Witnessing the Postmodern Jeremiad: (Mis)Understanding Donna Haraway's Method of Inquiry

Configurations

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 127-163

  Bartsch, Ingrid ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 12144249685     PISSN: 10631801     EISSN: 10806520     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/con.2001.0002     Document Type: Article

References (133)

1. Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), p. 62.
2. See Teresa L. Ebert, Ludic Feminism and After: Postmodernism, Desire, and Labor in Late Capitalism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996);
3. Jonathan Crewe, "Transcoding the World: Haraway's Postmodernism," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 22 (1997): 891-905;
4. Susan Sperling, "Baboons with Briefcases vs. Langurs in Lipstick," in Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era, ed. Micaela di Leonardo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 204-233;
5. Susan Bordo, "Feminism, Postmodernism, and Gender-Scepticism," in Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Linda Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 133-156;
6. Anne Scott, "The Knowledge in Our Bones: Standpoint Theory, Alternative Health and the Quantum Model of the Body," in Science and the Construction of Women, ed. Mary Maynard (London: University College London, 1997), pp. 106-125.
7. See Susan Hekman, "Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited," Signs 22 (1997): 341-365;
8. idem, "Reply to Hartsock, Collins, Harding, and Smith,"Signs ibid., pp. 399-402;
9. Patricia Hill Collins, "Comment on Hekman's 'Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited': Where's the Power?" Signs ibid., pp. 375-381;
10. Sandra Harding, "Comment on Hekman's 'Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited': Whose Standpoint Needs the Regimes of Truth and Reality?"Signs ibid., pp. 382-391;
11. Nancy Hartsock, "Comment on Hekman's Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited': Truth or Justice?"Signs ibid., pp. 367-374;
12. Dorothy E. Smith, "Comment on Hekman's 'Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited,'"Signs ibid., pp. 392-398.
13. See Carolyn DiPalma, "Reading Donna Haraway: A Feminist Theoretical and Methodological Perspective," Asian Journal of Women's Studies 5 (1999): 50-83.
14. Bercovitch, American Jeremiad (above, n. 1), p. xi.
15. American Jeremiad Ibid., p. 16.
16. Elena Fetherston, ed., Skin Deep: Women Writing on Color, Culture, and Identity (Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1994), pp. i-vii.
17. Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s," Socialist Revie\v 15:3 (1985): 75;
18. idem, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 577.
19. Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 303.
20. Bercovitch, American Jeremiad (above, n. 1), p. 16.
21. American Jeremiad Ibid.
22. Haraway, "Manifesto" (above, n. 8), p. 101.
23. Haraway, Primate Visions (above, n. 9), p. 281.
24. Primate Visions Ibid., p. 9.
25. Donna Har^vay,Mo(Iest_\Vitiiess@Seconti_MilIenniiini.FeiimIeMaii0_Meets_Oiico\{oiise (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 8.
26. Ibid., p. 10.
27. Ibid., p. 253.
28. Haraway, "Manifesto" (above, n. 8), p. 65.
29. See Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), p. 69.
30. See Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference (New York: Routledge, 1989);
31. Elizabeth Weed, ed.. Coining to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics (New York: Routledge, 1989).
32. Haraway, Modest_Witness (above, n. 15), p. 304m32.
33. See Haraway, "Situated Knowledges" (above, n. 8).
34. Nancy C. M. Hartsock, "The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism," in Feminism and Methodolog}". Social Science Issues, ed. Sandra Harding (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 158.
35. Ibid., p. 159.
36. See Sandra Harding, Wlwse Science? Wliose Knowledge? Tliinking From Women's Lives (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).
37. Haraway, "Situated Knowledges" (above, n. 8), p. 590.
38. Situated Knowledges Ibid., pp. 583-584.
39. Elsa Barkley Brown, "What Has Happened Here: The Politics of Difference in Women's History and Feminist Politics," in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, ed. Linda Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 275 (emphasis added).
40. The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory Ibid.
41. Haraway, "Situated Knowledges" (above, n. 8), p. 583.
42. Situated Knowledges Ibid.
43. Situated KnowledgesIbid., p. 584.
44. Situated Knowledges Ibid., pp. 584-585.
45. Situated KnowledgesIbid., p. 585.
46. Situated Knowledges Ibid., p. 590.
47. See Haraway, "Manifesto" (above, n. 8); Donna Haraway, "Otherworldly Conversations; Terran Topics; Local Terms," Science as Culture 3 (1991): 64-98.
48. See Haraway, Primate Visions (above, n. 9); Donna Haraway, "The Promises of Monsters," in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 295-337; idem, "A Game of Cat's Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies," Configurations 2 (1994): 59-71; Haraway, Modest_Witness (above, n. 15).
49. See Haraway, "Game of Cat's Cradle."
50. See Game of Cat's Cradle ibid.
51. See Haraway, "Otherworldy Conversations" (above, n. 36).
52. See Haraway, "Promises of Monsters" (above, n. 37).
53. In addition, see Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991);
54. idem, "The Actors Are Cyborg, Nature Is Coyote, and the Geography Is Elsewhere: Postscript to 'Cyborgs at Large,'" in Teclinoculture, ed. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), pp. 21-26.
55. Haraway, "Manifesto" (above, n. 8), p. 72.
56. See Minh-ha T. Trinh, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).
57. See Haraway, "Otherworldly Conversations" (above, n. 36), p. 69.
58. See Burke, Permanence and Change (above, n. 19); Richard McKeon, Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Discovery (Woodbridge, Conn.: Ox Bow, 1987);
59. James Jasinski, "An Exploration of Form and Force in Rhetoric and Argumentation," in Argumentation Theory and the Rhetoric of Assent, ed. David Gratis Williams and Michael David Hazen (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), pp. 53-68;
60. John Bender and David Wellbery, The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990);
61. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, The Rhetorical Tradition (Boston: Bedford, St. Martin's, 1990).
62. Haraway, "Promises of Monsters" (above, n. 37), pp. 296-297.
63. Harding, Whose Science? (above, n. 25), p. 295.
64. Haraway, "Otherworldly Conversations" (above, n. 36), p. 65.
65. See also, Kum-Kum Bhavani, "Shifting the Subject: A Conversation between Kum-Kum Bhavani and Donna Haraway," Feminism and Psychology 4 (1994): 19-39.
66. The phrase "between women and ducks" is inspired by Haraway's essay "Otherworldly Conversations" (above, n. 36) in which she talks about the heterosexualization of ducks.
67. For example, see Haraway's discussion of spatialization as social practice in knowledge-system differences between European Australians and Aboriginal Australians, in Modest_\Vitness (above, n. 15), pp. 137-143; and of breastfeeding as practice and culture akin to technoscience as practice and culture, in ModestVitness ibid., pp. 207-212.
68. Burke, Permanence and Change (above, n. 19), p. 96.
69. Permanence and Change Ibid., p. 112.
70. Permanence and Change Ibid.
71. See Haraway, "Manifesto" (above, n. 8).
72. For example, see the recent Call for Papers from Duke University ("Discipline and Deviance: Genders, Technologies, Machines") that begins with the sentence: "Some feminist theorists such as Donna Haraway suggest that our implication in technology breaks down stable identity categories, such as human and machine, man and woman" (posted to the Society for Women in Philosophy Information and Discussion List, SWIP-L, March 9, 1998).
73. See Haraway, "Manifesto" (above, n. 8), p. 66.
74. Patrocino Schweickart, "What Are We Doing? What Do We \Vant? Who Are We? Comprehending the Subject of Feminism," in Provoking Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and Practice, ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), p. 237.
75. Andrea Slane, "Romancing the System: Women, Narrative Film, and the Sexuality of Computers," in Processed Lives: Gender and Technology in Everyday Life, ed. Jennifer Terry and Melody Calvert (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 71-80, n. 79.
76. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, "Cyborgs at Large: Interview with Donna Haraway," in Penley and Ross, Teclinoculture (above, n. 41), p. 20. The original spelling in the interview is "girl." Haraway explains that she thinks of the cyborg as a girl in order to short-circuit the Oedipal narrative of subjectivity and in order to problematize the category "woman." In light of recent third-wave feminist movements that often occupy spaces on the Internet, and that identify themselves as grrl-focused, we have taken liberties with Haraway's original quote.
77. See Barbara Findlen, Listen Up: Voices From the Next Feminist Generation (Seattle, Wash.: Seal Press, 1995);
78. Michèle Evard, "So Please Stop, Thank You: Girls Online," in \Vired_\Voinen: Gender and Ne\v Realities in Cyberspace, ed. Lynn Cherny and Elizabeth Reba Weise (Seattle: Seal Press, 1996), pp. 188-207;
79. Nina Wakeford, "Networking Women and Grrrls with Information/Communication Technology: Surfing Tales of the World \Vide Web," in Terry and Calvert, Processed Lives (above, n. 58), pp. 51-66.
80. Haraway, "Manifesto" (above, n. 8), p. 93.
81. See Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., "The SF of Theory: Baudrillard and Haraway," Science Fiction Studies 18 (1991): 387-404.
82. See Slane, "Romancing the System" (above, n. 58).
83. See Ebert, Ludic Feminism (above, n. 2).
84. Elizabeth V. Spelman, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Tlionglit (Boston: Beacon, 1988), p. 136.
85. "The relationships for forming wholes from parts, including those of polarity and hierarchical domination, are at issue in the cyborg world.... [Cyborgs] are wary of holism, but needy for connection" (Haraway, "Manifesto" [above, n. 8], pp. 67-68).
86. Key Chow, "Postmodern Automatons," in Feminists Tlicorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 101.
87. Feminists Tlicorize the Political Ibid., p. 103.
88. Haraway, Mociest_Witness (above, n. 15), p. 214.
89. Allucquère Rosanne Stone, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), pp. 181-182.
90. Haraway, Modest_Witness (above, n. 15), p. 214.
91. Haraway, Modest_Witness (Ibid.
92. Stone, War of Desire (above, n. 69), pp. 181-182.
93. Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Doilies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 23.
94. See also Evelynn Hammonds, "New Technologies of Race," in Terry and Calvert, Processed Lives (above, n. 58), pp. 107-122.
95. See Donna Haraway, "Ecce homo, or Ar'n't I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: The Human in a Post-humanist Landscape," in Butler and Scott, Feminists Tlieorize the Political (above, n. 66), pp. 86-100.
96. Haraway, Modest_Wihiess (above, n. 15), p. 214.
97. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 62.
98. See Haraway, Modcst_Witness (above, n. 15), p. 83.
99. Haraway, Modcst_Witness (Ibid., p. 213.
100. This is the point made by ecofeminists who challenge the anthropocentric construction of nature that funds the structures of domination that oppress women and nature. See Janet Biehl, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ecofeininist Politics (Montreal: Black Rose, 1991);
101. Val Plumwood, feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993);
102. Carolyn Merchant, Radical Ecology: The Search for a Liveable World (New York: Routledge, 1992);
103. Carolyn Merchant, idem, Earthcare: Women and the Environment (New York: Routledge, 1995);
104. Susan Griffin, "Ecofeminism and Meaning," in Ecofeminisin: Women, Culture, Nature, ed. Karen J. Warren (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,1997), pp. 213-226;
105. Lori Gruen, "Revaluing Nature," in Ecofeminisin: Women, Culture, Nature, ibid., pp. 356-374;
106. Noël Sturgeon, Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory, and Political Action (New York: Routledge, 1997);
107. Patrocino Schweickart, ed., National Women's Studies Association Journal, special issue: Women, Ecology, and the Environment, 9 (1997).
108. See, for instance, Ramona Fernandez, "Pachuco Mickey," in From Mouse to Mermaid, ed. Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 236-253, on EPCOT;
109. Timothy W. Luke, "The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum: Imagineering Southwestern Environments as Hyperreality," Organization and Environment 19 (1997): 148-163;
110. Kevin Archer, "A Lighter Shade of Green: Reproducing Nature in Central Florida," Florida Geograplier 27 (1996): 4-18, on the Magic Kingdom. Other Florida theme parks include Universal Studios, Sea World, Cypress Gardens, and Busch Gardens: The Dark Continent (a name that makes rather obvious the implication of race and nature).
111. In 1805 Alexander von Humboldt recognized plant communities, and related plant distribution to the physical environment, in his essay on the geography of plants. See George Ochoa and Melinda Corey, The Timeline Book of Science (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995), p. 121.
112. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters-Aunt Lute, 1987).
113. Trinh, Woman, Native, Other (above, n. 43).
114. In the late 1980s, President Bush's cabinet officials pushed for an across-the-board twenty-one day standard, meaning that there would have to be flooding or saturated conditions for twenty-one consecutive days in order to be considered a wetland. "Following fierce but unfruitful lobbying by both conservation and property rights' interest, Congress called time out and tossed the political hot potato to the National Academy of Sciences"; scientists funded by the National Academy of Science were awarded half a million dollars to complete a twelve-month study of wetland delineation: David Salvesen, Wetlands: Mitigating and Regulating Development Impacts, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 1994), p. 31.
115. David Salvesen, Wetlands: Mitigating and Regulating Development Impacts, 2d ed. Ibid., p. 25.
116. The Everglades Restoration Project alone has a $685 million price tag. See William J. Mitsch and James G. Gosselink, Wetlands, 2d ed. (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993).
117. Not all states have banking as a mitigation option. However, in some, such as Minnesota, wetlands can be replaced "by buying credits from an approved mitigation bank, which does not exist yet in Minnesota. An individual can restore a wetland and then seek to deposit it in a bank, but only functioning wetlands will be accepted" (Salvesen, Wetlands [above, n. 84], p. 80). In Florida, degraded wetlands are purchased and restored (often by government agencies using taxpayers' money) to form the wetland bank; the values of the restored wetland are quantified and used as credits that can later be withdrawn at a price to compensate for "unavoidable" wetland loss. In the end, wetlands are bartered much like currency, and regional mitigation "banks" become the equivalent of mergers.
118. Lewis M. Covvardin, Virgina Carter, Francis C. Golet, and Edward T. LaRoe, Classification of Wetlands and Deepwater Habitats of the United States (United States Fish and Wildlife Service FWS/OBS-79/31 [1979]).
119. Section 404 of the Clean Water Act gave authority to the Army Corps of Engineers to establish a permit system to regulate the dredging and filling of materials in waters of the United States, including wetlands, according to a revision issued in 1975. The procedure for obtaining a permit for dredge-and-fill activity in wetlands is a complex process requiring an application, public notice, and the involvement of many agencies and interest groups. Until recently, the vast majority of permit applications were approved, providing wetlands with little "real" protection.
120. For example, see Archer, "Lighter Shade of Green" (above, n. 80) for a discussion of the similarities between the (taxpayer-funded) twenty-year, $5 billion project to restore the meanders in Florida's Kissimmee River, the headwaters of the Everglades (originally "tamed" and dammed for flood control), and the landscape projects of Florida's theme parks.
121. In a Science policy forum article, Elizabeth Culotta writes that both wetlands scientists and Florida legislators share the unoffical motto: "Wet it and they will come" (Elizabeth Culotta, "Bringing Back the Everglades," Science 268 [1995]: 1688).
122. The quote comes from a review of Disney's new theme park, Animal Kingdom: "And whether the animals cooperate or not, will a theme park with education as its theme prove interesting enough to keep the customers returning?" (Robert N. Jenkins, "Magic Missing from Parts of New Kingdom," St. Petersburg [Florida] Times, April 4, 1998, p. 22).
123. See Andre Gayot, ed., The Best of Florida (New York: Prentice Hall, 1991), p. 212.
124. This quote is from Roy Disney, Walt's nephew, vice chairman of the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company, and director of Disney's animation department; he was describing the message of the latest Disney theme park: Jenkins, "Magic Missing" (above, n. 92), p. 10A.
125. As Jane Ciabattari reports: "Throughout the park, the message is conservation. Its breeding program will follow the guidelines of the Species Survival Plans, which keep track of the genetic makeup of endangered species and prohibit overbreeding" (Jane Ciabattari, "Step into the African Wild," Parade Magazine, February 22, 1998, pp. 4-5).
126. R. D. Smith, A. Amman, C. Bartoldus, and M. M. Brinson, "An Approach for Assessing Wetland Functions Using Hydrogeomorphic Classification, Reference Wetlands, and Functional Indices," U.S. Army Engineers Waterways Experiment Station Technical Report TRWRP-DE-10 (Vicksburg, Miss., 1995).
127. Goodall said this in response to Disney's Animal Kingdom, a "mix of animals, robotic dinosaurs and live shows"; Goodall is on the board of directors. See Mark Albright, "A Tame Walk on the Wild Side," 5f. Petersburg (Florida) Times, April 22, 1998, p. 10A.
128. See Nancy Fraser, "Women, Welfare, and the Politics of Need Interpretation," in idem. Unruly Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), pp. 144-160;
129. Wendy Brown, "Wounded Attachments" and "Finding the Man in the State," in idem, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 52-76, 166-196;
130. Valerie Lehr, Qiiccr Family Values: Debunking the Myth of the Nuclear Family (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999).
131. Haraway, Moilest_Wittiess (above, n. 15), p. 85.
132. We use "with" in Linda Alcoff's sense of the word. Alcoff's "The Problems of Speaking for Others" talks about speaking "with" others as a means to shift her earlier work on positionality away from relativism and toward relationality. See Linda Martin Alcoff, "The Problem of Speaking for Others," in Who Can Speak? Authority and Critical Identity, ed. Judith Roof and Robyn Wiegman (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 97-119.
133. From Haraway's remarks during her plenary address, "FemaleMan© Meets OncoMouse™: Transgenic Impieties for Trying Times," at 31st Annual Texas Tech University "Webs of Discourse: The Intertextuality of Science Studies Symposium" sponsored by the Program in Comparative Literature, February 5-7, 1998.