“The Contest for Primate Nature: Daughters of Man-the Hunter in

the Field, 1960-80”Donna Haraway

Student Edition

Prepared by:

Dr. Kay Picart

Guide Questions

Why does Haraway contend that “language is not innocent in our primate order”?

In what ways is “science our myth”?

Guide Question

In what ways are feminism and science both myths?

Guide Questions

Does Haraway mean to say that there is no such thing as a “fact” or “truth”?

Does Haraway contend that science and politics are one and the same thing?

Guide Question

Describe Washburn’s “patrilineal primatology.”

Fathers-1

Who was the “father” and what was the “Man-the-Hunter” hypothesis?

Guide Question

How was the Man-the-Hunter hypothesis modified by Washburn’s daughters (Jay/Dolhinow, DeVore, Ripley, Hrdy, Bogess)?

Fathers

Compare and contrast Jay’s and Devore’s works

Fathers

What story could not be accounted for by both Jay and Devore?

Did Jay’s story radically rework Washburn’s patrilineal narrative?

Fathers

How did Hrdy’s narrative constitute a rebellion from the patrilineal narrative?

Guide Question

Why is Haraway highly critical of Hrdy’s remark that: “Anyone heroic enough to read on to the end of the book will learn why the identification of langurs with warriors was an appropriate taxonomic choice, & why the final salute must be to the prescience of the 19th C British naturalists who first went to study the Hanuman”? (100)

Daughters

In what ways were Hrdy’s theories like soap operas?

Daughters

What was Ripley’s emphasis on?

Final Question

Why are categories of health and pathology important to Bogess?

Guide Question

What are Haraway’s concluding remarks?

Final Question

Can you think of other instances in which new scientific stories, implicating gender and/or race and class, have been revised?

(E.g., the story of fertilization; a feminist critique of the story of sex)