La The question of nature in the thought of Donna Haraway. A reading from posthuman materialism

A reading from posthuman materialism

Abstract

Nature is, for Donna Haraway, both a topos (a place) and a trope (a literary figure). It is from this convergence of space and time (a narrative emerging from the configuration of the world that materialises as corporealities of multiple and messy trajectories) that Haraway engages in a meditation on the manifest desire for that ‘commonplace’ that nature points to, and attempts to reframe the ‘natural’ commonplace in terms that challenge patriarchy and capitalism. If capitalism can be understood as the project of an increasing abolition of space due to the acceleration of time, Haraway’s discussion of common spatiality is particularly suggestive. Indeed, contesting the sensibility of the classical tradition (which geometrises space and renders nature external), Haraway offers a repertoire of tools for thinking co-habitation in such terms as to account for both the always tensional relationality (from which what exists emerges) and the narratives that weave space and time, world and story. To address these ideas, firstly, we will delimit what we mean by posthuman materialism; secondly, we will mention the main implications of the kantian notion of nature; and thirdly, we will consider Haraway’s contributions to this discussion.