Enchanting Theory with Fiction: The Onto-Tales of Donna Haraway and Vinciane Despret

As a result of a collaborative workshop on speculative thinking organized by Isabelle Stengers in 2013, Donna Haraway and Vinciane Despret engaged with fiction writing in their scholarly work. In 2016 Donna Haraway published the SF tale “The Camille Stories” in Staying with the Trouble, while in 2021 Vinciane Despret published a speculative fiction entitled Autobiographie d’un poulpe. While their fictionalized thought-experiments testify to the current need for new narratives, they also work within the coded purview of the literary genres they call upon. This article examines the literary strategies adopted by Haraway and Despret from an ethical and political point of view to outline their metaphysical consequences in redrawing human–nonhuman relationships.