AfterWhom

Science Studies & Feminist Philosophy

Donna Haraway

1944– · Science Studies & Feminist Philosophy

The Thinker Who Blurred Every Boundary

Haraway is for the person who suspects that the boundaries between human and animal, natural and artificial, self and other are more porous than anyone admits — and that this is liberating, not terrifying. You've probably felt that the old categories — nature vs culture, human vs machine, male vs female — are breaking down. Haraway has been thinking about this collapse since 1985. Her Cyborg Manifesto argued that hybridity is our condition, not our threat. She writes in a style that is dense, playful, and unlike anything else in academic philosophy.
cyborg theorynatureculturesituated knowledgecompanion speciesmaking kin not babies

Where to Start Reading

A Cyborg Manifesto (in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women)

The essay that launched a thousand dissertations. Haraway argues that the cyborg — a hybrid of machine and organism — is a better feminist myth than the goddess. Dense, witty, and genuinely radical.

Staying with the Trouble

Haraway's most accessible book — on how to live responsibly in a damaged world without despair or denial. The concept of 'making kin' is her alternative to both techno-optimism and apocalypse.

When Species Meet

Haraway on the relationship between humans and companion species — dogs, lab animals, and the ethics of living with other beings. More concrete and personal than her earlier work.

“It matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with.”

Related Thinkers

Classical Philosophy
Plato
428–348 BC
The Inventor of the Examined Life
Stoic Philosophy
Marcus Aurelius
121–180 AD
The Private Notebook of an Emperor
Rationalist Philosophy
Baruch Spinoza
1632–1677
The Geometer of Human Freedom