Reading Group: Donna Haraway's "Staying with the Trouble"

For this iteration of the Philosophy of Life Sciences Reading Group, we will be reading Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble, focussing specifcally on Chapter 2, Tentacular thinking (we will read this as a stand-alone text, so no prior reading is required).

Donna Haraway, who famously wrote the Cyborg Manifesto, is a philosopher of science and technology. Drawing on the complexity of biological organisms, here she develops a mode of thinking of the world and modern humanity that challenges both the Anthropocene (which frames the current geological epoch in terms of humanity's impact on Earth) and the Capitalocene (which instead locates the driving force of these transformations in capitalist relations). She proposes the Chthulucene, in which humans exist in constant, entangled, ramified relations with other beings. In this framework, the self-making individual, associated with the cybernetic concept of autopoiesis, is understood instead through sympoiesis (“making-with”), shifting the focus from autonomous systems to interdependent systems. Her writing alternates between theory, science and myth.

Anyone from any background is welcome! If you’d like the pdf or to ask any question feel free to drop me a message. Please don’t worry too much about the RSVP list, this event is advertised elsewhere, and we have already ~10 people attending already.

Doors open at 12:00, the discussion starts at 12:30pm.