Page 128 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

if you have close personal contact with wild animals you experience that animal

with a wonderment and you feel a responsibility and a love for it, which is what

drives proper conservation."

To return to Donna Haraway: she is vigorously, humanly engaged and

exhilarated by the messy entanglements that arise between species in the

ordinary everyday mundane world. She never avoids conflicting opinions and

greatly enjoys engaging her messmates, as she calls them. Entangled as we are

in a complex web of connectivity, she recommends and embodies a general

attitude of courtesy, curiosity and respect.

Haraway encourages us to pay full attention to the vicissitudes of animals’ lives;

she exhorts us to be grateful for the sacrifices made for the food we eat, include

gratitude for the lives of lab animals who have helped in making certain diseases

less lethal; keep the vivisectionists in our thoughts; be aware as well of the

circumstances of feral and domesticated pets and all wild creatures. Do not back

away from their suffering, but use it to inform our human choices, improve their

lives and ours, minimize suffering when and how you can. Do not be overly

human-cherishing.

Like a good ex-Catholic, she hands out a short list of commandments for

everyone to consider before confession: 1) do not be self-certain 2) do not

relegate those who eat differently to a subclass of vermin, underprivileged or

unenlightened 3) insist on knowing more, including scientifically, and feeling

more, including scientifically, about how to eat well—together. She knows that in

order to steer clear of moral ambiguity and self-righteousness as humans, we

have to cultivate and suffer permanent moral and intellectual indigestion.

Haraway’s next book, appropriately entitled Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin

in the Chthulucene (September, 2016), grew out of the essay that inspired this

issue on “Making Kin.” Her work is important for all species, including ours.