Staying with the Trouble

"In Staying with the Trouble, we find real SF: science fiction, science fact, science fantasy, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, string figures, so far. So many ways to look at the world and ourselves, so many complicated ideas on how we critters will survive and thrive and die in the disturbing Chthulucene. Haraway is difficult to read. But the effort required is worth it." -- Nancy Jane Moore * Cascadia Subduction Zone * "Chthulucene is not a simple word, yet it is a productive motif for Haraway. With it she laces ideas from urban pigeons, woolen coral reefs, writing workshops, Inupiat computer games, canine estrogen and Black Mesa sheep. The thready and the tentacular form the subject and the framework of her theory-making, as well as the structure of her writing." -- Archie Davies * Antipode * "Staying with the Trouble is Haraway at her most accessible. Readers familiar with her work with recognize her characteristic style and language, polysemous metaphors co-mingle with evocative refrains, deep etymological readings, and even the occasional sentence with internal rhyme schemes. . . . This is a work to provoke and inspire. It is a call to arms (or pseudopods as the case may be)!" -- Matt Thompson * Savage Minds * "[W]e should take seriously the implications of kin versus family, of kin as encompassing all non-human relations. There is an ethics here, on a micro and macro level. Haraway is no moralist, but replacing 'human relations' with 'kin' arguably brings about a transformation in our hierarchies and priorities - why not care as much about a wildflower as you do about your niece? If it is not a zero-sum game, and let us hope it is not, we can make room for all kinds of lives, and all kinds of ways of living. Staying with the trouble is also a matter of sticking with all the things that currently live and will die alongside us, whether we cause it or notice it or not." -- Nina Power * Spike * "Haraway models like few others deep intellectual generosity and curiosity. Staying with the Trouble cites students, thinks with community activists and artists, and writes alongside scientists and fiction writers. Haraway does not want you to read her; she wants you to read with her. She also insists on conversations with all kinds of storytellers: academics or not, humans or not, environmental humanities scholars or not." -- Astrida Neimanis * Australian Feminist Studies * "The book enacts different forms of analysis and activism. It is not only that the book transcends disciplinary boundaries of biology, sciences studies, art history, philosophy and dense descriptions of political activism most often found in social sciences. These approaches are interwoven in a very rich and exquisite manner for which the author is well known." -- Waltraud Ernst * Angelaki * "Haraway is probably as aware as a writer can be that what she has to offer at the moment is nowhere near enough to engage with all the trouble that needs to be engaged with. All she can do, she seems to be saying, is to stay with it a while, worrying at the very edges of her capacity, and then pass it on. We need each others risk-taking support, in conflict and collaboration, big time, is how she ends that infamous two-page endnote. The answer to the trust of the held-out hand, as she also puts it. Think we must." -- Jenny Turner * London Review of Books * "Staying with the Trouble is a kind of Whole Earth Catalogue of thought devices for attuning our senses to the damaged ecosystem of the still-blue planet. It makes It makes inspiring and imaginative use of science fiction, art projects, geology, evolutionary theory, developmental biology, science and technology studies, anthropology, environmental activism, philosophy, feminism, horticulture, linguistics, pigeon fancying, and many other ways of thinking and knowing

Donna J. Haraway is Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of several books, most recently, Manifestly Haraway.

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. Playing String Figures with Companion Species 9 2. Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene 30 3. Sympoiesis: Symbiogenesis and the Lively Arts of Staying with the Trouble 58 4. Making Kin: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene 99 5. Awash in Urine: DES and Premarin in Multispecies Response-ability 104 6. Sowing Worlds: A Seed Bag for Terraforming with Earth Others 117 7. A Curious Practice 126 8. The Camille Stories: Children of Compost 134 Notes 169 Bibliography 229 Index 265