Exploring care ethics through a more-than-human lens - Donna Haraway

Bio: Donna J Haraway, researcher and sci-fi writer (USA)

Background info: Donna J Haraway is American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States. She is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies, and a leading scholar in contemporary ecofeminism, post-humanism and new materialism movements. Some of her most acclaimed books include: ‘A cyborg manifesto’ (1985) 'When species meet' (2008) and ‘Staying with the trouble: making kin in the Chthulucene’ (2016).

In creating this MOOC we have been particularly inspired by the conceptual over-laps between caring-with and Haraway’s reflections on becoming with the more-than-human. For Haraway caring, and thus becoming response-able,

"means becoming subject to the unsettling obligation of curiosity, which requires knowing more at the end of the day than at the beginning” (2008:36) (see also U2: Lesson 2).

In this lecture (1h 20 min long) titled ‘Storytelling for multispecies and care’ from March 2021, Prof Donna Haraway, tries to answer two urgent questions:

• How do we practice multispecies justice and care in these times?
• How do we practice the act of flourishing together?

Her point of departure is that we are ‘entangled’ beings with the rest of the world (so against human exceptionalism), situated in life worlds, and that, quoting Anna Tsing, we must develop the ‘arts of living on a damaged planet’. In order to do so we must remain especially attentive to differing power relations.