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Companions at a Distance: Technoscience, Blood, and the Horseshoe Crab

Companions at a Distance: Technoscience, Blood, and the Horseshoe Crab <jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>In this paper we present a particular history of Limulus polyphemus, the horseshoe crab, as a means of expanding on Haraway’s notion of companion species. Drawing on accounts of the horseshoe crab’s role, on the one hand, in work of the Serological Museum at Rutgers University that spanned the 1940s to the 1970s, and, on the other, in the development of the limulus amebocyte lysate test, we trace some of the complexities of human-limulus relations. These relations encompassed not only the horseshoe crab’s objectification (as a source of serum), but also the natural historical, the mythical, and the symbolic (in relation to its blue blood or its supposed status as a “living fossil”). We suggest that the horseshoe crab, and similarly alien or abjected species, can be valued as companion species if this concept is expanded beyond parameters such as intimacy, surprise, and “becoming-with” to include distanciation, wonder, and “becoming-because-of.”</jats:p> </jats:sec> http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Society & Animals Brill

Companions at a Distance: Technoscience, Blood, and the Horseshoe Crab

Gisler, Priska; Michael, Mike
Society & Animals , Volume 19 (2): 115 – Jan 1, 2011
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References (26)

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2011 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1063-1119
eISSN
1568-5306
DOI
10.1163/156853011X562971
Publisher site
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Abstract

<jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>In this paper we present a particular history of Limulus polyphemus, the horseshoe crab, as a means of expanding on Haraway’s notion of companion species. Drawing on accounts of the horseshoe crab’s role, on the one hand, in work of the Serological Museum at Rutgers University that spanned the 1940s to the 1970s, and, on the other, in the development of the limulus amebocyte lysate test, we trace some of the complexities of human-limulus relations. These relations encompassed not only the horseshoe crab’s objectification (as a source of serum), but also the natural historical, the mythical, and the symbolic (in relation to its blue blood or its supposed status as a “living fossil”). We suggest that the horseshoe crab, and similarly alien or abjected species, can be valued as companion species if this concept is expanded beyond parameters such as intimacy, surprise, and “becoming-with” to include distanciation, wonder, and “becoming-because-of.”</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Journal

Society & Animals – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 2011

Keywords: limulus test; horseshoe crab; companion species; human-nonhuman animal relations

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