The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Paradigm)

Haraway is a titan of feminist studies of science and technology, but did you also know that she’s a crazy dog lady? The Companion Species Manifesto is a love letter to Canis familiaris in general, and Cayenne Pepper, an Australian Shepherd, in particular.

This brief volume is a sequel-parody of her famous Cyborg Manifesto (may we all write something so wildly interpreted), but focusing on dogginess, the love of dogs, the intense awareness and trust of human/dog agility competition, domesticity, significant otherness, knotty prehensions and technobiopolitics. It is 100% Haraway, and totally weird and incomprehensible. Meditations on feminist approaches to science studies intertwine with descriptions of dog training methods, and the ongoing conflict between AKC ‘purity’ and working dog hybridity.

I can’t say what I got out of this book. Honestly, I tend to take Haraway as performance art, an academic version of Lord Buckley. It’s cool, well-researched, and very flashy, but almost impossible to follow.