Companion Species Under Fire: A Defense of Donna Haraway's the Companion Species Manifesto‪.‬

According to Marianne Dekoven, Donna Haraway's "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," published in 1985, "signals the end of utopian feminist theory.... and the inception of postmodern feminist theory" (1694). Haraway argues that technology constantly challenges gender binaries and in a world of continuous technological advancement, "we become unable to think of ourselves according to these categories or even as merely biological beings" (Richter 1966). She states, "[c]yborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves" (Haraway, "Manifesto for Cyborgs" 601). Haraway does not argue that all organisms possess fixed or containable identities, but rather that all organisms are always in a process of identification. She not only challenges and destabilizes dualistic arguments pertaining to gender, but also "offers the opportunity of dismantling hierarchies of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and location" (Dekoven 1694). More recently, however, Haraway has left the cyborg behind, stating that she "ha[s] come to see cyborgs as junior siblings in the much bigger, queer family of companion species" (Companion Species Manifesto 11). Despite this shift in direction, Haraway's understanding of companion species shares some intimate connections with cyborgs. She argues that companion species function, like cyborgs, to bridge gaps between binary categories: Although cyborgs and companion species function similarly, Haraway writes, "by the end of the millennium, cyborgs could no longer do the work of a proper herding dog to gather up the threads needed for critical inquiry" (Companion Species Manifesto 4). And so, she has set aside arguments pertaining to hybrids of organic and mechanical matter and has turned to dogs instead.