Dogs and Humans of all countries

What is a pet ? What is a species mate ? What types of exchanges between women/men and dogs have they established in the very long history of their companionship? ? How to qualify the relationships of learning and mutual knowledge that they are led to develop in current and codified practices of dressage or competition ? To use certain formulations from Vinciane Despret, avid reader of Donna Haraway and specialist in the analysis of human/animal relationships: what do animals teach us about humans, what do animals teach us about any form of relationship, what do animals teach us about what it is to learn ?

The Pet Species Manifestowhich we would also be tempted to translate by Species Companion Manifestoundertakes less to answer these questions systematically than to look at the unthought (and polysemous) continent of our “ attachments » (Bruno Latour) i.e. on how we are linked/attached as a species to an environment, as individuals to things (artifacts), and here, as humans to others and, in particular, to this very particular other that is the animal since it is both ourselves and another. Reflection takes its source in a multiple and situated experience, in the sense intended by Donna Haraway or Sandra Harding, both theorists of situated knowledge or the epistemology of “ point of view “. Donna Haraway adopts a triple, heterogeneous, incorporated point of view: that of an academic specialist in the analysis of science/culture relations and feminist theorist whose notoriety goes beyond the status of academic ; that of a white American woman of a certain age who lived in long companionship with different dogs ; that of a sports reporter’s daughter. Reflection is born from this experience, that is to say from what it produces as a possibility of understanding and knowing, whether it is a question of mobilizing the rationality and the conceptual apparatus of the academic, the knowledge bodily, tacit and formalized by the dog trainer or the generous reflexivity of the sports reporter’s daughter. In this sense, the text also takes the form of an intimate confession and as such seems to involve a risk: what to do – how to get rid of – the need to hold together the proposed analysis and the sensitive experience on which it is based. founds and claims ? What to do when this experience unites the author and the dog, two beings described as “ infertile » (p. 10) and of which “ love » is claimed as an argument for thinking, as a reality to think ? In my opinion, this text has strengths but also certain limitations that I would like to highlight.

Humans and dogs: related species

On the strengths side, Donna Haraway offers us an original and substantial point of view on complex and little-visited questions: can we consider that humans and dogs have co-evolved? ? Should we limit ourselves to reporting on the variable place of dogs in different human civilizations or should we not undertake the more complex story, of a history “ biosocial » which would make it possible to break with the usual dichotomies ? This is a question of cohabitation, domestication, coevolution, interspecific or interspecies sociability. Donna Haraway outlines a series of avenues to follow to overcome the nature-culture dichotomy, linking history and biology: “ There is no specific time or place where genetics ends and environment begins. » (p. 39). This strong thesis continues the author’s previous propositions, outlined regarding the study of primates and primatology, in chapters relating to the history of the concept of race or in her analysis of contemporary biotechnological transformations. For Haraway there is no Eden, and the concept of Natureculture that she forged aims to deconstruct Western dichotomies that are deadly to thought. Haraway therefore proposes to rethink the social and the biological as already always linked, in a way that is both contingent and profound:

It would be an error to attribute the bodily and psychological mutations of dogs to biology, and to culture – and therefore, as not being part of co-evolution – the bodily transformations of humans as well as those of their lifestyles. , for example, the appearance of pastoral or agrarian societies. At a minimum, I suspect that human genomes contain a large amount of molecular traces left by the pathogens of their pet species, notably dogs. Immune systems play a major role in naturecultures ; they determine where and with whom organisms – including human beings – are able to live. The history of influenza is inconceivable without appealing to the concept of coevolution between humans, pigs, poultry, and viruses. (p. 38).

Dressage stories and bond politics

Another strong point of the book is to draw our attention to dog training practices as knowledge. The analysis of these dressage stories » allows us to question the texture of the links likely to link humans and animals and the modalities of implementation of both formal and tacit knowledge. By showing the type of relationship that it is possible to form with an animal in the context of a demanding, repeated exercise aimed at performance, Haraway questions any form of “ relationality “, that is to say the profoundly unknowable character of oneself and the other in the absence of qualification of the link. The concept of “ otherness » takes on its full meaning here, an extended meaning (“ at large “) which establishes our biosociality, but also our social and species responsibility: “ The important thing here is to accept that we can never stop questioning the status of what happens at any moment in the relationship. (…). I think that every form of ethical relationship – whether it occurs within or between species – is woven with the same robust thread of constant vigilance with regard to otherness-in-relation. We are not autonomous, and our existence depends on our ability to live together. » (p. 57). Two strong elements are then highlighted: having a working relationship with an animal transforms the human and animal participants of the activity ; Given these experiences, it is possible to think about how a human can enter “ in a legal relationship with an animal » (p. 60).

This is where the political significance of the Pet Species Manifesto in a vein already developed in other texts by Haraway. The object, the project of this biopolitics is to succeed in defining a “ live together », a common world (a topos) which takes a more political form with Haraway than with Latour in the sense that the questions of “ accounting » (accountability) of scientific, political (and species) responsibility are posed as inseparable. It clearly appears that the knowledge of feminist authors, specialists in “ marginal lives “, but also that the knowledge and know-how of certain professional groups, such as trainers, breeders or other people with experience working with animals (a section of the book is devoted to the history of shepherd breeders of the Pyrenees, to the role of certain figures – particularly female – in the biosocial definition of this race as protector of the herd) can count as resources for thinking about the modalities of this common world and the rules of life that should be developed there .

One manifesto too (few) ?

The real question that remains about this text, and unlike previous proposals, and in particular the Cyborg Manifesto (1985, 2007 for the French translation), is to know if it succeeds in fulfilling its objective of “ contribute to the development of tools intended to equip science studies and feminist theory for today » (p. 13). From this point of view, and despite the elements mentioned above, this text disappoints. We can cling to certain passages, follow certain flashes, but the whole thing doesn’t really work. The work of undermining Western categorizations carried out by Donna Haraway in Primate visionsthe unparalleled analysis that she conducts of sciences as cultures, her extraordinary visions of a future in the making, her ability to translate and reflect technological, social, political and biological mutations within the framework of Cyborg Manifestoits narrative inventiveness, so valuable for defining spaces for reflection and alternatives to contemporary technoscientific and capitalistic regimes, its critical, feminist and socialist acuity – if we refer to the subtitle of the Cyborg Manifesto – seem here lost in the twists and turns of an attachment which can neither be kept at a distance nor considered with the usual irony claimed by the author since her present work consists precisely of “ take seriously » these emotional human/dog relationships. The figure of the dog to think about the posterity of feminism, humanism and utopia ? The provocation does not work, the demonstration is fragile and essentially unfinished. This new Manifest lack of distance, and above all, it lacks politics, that is to say the capacity for translation and articulation.

There is proof that the thought of looking at the animal changes what it changes. What this could change in the thinking and updating of feminism or other social movements remains to be proven. The political and emancipatory significance of these reflections on new forms of kinship between species and the political consequences of the extension to animals of the status of “ significant other » is for some aspects successful but remains largely enigmatic and problematic for others.