Class Critical Reading/Writing Exercise

When Species Meet (Introduction from pp 3 - 6) – Analysis

‘When Species Meet’ by Donna Haraway, is a book focused on Humans meeting other creatures especially domestic ones. The book questions who we will become when we encounter other creatures.

After reading the text I made sure to look up some words I did not fully understand in order to make more sense of the sentence.

• Worldly: of, relating to, or devoted to this world and its pursuits rather than to religion or spiritual affairs

• Neo-Liberal: a liberal who de-emphasizes traditional liberal doctrines in order to seek progress by more pragmatic methods

• Liberalism: belief in the value of social and political change in order to achieve progress

• Chimerical: existing only as the product of unchecked imagination: fantastically visionary or improbable.

• Brim: the edge or rim of a hollow vessel, a natural depression, or a cavity.

• Implicit: capable of being understood from something else though unexpressed

• Myriad: a great number.

(Merriam-webster, 2016)

In the introduction of the book we read that we as humans do not live alone, even on our body, other creatures live on it. On the human body 10% of all the cells are of human genomes, the rest are genomes of bacteria, fungi, protist, creatures that help you stay alive, others that hitch a ride, and some that are harmful for you but the human cells keep them under control until you die where they will take over and use what is left of your body.

The word Figurines is defined as ‘Chimerical vision’ in The Oxford English Dictionary in an eighteenth-century source and that the meaning is still implicit in her sense of figure.

Then she continous to say that the focus of this book is human beings meeting other critters, especially but not only domestic. The paragraph ends by making a list of what she is going to talk about in the book and mansions different types of figures which all live on the earth and asking who we will become when species meet.

The purpose of the author is to entertain and effect people emotions on the connection between human and critter. She talks about what happens when human meet other creatures, and when for example you touch your dog, are you really touching your dog or you are touching a lot of other creatures along that live on your dog’s body?

She first starts by describing that we live with other creatures all the time and that there are myriad of creatures. Then she describes what figures are since she refers to the creatures and humans she wrote about as figures. In the end, she makes a list of what she is going to talk about and how humans are effected when they encounter other creatures. Probably she wrote this book for domestic animal lovers, because she states that this book will be focusing mostly on domestic creatures but not only.

References

Haraway, D., 2008. When Species Meet. s.l.:University of Minnisoda Press.

Merriam-webster, 2016. Definition of LIBERALISM. [Online] Available at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liberalism [Accessed 26 October 2016].