"En medio de una devastación ecológica en aumento constante, la teórica feminista multiespecies Donna J. Haraway ofrece nuevas y provocadoras maneras de reconfigurar nuestras relaciones con la tierra y sus habitantes. Evita referirse a nuestra época actual como el Antropoceno: prefiere el concepto de lo que llama el Chthuluceno, ya que describe más y mejor nuestra época como aquella en la que humanos y no humanos se encuentran inextricablemente ligados en prácticas tentaculares. El Chthuluceno, explica Haraway, requiere sim-poiesis, o hacer-con, en lugar de auto-poiesis, o auto-creación. Aprender a seguir con el problema de vivir y morir juntos en una tierra herida favorecerá un tipo de pensamiento que otorgará los medios para construir futuros más vivibles. Seguir con el problema, conducido teórica y metodológicamente por el significante SF –siglas en inglés de figuras de cuerdas, hechos científicos, ciencia ficción, feminismo especulativo, fabulación especulativa y hasta ahora– consolida aún más la reputación de Haraway como una de las pensadoras más osadas y originales de nuestro tiempo". (Descripción editorial).

Sobretudo é um livro cujas ideias gerais devem ser levadas a sério. Uma delas é que é preciso valorizar o pensar junto, agir junto, agenciar junto. Porque daí surge a importância de se comportar de um modo a viver e morrer bem junto. O morrer aí é importante; o bordão lembra-nos da importância de pensarmos o legado. E no último capítulo é proposto um exercício imaginativo sobre esse legado. Como viveriam as 5 próximas gerações? Me parece algo essencial a ser trabalhado por todos nós. Porque na imaginação trazemos o simbólico e no exercício de deixar mais consistente o pensado, percebemos que não há tabula rasa ou salvação - é preciso pensar a arte de viver e morrer em um mundo danificado, de um legado "de fim de mundos". E entrando em simbiose ou ao menos em relação de parentesco e amizade, não apenas com humanos mas com não-humanos, vamos tecendo uma rede de cuidado e percepções do que é importante que leva em conta mais do que a humanidade. Porque seu pensar capturado pelo capitalismo que fomentaria o excepcionalismo humano. Daí outra ideia: não se trata de antropoceno, mas de capitaloceno, um antropos perdido na grande indústria, grande ciência, grande empresa; perdido no hábito da reprodução. Haraway, pró decrescimento, diz: faça parentes, não bebês. Porque trata-se de fomentar a amizade profunda como o laço do parentesco, que pode incluir cachorros etc. Por fim, a autora traça uma tentativa de roubar o tentacular lovecraftiano do seu autor e da esfera do terror, conectando-o com aranhas e a ideia de sintonia problemática mas possível e necessária entre espécies. Por isso o chtuluceno. Outra jogada nominal é aquela envolvendo SF, que passa a ser não apenas ficção científica, mas feminismo especulativo, fabulação especulativa, e figuras no jogo de cordas (não lembro o nome em português - string figures). De todo modo, é preciso, informadamente, com parcerias diversas, com a arte e ciência e filosofia e o não-humano, conviver com os problemas. Não se colocar fora deles, como se não existissem ou como se fossem forças extreriores avassaladoras, esperando o momento da devastação.

Dito tudo isso, há um grande porém. O livro tem uma introdução bastante empolgante, porque amalgama todas as ideias do livro. Mas ele é repetitivo e parece um pouco mal costurado. Algumas figuras retóricas, como a de evocar e engrandecer personalidades chave, parecem mais prejudicar que ajudar. E, embora calcados em práticas, a autora aposta muito na fabulação, no imaginário e na construção simbólica, rumo a uma transição possível da vida que temos para outra. Mesmo se for pouco, pelo menos é algo, um começo, algumas ideias com um poder persuasivo bom. ( )

Donna Haraway writes manifestos for now. It's not quite clear how we'll get to some of the states of being she describes, but you'll come away from the book changed for the better. Listen to the audiobook if you can. ( )

Donna Haraway makes a peculiar choice in coining "Chthulucene" for use in this book. The difference in spelling from H.P. Lovecraft's notorious dreaming god is deliberate, and she insists that the etymology is from khthon-; but then why not "Chthonocene?" The fact is that she is deliberately evoking Cthulhu, who "shall soon rule where man rules now," as the Necronomicon admonishes. But her sympathies, unlike those of (the conscious) Lovecraft are not with the "rulers" coded out as Anthropos or Capital or Plantation Owner, or any future value of that function. Her principal slogan for advancing a Chthulucene agenda is "Make kin, not babies," and she proposes a "tentacular" program of what an Anthropocentric thinker might regard as species treason--not to mention its profound antagonism to Capital.

Haraway's program of "staying with the trouble" is an imagining of futures that resists utopianism and dismal forecasting. It reminds me more than a little of the anti-capitalist bolo'bolo (by P.M., 1983--whatever happened to my paperback copy?), which was much more sanguine. The chief difference in gravity probably stems from Haraway's attention to the damage already done to human and non-human biomes. The final chapter of the book is an SF narrative implementing these visions over the period 2025-2425. Throughout the various essays, Haraway construes SF multivalently as "speculative feminism," "string figures," "speculative fabulation," "science fantasy," and the more customary "science fiction," and asserts it as part of her resources and method. Previous SF works that receive her special attention include Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home (and others), Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, and Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

The species that participate in her Cthulucene imaginings notably include pigeons, squid, orchids, coral, horses, and butterflies. And SF reflections even recruit the Ood from Doctor Who (the subverted Cthulhu again). Some of these are models to overcome the paradigm of organisms, in favor of holobionts. Others illustrate extant and/or possible relationships among "critters" (Haraway's preferred term, embracing and exceeding all biotic kingdoms) including humans.

Staying with the Trouble is a chewy read, full of accounts of activist art and the results of late-breaking scientific inquiry (not capital-S "Science" Haraway hastens to add). The body text is about half of the total book, and many of the sixty pages of small-type end notes are worth investigating for their further discussion of sources and inspiration. There are black-and-white illustrations throughout. I made slow progress through it, but it was worth my effort, and although I read a borrowed copy, I would be willing to make space for it on my own shelves.

It's not that there's nothing here--Haraway is bracing in a way, doesn't flinch from the dark and fearsome aspects of the latter part of the slogan "Make kin, not babies," and yet still insists on it, stressing the central role, the everything role, of a shift in thought and values as opposed to reproductive coercion or the late-capitalist scarcity that withers family (as distinct from that more promising kinship model, the gens) lines. But it's ... it's our same old way of thinking about how to change our way of thinking things, and fairly or unfairly Haraway I look to people in positions like yours to help us really metamorphose as opposed to getting at the same old thing from a new facet. Like, you could trot out your pretty keyword "chthulucene" (spelled differently to evoke Cthulhu but also distinguish it from the dark and racially hateful and misogynist aspects of Lovecraft's monster, and if so why bother?) for the chthonic that is also an originary tentacular connectedness--"Naga, Gaia, Tangaroa, [...] Terra, Haniyasu-hime, Spider Woman, Pachamama, Oya, Gorgo, Raven, A'akuluujjusi" by another name. It's, I'm sorry, an effort to be of the moment, to exploit a new conceptual corner. Gaia herself embodied this thinking better, as did, I blush to say it, the rhizome--but these things are played out in rarefied Haraway (harefied Raraway) circles of connection and so Donna of Cyborg Mountain, the Donna who goes to the trouble of disavowing "'posthumanism" for "compostism" here but in what a self-conscious, eye-on-legacy way! But of course this tendentiously named and renamed condition we are talking about also demands legacy thinking. So rather than demonize DH to the (putatively rapidly approaching) ends of the earth let me link to someone I think does this better (why did I review Haraway's essay and not this other one? Who knows?)--Nick Admussen with "Six proposals for the reform of literature in the age of climate change," suggesting a need for new stories that goes so much deeper than what I saw here: http://criticalflame.org/six-proposals-for-the-reform-of-literature-in-the-age-o...

I mean, but I am susceptible too because though I think using Cthulhu was cynical and pointless I did love the other key term she appropriate from Kim Stanley Robinson, who suggests that once we conceive of the Anthropo-/[...]cene as a border event and not an epoch (and the Holocene then as the era in which earthly reserves of life and species were still sufficient for a post-anthropogenic rewilding, oikologically, correspondingly oikonomically the last period of "cheap nature" per Jason Moore--I am bringing in also Haraway's own observations here not just KSR's), then a really good term for our present moment would be "The Dithering." ( )