Haraway, Donna J. “Cyborgs to Companion Species: Reconfiguring Kinship in Technoscience,” The Haraway Reader, New York: Routledge, 2004. 295-320.
In this essay, Haraway expands upon her Cyborg Manifesto to consider the broader interactions of humans and technologies with the animal kingdom. Addressing issues of identity and difference, and our relationship to ourselves and others, she thoroughly blends what are normally seen as “distinct” categories between humans, animals, nature, and technology. Haraway argues that we are constantly (re)creating ourselves based upon our social interactions with others (be they animal, human, plant, or machine). It is both the recognition of the Other as not-us, and yet still somehow part of us through the process of interacting, that is essential to the creation of meaning, and how that meaning is the basis of what we call culture. Since meanings can never be “fixed,” self and Other are constantly changing, and thus changing culture. Haraway briefly traces an evolutionary theory about how certain genetic traits in wolves actually "encouraged" the development of the domesticated dog alongside humans.
Haraway, Donna J. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2008.
When Species Meet is a further exploration of Haraway's Companion Species Manifesto (which grew out of the Cyborg Manifesto). Haraway analyzes various meetings of humans and animals, from the relationship of a zookeeper with his/her animals, to cloning animals for scientific purposes, to her personal interactions with her dogs in the agility ring, to the raising of livestock for food. Perhaps most important for understanding Haraway's theories, however, is section II: it illuminates how Haraway grew into the cyborg and companion species manifestos, by discussing her relationship with her father. Here we find out that her father had been paralyzed from tuberculosis as a child, and so grew up using crutches as an extension of his body; the family never saw the crutches as external devices; they were a part of him, of who he was. She explores how these webbed interactions, these kinships, make new categories and unmake others; citing Mary Pratt, she calls these interactions contact zones and situates them both historically, socially, and politically. For Haraway, there is never an individual; it is always an individual-in-context, a context that includes the entire web of life and the constantly shifting relations of all species in a dance of co-creation.
Brooke, Robert. "Ethnographic Practice as a Means of Invention," Voices and Visions: Refiguring Ethnography in Composition. Kirklighter, Vincent, Moxley, eds. Portsmouth: Boyton/Cook, 1997. 11-23.
Brooke argues that ethnography is politically and historically situated, and therefore no ethnographer's findings can ever be "objective." He addresses issues of representation and power -- who is representing whom and for whom? He asks us to consider where the categories we study come from and how they change as we write. What are the possibilities of seeing something as meaningful when we must consider how we locate ourselves when we write? Brooke states that, "because science cannot be neutral, the politics of the researcher must be explicit." After analyzing some of his classroom observations and what he wrote, he then discusses the significant changes a publisher required of his work, and asks us to consider what we surrender in order to meet the needs of our audience(s). Most significantly, Brooke notes how, as a young researcher, he saw what he had been trained to see. Now being aware of that training, he asks that we consider how we approach our subjects and our classrooms, if we see them one way and not another.
