Donna Haraway: An Analysis Of Co-Extinction Between Nature And Culture

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For lack of a better word, Donna Haraway is a strange writer. However, underneath her unnecessarily obscure word choices and endless tangents, there is actually a fairly interesting point being made. Her point essentially revolves what she calls ‘companion species’. In her view, the world has spent far too much time forcing a distinction between nature and culture, when in her opinion the difference is arbitrary. In fact, to illustrate this she even coined the term ‘natureculture’ which she uses to describe our society as a whole. To her, everything within these naturecultures can then be described as companion species; combinations of the natural and the technical which clearly illustrate her point which is basically that nothing can be described …show more content…

Given her fondness for dogs (although fondness is a bit of an understatement), it makes sense that she would see dogs as an excellent example of a companion species, even more so than most given our unique relationship with dogs. In many ways, dogs and humans share a co-evolutional story. It started thousands of years back, when the first dogs began following humans around an eating their trash. After that the two species began to grow together, with humans learning to adapt to dogs in society as companions, and with dogs slowly evolving to better suit the needs of their …show more content…

What it seems that she fails to realize, is that categories such as this exist for a reason. We as human beings need distinctions such as natural and cultural in order to better organize our collective thoughts. Regardless of what she might think, categorizations are made for a reason, nor are they made solely with the intention of benefiting specific interest groups. She seems to be suggesting that we need to abandon all our basic ideas and start looking at everything her way, which quite simply is not worth the effort. The best she can truly hope for is a redefinition of our categories using more updated ideas and viewpoints, anything more seems

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