Vicissitudes

Taking here together the concept of refugia, places of refuge, that Haraway introduces through the work of Tsing, with the elemental and dynamic characteristics of cyborgs that Harayway incorporates to their notions of kin and composting, I can’t help but be reminded of The Phaedo and its argument for the soul’s immortality to Haraway’s call to “unravel the ties” (102) so to “join forces to reconstitute refuges” (101) as a way of accommodating, or, to use Haraway’s term, staying with the trouble, what may be, and Haraway might not disagree, another form of evolutionary manipulation. A longer post would expand on the concept of refugia, at both the micro and macro level, and perhaps even connect it to The State and the increasing privatization and criminalization of (public) space — public space that encourages discourse and action — would likely impose another form of systemic bondage. Moreover, the physicality of this notion extends certainly not just to the development and redevelopment of real property, but also to anything (and everything) to do with the body. Moreover, this same longer post would make clear connections with the Platonic idea of the soul, and its ‘composite’ and how Haraway perhaps takes the theory of Forms and humanizes it toward a rhetorical (read: political) end. Which would lead this hypothetical longer post’s interrogation of what exactly seeking relationship means and the unpredictable effects of its dynamics (read: a force of one entity initiating an energy transfer with/from/toward another) might be. But this isn’t a longer post; so it won’t even interrogate Haraway’s reference to the pharmakon and its intermediacy as a possible stand-in for what (or perhaps more cunningly, who) exactly is seeking refuge where, why and how.