- (more of a note than a question) Note that the book from which this excerpt comes, The Companion Species Manifesto, relates back to, and in many ways extends, the argument of Haraway's prior essay, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs." Note how the startling comparision between dogs as "companion species" and cyborgs are linked throughout this essay. And note that companion species like dogs share with cyborgs (cybernetic organisms, or synthetic "bodies" run by computers) share the quality of being "others" to the biological human body, others whose otherness make the contours of the "human" more visible and avaiable for analysis.
- What are some ways, from the top, that Haraway pushes us to rethink our ideas about dogs? What mistakes do we make when we think about what dogs are and how they relate to humans? How does thinking about dogs as companion species help us to rethink what it means to be human?
- What is a "species"? What are some ways that Haraway develops the resonances of this concept via what she calls the four "tones" that compose this concept?
- What are some of the ways that Haraway links facts to fictions, the empirical world to the language that points at it, biological companions and cyborgs?
- At the end of the piece, Haraway returns to the "meta" question of her own methodology or style. How would you describe her style? How does the form of her essay relate to its content?
