The first edition of the Seeds of a Second Renaissance newsletter offers a bite-sized introduction to the work of Donna Haraway:
a leading interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of science and technology studies, feminist theory, animal studies, and environmental criticism. Haraway’s invitation to “stay with the trouble” and cultivate “response-ability” is relational medicine in our time of alienation and crisis.
In urgent times, many of us are tempted to address trouble in terms of making an imagined future safe, of stopping something from happening that looms in the future, of clearing away the present and the past in order to make futures for coming generations. Staying with the trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future. In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings. ”
~ Haraway, Staying with the Trouble (2016), p.1
Inspired by Haraway, we might enquire:
- How do we remain present to our times, not grasping for another time or place when things get knotty?
- How do we avoid overwhelm, to remain responsive to the troubles we’re entangled in?
- How do we assume responsibility in the sense of accountability – and cultivate our capacity to respond?
Would love to hear reflections on any of these questions, or on Haraway’s work more broadly!
Full newsletter issue: Seeds of a Second Renaissance - Donna Haraway on Response-ability and Staying with the Trouble
