Staying with the Trouble

Professor Donna Haraway says she wrote a book called Staying with the Trouble because isn’t an optimist or a pessimist and neither hope nor despair are useful to us right now.

If we succumb to the idea that we have made an irreparable mess or to the idea that future generations or technology will find a solution to the climate crisis and large scale wild habitat destruction then we don’t have to take any responsibility *now*.

That kind of thinking allows us to function (or not) with impunity because if all else fails some of us can just start afresh on Mars. To flourish, we don’t need the survival of a species, we need multispecies justice. This is not to reject technology but to say that we can’t expect some sort of ‘deus ex machina’ to sort things out for us and simply continue as we are.

Donna argues that in order to stay with the trouble we have to acknowledge and build kinship beyond our biological families. We need to redefine family and who we are responsible to because “we require each other in unexpected collaborations and considerations.”