, I do not universally condemn the killing of animal Others, I feel that there is a tremendous difference between re-institutionalizing human domination over animals in the idea of a transformative identity and meely choosing to live the least harmful lifestyle within the context of one's local ecology.

Relationality and Outsideness
Last year I was a major supporter of relational ethics, and i still am, but I am increasingly becoming skeptical of them. Communitarianism creates fairly rigid (and potentially violent) boundaries and rites, and relational-ethics like Confucianism often carry with them dominating assymetries. I'm even skeptical of Midgley's idea of a 'mixed community' now. Even though she writes that a mixed community is not composed of concentric circles as J Baird Callicott imagines in is Leopoldian extentionist framework, Midgley almost always privileges human interests over animal other interests. [Although, to be fair, she is a great proponent of animal personhood and welfare].

I think liberals have a point, now, in stressing the value of independence/outsideness. The more distanced one is, the more critical one can become of oppressive systems. By immersing human identity and epistemology so intimately into relations with other species (and techologies), one increases the risk of unquestionably accepting such asymmetrical relations. yes, we may be intrinsically relational beings, but as agents we can *choose* who we affiliate with and *how*. Personally, I don't think respectful/caring intentions are sufficient for ethical/acceptable behavior, one must also consider the processes and consequences. Josephine Donovan's diaological care ethic, I believe, is a better mode of engagig and flourishing *with* animal others.