Persona #156
Donna Haraway
1944– · American historian of science and feminist theorist; theorist of cyborgs, companion species, and the chthulucene
Cyborg manifesto and companion species — feminist science studies of human-machine-animal entanglement
"A Cyborg Manifesto" (1985) is the most cited feminist-theory essay of the late twentieth century: the cyborg as an ironic political-mythic figure for feminism after the breakdown of nature/culture, organism/machine, and human/animal dualisms. "When Species Meet" (2008) developed the philosophy of companion species; "Staying with the Trouble" (2016) proposes the chthulucene as an alternative to anthropocene-as-narrative. Haraway taught at the History of Consciousness program at UC Santa Cruz; her work is foundational for science studies, multi-species ethnography, and post-humanist feminism.
Key works
- Primate Visions (1989)
- Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1991)
- A Cyborg Manifesto (1985, essay)
- Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium (1997)
- When Species Meet (2008)
- Staying with the Trouble (2016)
Declared Influences
Transhumanism / Posthumanism 30%
Postmodernism 20%
Process Philosophy 15%
Dialectical Materialism 15%
Animism / Relational-Indigenous Worldview 15%
Haraway is the principal theorist of feminist posthumanism; the dissolution of human/machine/animal boundaries is the central program.
"By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism — in short, cyborgs." (A Cyborg Manifesto)
Postmodernism
20%
Haraway works within the poststructuralist-feminist constellation while critically distinguishing herself from its more anti-realist tendencies (cf. "Situated Knowledges").
"I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess." (A Cyborg Manifesto)
Haraway's ontology of "becoming with" companion species and the chthulucene as relational temporality is structurally process-philosophical.
"It matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with." (Staying with the Trouble)
Haraway was trained in Marxist-feminist science studies and retains an attention to capital, labor, and technological infrastructure.
"The cyborg is a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction." (A Cyborg Manifesto)
Haraway's late work on multi-species kin and the chthulucene engages indigenous and pagan relational ontologies as resources for posthumanist thought.
"Make kin, not babies." (Staying with the Trouble)
Internal Tensions
Haraway's cyborg-feminism was attacked from the Right as celebrating technological alienation and from radical-ecofeminist quarters as too comfortable with the machine. Her late chthulucene-and-companion-species work has its own tension with her earlier cyborg work — the chthulucene turns toward the worldly multispecies while the cyborg seemed to lean technological. Haraway treats this as productive rather than inconsistent.
⧖
I. Time
Relational temporality of becoming-with; the chthulucene as a register of multispecies kin time.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Relational
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Non-Deterministic
Traversability: Linear
Direction: Uni-directional
Dimensionality: One
✦
II. Space
Relational; sites of multispecies entanglement.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Relational
Curvature: Flat
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
◉
III. Matter
Substantival but reread as always-already entangled with machines and other species.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
◎
IV. Observer
Plural cyborg-companion observers; multiple time-instances in multispecies temporalities. Cosmic-ordering: the chthulucene.
Attributes
Time Instance: Multiple
Space Instance: Single
Knowledge Extent: Mediated
Knowledge Retainment: Partial
Physicality: Embodied
Agency: Active
Number: Plural
Metaphysical Agency: Cosmic-ordering
⚡
V. Energy
Standard physics with feminist-materialist inflection.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dispersibility: Irreversible
⧉
VI. Information
Relational information of multispecies kin-making.
Attributes
Ontological Status: Relational
Cosmic Conservation: Conserved
Personal Conservation: Non-conserved
Granularity: Continuous
Classified works
Works in the atlas that Donna Haraway authored or that draw on this persona's writings, with full attribute fingerprints of their own.
Authored · Mid
A Cyborg Manifesto
Authored · Late
Staying with the Trouble
Authored · Mid
Primate Visions
Authored · Mid
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women
Authored · Late
Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™
Authored · Late
When Species Meet
Cites
The Elementary Structures of Kinship
Cites
Ecology, Community and Lifestyle
Cites
Tool-Being
Computed school proximity
The persona's attribute fingerprint scored against all 202 schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated influences above.
Philosophical neighbors
Other personas whose attribute fingerprint sits closest to Donna Haraway's — intellectual neighbors across traditions and eras.
72%
Toni Morrison — 1931–2019
23/31
71%
Mary Daly — 1928–2010
24/31
69%
Henri Bergson — 1859–1941
22/31
69%
Bruno Latour — 1947–2022
25/31
66%
Zhuangzi (Zhuang Zhou) — c. 369–c. 286 BCE
20/31
65%
Sun Ra (Herman Poole Blount) — 1914–1993
20/31
65%
Walter Benjamin — 1892–1940
22/31
65%
Audre Lorde — 1934–1992
22/31
How Donna Haraway resolves each dilemma
57 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 15 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(31/202)
Is the universe running out of usable energy?
The heat death of the universe — entropy maxed out, no further work possible — is among the more sobering implications of mainstream physics. Whether it is structurally inescapable depends on what kind of finitude the cosmos has.
Both time and matter are unbounded; 'running out' is misframed.
On this view, the cosmos has neither a temporal horizon nor a material exhaustion point. The framing of running out presupposes bounds that the cosmos doesn't have. Energy gradients perpetuate; new configurations emerge; the categories that make heat-death scary don't apply at the cosmic scale.
Roads not taken
Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing. (47%) ·
Time both has and lacks bounds depending on the level you ask at; finitude is conventional. (26%) ·
The cosmos has bounds; heat death is a real horizon. (12%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(31/202)
Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so?
Whether we can grow our way out of resource constraints — or whether the cosmos sets limits the economy ultimately must obey — depends on what kind of finitude matter has.
Resources are practically inexhaustible on cosmic scales; terrestrial limits are engineering.
On this view, matter and time are both unbounded at the largest scales. Terrestrial resource limits are real engineering and political constraints but not metaphysical ones; the cosmos can in principle support whatever expansion intelligence is capable of.
Roads not taken
Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time. (47%) ·
The finitude question is level-dependent; resource ethics happens at the level that constrains us. (26%) ·
Resources are finite in the strict sense; living well requires accepting the limit. (12%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(31/202)
Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide?
If we owe future people a habitable planet and the material means to flourish, and the cosmos is bounded in ways that make those obligations impossible at some scale, the obligation and the possibility come apart. Where they come apart turns on what kind of finitude we live in.
Both time and matter are unbounded; we cannot in principle owe more than is possible.
On this view, the cosmos has the resources to support whatever flourishing future generations are capable of, given sufficient time and intelligence. The impossibility concern is misplaced; the real questions are about trajectories and choices, not about resource ceilings.
Roads not taken
Time is unbounded but matter is not; we can owe more across long time than the matter can provide. (47%) ·
The owing-and-possibility question is level-dependent; we owe what is appropriate at the level we act on. (26%) ·
The cosmos is bounded; our obligations to future generations are bounded with it. (12%)
6 mainstream positions
Do you really choose?
The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it.
69%
Are addicts responsible for their addiction?
The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real.
69%
Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do?
An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible.
69%
How much weight do future people deserve?
Time arises from events or from a deeper substrate — the future is not yet.
32%
Is regret rational?
The past is not a thing now; regret is the present holding what is no longer.
32%
Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them?
Past species no longer exist; what we owe is to the present and the future.
32%
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is the world created from nothing?
Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance.
55%
Is the physical world fully real?
Yes — the physical world is fully real, mind-independent, persisting.
55%
Does matter have intrinsic moral standing?
Matter is morally considerable insofar as it is created or conserved good.
55%
What is money?
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features.
54%
What is a nation?
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character.
54%
What makes someone male or female?
Sex is a real biological kind with given content.
54%
Should we edit the human germline?
Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given.
54%
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/202)
What makes someone the same person over time?
When dementia hollows out memory, when a coma resolves with no recall, when you imagine being uploaded — the question of whether the surviving person is still you turns on what kind of thing the 'you' was to begin with.
You span moments — identity is a pattern that need not be located at a single now.
On this view, the observer is not bound to a single present. Identity is something that exists across moments — as a pattern, an ancestral line, a trans-temporal structure. Uploading, in this picture, is not a metaphysical impossibility but an engineering question; ancestors are real …
Roads not taken
You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity. (36%) ·
You are a soul — what persists through change is the non-bodily aspect. (29%) ·
There was never a fixed self to either preserve or lose. (14%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/202)
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Loss of memory, of recognition, of the cognitive patterns that made the person — does this end the person, or merely the person you knew? The answer turns on what makes someone who they are.
The person is the pattern across moments — diminished pattern, diminished person.
On this view, the person is constituted by a pattern extending across moments — memory, narrative, characteristic ways of being. As dementia erodes the pattern, the person is correspondingly diminished. What remains is real but is less than what was; the marriage to the person …
Roads not taken
Same body, same person — even when the cognitive pattern has changed. (36%) ·
The soul persists; the cognitive change is the body's, not the person's. (29%) ·
There was no fixed person to lose; care is owed to whoever is here. (14%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/202)
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
The Star Trek transporter problem: a machine scans your body atom by atom, transmits the pattern, builds an exact duplicate at the destination, and dismantles the original. Whether you arrive at the destination or die in the scanner is the question; the answer depends on what you are.
You are the pattern; the pattern survives the substrate change. You arrive.
On this view, you are the trans-temporal pattern that has shown up in this body up to now. The teleporter preserves the pattern — destroys one instance, builds another — and the pattern is what matters. You step in and you step out. The fact …
Roads not taken
Different body, different person — you died in the scanner. (36%) ·
The soul accompanies the person; engineering can't transfer it. (29%) ·
There was no fixed you to either survive or fail to; the question is malformed. (14%)
Distinctive · only 11% of schools agree
(22/202)
Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species?
Different traditions take fundamentally different things to be the basic moral-political unit.
The species or biosphere is the moral primary.
The biological species, or the wider community of sentient life, is the moral unit.
Roads not taken
The discrete person is the moral primary. (40%) ·
The community of persons is the moral primary. (28%) ·
The cosmic-religious order is the moral primary. (14%)
Distinctive · only 13% of schools agree
(26/202)
Are the dead morally present to the living?
Ancestor veneration, intercession with saints, the moral weight of a promise made to someone now gone — these all presuppose that the dead are present in some sense beyond memory. Whether they are turns on whether an observer is the kind of thing that exists in a single moment or across many.
Observers span moments; the dead are present in a real (not merely metaphorical) way.
On this view, an observer is not located at a single moment but extends across moments. The dead, on this signature, are not gone — they are elsewhere on the same trans-temporal structure that you yourself occupy. Ancestor veneration, intercession with saints, the moral weight …
Roads not taken
Observers are bounded by their own moment, and no further agency makes the dead present. (44%) ·
The dead are present through divine memory, communion of saints, or ancestor presence. (35%) ·
From the standpoint of the One, the distinction between living and dead is conventional. (8%)
32 mainstream positions
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
An observer can occupy multiple times at once; foreknowledge is not foreordering.
13%
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
Meditation accesses a trans-temporal level the ordinary observer doesn't ordinarily reach.
13%
Does prayer change God's mind?
Prayer participates in a trans-temporal liturgy or communion; the question of 'changing the mind' misses the trans-temporal mode.
13%
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Truth is real but always known from a perspective.
16%
What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize?
Direct experiential union is the authority.
16%
What happens to "you" when you die?
You were always a pattern. The pattern propagates.
18%
Does history have a direction or meaning?
History is the gradual unfolding of improvement or liberation.
23%
Could causation work backwards?
Causation runs one way — the arrow of time is real and structural.
68%
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
The asymmetry is real because time itself has a real direction.
68%
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
The arrow is real and structural; the asymmetry isn't an artifact of description.
68%
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
Damage is real and permanent on the relevant timescales. There is no recovery; there is only limitation.
66%
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
Civilizational complexity is hard to build and easy to lose; recovery is at best partial.
66%
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
Entropy is what time is. The moral weight, if any, is the weight of working against the current.
66%
When does a person begin?
A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence.
54%
What is marriage?
Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make.
54%
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Moral obligation tracks the relations one is in; distance does matter, structurally.
50%
What is our place in nature?
Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform.
48%
Should we colonize space?
Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship.
48%
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
Genetic modification is cultivation by other means.
48%
Is reality fundamentally digital?
No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure.
44%
Are there indivisible units of experience?
No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness.
44%
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Held in continuous divine or ancestral remembering — neither stored discretely nor purely reconstructed.
44%
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
Prayer reaches because God or a cosmic ordering acts on the prayed-for.
37%
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
What looks like coincidence is providence — there is no such thing as a real coincidence.
37%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
Animal minds are real because biology is the substrate of mind.
32%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
Brain tissue can in principle do what brains do; the question is integration.
32%
Could an AI have a mind that matters?
No — mind is what a biological brain does, and an LLM has no brain.
30%
Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it?
Trust expertise only insofar as it coheres with first-person experience.
17%
Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge?
What gets called 'revelation' is real direct experience — not a text.
17%
Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces?
An LLM has no first-person experience, so no knowing in the relevant sense.
17%
Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal?
Liberation is the realization of cosmic or species self.
15%
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Through historical-critical engagement and the working-out of contradictions.
13%
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone.
51%
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys.
51%
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible.
51%
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away.
51%
Films Referencing This Persona (8)
Either directly referenced in the film, or reading the film through one of this persona's top schools.
Experiments Engaging This Persona's Schools
Surface via influence-schools that respond to the experiment. Each entry shows the school through which the connection runs.
Bostrom's Simulation Argument
Sympathetic: technological maturity makes ancestor-simulations plausible, and the population reasoning gives them ontological weight.
Voyager 1 Crossing the Heliopause
A landmark of humanity's technological extension into space; the Voyagers carry Golden Records as artifacts of human cultural presence beyond the heliosphere.
The Veil of Ignorance
The unencumbered self of the veil is a metaphysical fiction; persons are constituted by their attachments and traditions, and cannot reason about justice while pretending …
The Liar Paradox
A model case of the unstable, self-undermining character of language; the paradox is endemic, not a glitch.
Asch's Conformity Experiments
A neat empirical illustration of the situatedness of "truth": consensus is socially produced even at the level of immediate perception.
The Ship of Theseus
The puzzle assumes substance metaphysics that processes do not need. "The ship" is a pattern of becoming; asking which of A or B "is" the …
Parfit's Teletransporter
Persons are processes, not enduring substances. Fission cases reveal the artificiality of insisting on a unique continuant; the two-branch outcome is metaphysically tractable, just not …
Joule's Mechanical Equivalent of Heat
Whitehead's process metaphysics is congenial: energy as a fungible quantity that flows between forms is closer to reality than substantival matter or substantival caloric.
Lavoisier's Conservation of Mass
Mass conservation across qualitative change is a canonical illustration of the conservation and transformation of matter, central to dialectical-materialist ontology of nature.
Galvani's Twitching Frogs
A canonical instance of bridging the supposed gap between living and non-living matter: both subject to the same physical laws, but in distinct material-organisational regimes.