Making kin beyond babies - after Donna Haraway

What does „Make kin, not babies” mean? Why is it relevant and why is it dangerous? Donna Haraway’s troublesome motto brings us a vision for multispecies kinship and justice, starting to speak about population from a feminist perspective. The video takes into account the critiques it has received from feminist marxists and others. Moreover, it tries to show how the concept was expanded by other feminist philosophers and thinkers, as well as how Haraway herself enmeshed it into her own work about living and dying and about staying with the trouble in the Chthulucene.
In these times of climate and ecological collapse, what must we change about our societies, to make place for life, for all beings? Our extractivist economic arrangements are a good start. But beyond that, might it be that our relationships, too, need a little re-thinking?
00:16 Part I - The Children of Compost
02:16 Part II - Making kin not population
04:53 Part III - Making kin and taking care
08:28 Part IV - Making kin beyond babies
This video was made by just wondering…
If you can, support us, it will really really help us with the production costs:
/ justwondering
www.ko-fi.com/justwondering
Here’s our website to find out more about us: justwondering.io/
Twitter: / justwonderingyt
Facebook: / justwonderingyt
This video is second in a series: a ”Dictionary of thinkers and concepts” that we think with!
Everything is equally weird - On Graham Harman's philosophy - • Everything is equally ...
Credits:
Written by M
Writing suggestions by Aron Nor
Recorded by M & Aron Nor
Illustrations made by Mina Mimosa
Video/Audio editing by Aron Nor
Hashtags to go by:
#MakeKinNotBabies from Donna Haraway
#AgainstPopulation and #RedistributionsNotReproductions from Michelle Murphy
#LandBodyDefense from Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA) and Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN)
#FreeMovementNotCapital and #PlanUtopiasNotPeople from Simon Torracinta
#BlackLivesMatter from the movement co-founded by three black community organizers: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi
References:
Benjamin, Ruha (2018) Black Afterlives Matter: Cultivating Kinfulness as Reproductive Justice. In Clarke, Andele & Haraway, Donna, ed. Making kin not population. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press
Haraway, Donna (2018) Making kin in the Chthulucene:Reproducing Multispecies Justice. in Clarke, Andele & Haraway, Donna, ed. Making kin not population. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press
Haraway, Donna (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chtulucene. North Carolina: Duke University Press
Haraway, Donna. (2015) Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin, Retrieved 2020 environmentalhumanities.org/ar...
Hamilton, Jennifer Mae (2019): The Future of Housework: The Similarities and Differences Between Making Kin and Making Babies, Australian Feminist Studies
Lewis, Sophie. (2017) Cthulu Plays no role for me, Retrieved 2020 www.viewpointmag.com/2017/05/...
Michelle, Murphy (2018) Against Population, Towards Alterlife. in Clarke, Andele & Haraway, Donna, ed. Making kin not population. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press
Tallbear, Kim (2018) Making Love and Relations Beyond Settler Sex and Family. in Clarke, Andele & Haraway, Donna, ed. Making kin not population. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press
Torracinta, Simon. (2017) Make kin not borders, Retrieved 2020 thenewinquiry.com/make-kin-no...
Battistoni Alyssa and Donna Haraway (2019) on The Dig www.thedigradio.com/podcast/c... Retrieved 2020
Jessa Crispin and Donna Haraway (2018) on Public Intellectuals "Alternatives to Babies" • Video
Fabrizio Terranova (2016) Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival (Film)
Help us caption & translate this video!
amara.org/v/CZyIs/

[@rebecabassedom2144]

Thank you for this video. It helps me so much to understading more about Donna Haraway. Please, bring us more content about her! Kisses from Brazil

[@bijinzhu62]

You guys have done an amazing job breaking down these complex ideas. Really helpful!

[@kahhtd]

I love how you handle this topic. I just read Staying with the Trouble by Haraway and have been eager to explore the philosophy she presents more through different lenses and critiques. I think you've explored the topic very well in this video and shared many new voices that bring different views to the issues. Thank you so much for putting in the research on this and expanding the discussion! I think, for me, I've see "making kin, not babies" not quite so literally but as a way to prioritize community building with all relations over atomic family structures seen predominately where I live in south-western Canada.

[@samkalei]

I appreciate the tension you hold between the ideas in this video, prevention population and it’s historical uses as neither good nor bad but as complex and enraged in both good and bad and more than good and more than bad things. It’s complicates something which shouldn’t be reduced to a reactionary or simplistic argument, as it holds so much life and nuance. It’s a topic that deserves attentiveness, and I value that you’ve brought that to it. I also appreciate the same treatment you’ve given Donna haraways concepts. I feel like you held her ideas as living things rather than stagnant formulations we can assign value judgements to which, really enjoyed the video

[@justwondering]

Thank you so much for this really thoughtful comment!!

[@puneetjain5625]

The voices are so soothing. It’s a goood night. Thanks for making this.

[@TakaConDaga]

No lo vi todavía pero ya voy dejando el me gusta y me suscribo porque que hayan más videos sobre estos temas es muy bueno!

[@luclem.6234]

I love how you make criticisms integral to the presentation!

[@mariapisiou1942]

It's great! Thanks for sharing!

[@jingxinwang947]

Thanks you so much for these video. I always came back to this video and appreciate donna's ideas.

[@mellissaberry1562]

SO beautiful and a vision for the future!

[@jiayihuang6137]

Oh mine. The coolest academic video I have ever seen! thank you so much

[@fahimijimi]

Love this! very fascinating stuff

[@anniepaslui]

thank you so much for this video!!! really aspirational and needed

[@katejudson8907]

A search for Rosi Braidotti brought me here. Glad for that. Very interesting. 👍

[@justwondering]

Interesting, I'm glad to hear. I hope we'll manage to make a video about her sometime in the future :)

[@leamariekerst4576]

I love the artwork so much and the philosophy behind it too!

[@chhamgurung3180]

very nice, thanks a lot for sharing!

[@carolardente3239]

Amazing work!

[@Ergogeorge]

Wonderful!

[@SomasAcademy]

Reading the tags on this made me concerned that it was going to be some Malthusian thing, glad to see it was more thoughtful than that.

[@justwondering]

Soma Hanikeri Thanks! We were a bit anxious to talk about the "not babies" part, so I really hope the whole thing can open up a way to think about kinship and population in a more thoughtful manner.

[@Marinucas]

The criticism is commonly brought up against Donna Haraway's ideas and to be honest, she did not help in dispersing those fears about a Malthusian approach with her dismissive responses to these criticisms. Quite disappointing. The video does a great job though in contextualizing it and applying it without these tendencies!

[@mossy_turtleneck]

Isn't a Malthusian perspective refuted by the ecological principles of populations growth and carrying capacity?

[@querypowerball4895]

uhh thank u for this!

[@domfrancis4913]

This is great. Thanks for such a fantastic video :)

[@justwondering]

Thanks! We are glad you liked it ❤

[@eliogabalovolodine6817]

Thank you for the video! I was thinking about what kind of new forms of kinship and support are possible beyond the nuclear family. Someone knows what kind of reading or practical examples to explore these possibilities? Like, other then the expanded family, I was thinking of the model of the Houses in the Drag community that I saw in Paris Burning or the collective unit thought out by Shulamith Firestone in the Dialectic of Sex, but these are both humans-based kinship, while I was more curious of how to make these kind of formation with non-humans without humanizing or subordinating the non-human component - like it is done in millions of households with domestic animals that are usually treated as children or as friends, with all the baggage of entangled human projections that are difficult to transform or to free from (e.g. Oedipus). I guess this is also why we should stay with the trouble and the fact that there is no clean-cut solution to these messy relations but I was curious if someone knows other examples that problematize it or find new paths forward.

[@justwondering]

Thank you! There are probably many forms of kinship beyond the nuclear family, and anthropology is one way to find out about them. We also loved Paris is Burning, so that's one good example of an intentional community/family. As in regards to more-than-human families, microsanctuaries and animal sanctuaries can function as such, depending on their rules and how they organize. One example is VINE sanctuary, here's a paper that details how it works: Blattner, C. E., Donaldson, S., & Wilcox, R. (2020). Animal Agency in Community: A Political Multispecies Ethnography of VINE Sanctuary. POLITICS AND ANIMALS, 6, 22.

[@asherahhunter5077]

A satirist novel by vonnnegut the sirens if titan where a govt mandate of kinship is assigned by surname and with expectations of relative pathos and a financial responsibility to keep "relatives" relatively healthy and happy. Aka more than alive

[@thisisnotthetruth3878]

👏👏👏👏

[@mossy_turtleneck]

The timing of this video is a little bit uncanny.

[@PrakashRaj-zq8uj]

the concept of population reinforces the ideology that casts life as contained, that is, the individual is a container for the life-force that sustains them. relinquishing this containment of life-force within an imagined Self is made difficult by the ideology of population. it hegemonizes the genetic categorization of species, which Donna attempts to dissipate through the fabulation of babies being genetically modified to resurrect dying species. that there is a considerable consistency among genes, may make the categorization of species feasible, but the inference of sameness within species is wrong. we earthlings are all genetically varied, and despite the magnitude of variation being different, we still categorize certain earthlings as the Other and discriminate difference. this view is inconsistent as if truly there was a Self, everything else would be the Other, but our tendencies of partiality to imagined similarities betrays rationality. thus, population is problematic because the summation of contained life-forces of similar genetic dispositions generates an ideology of sameness, that in turn allows us to construct the Other. finally, in the absence of the concept of population, speciesism would be less rampant, allowing us to embrace the Other and rethink life as uncontained, infinite.

[@justwondering]

fascinating thought! do you have any reading suggestions on this matter?

[@PrakashRaj-zq8uj]

@@justwondering the concept of Other was drawn from Douglas Mary's Purity and Danger, container is a word Donna uses herself in Making Kin in the Chthulucene, these theorized alongside personal ethical and spiritual positions and this video's fabulous illustration of the genetically modified human-critter helped piece the thought. thank you, beautiful video