Hybrid Family 

2016

 Thus, we can give a new and very different meaning to HOMO HOMINI
LUPUS: “Man to Man is—or at least should be—a kind Wolf.” 

— Wolfgang M. Schleidt/Michael D. Shalter; Co-evolution of
Humans and Canids - Evolution and Cognition, 2003, Vol. 9, No. 1

The project HYBRID FAMILY was related to the theory of becoming-animal by rethinking the social and ideological instrumentalization of a woman´s body and breastfeeding. Overcoming the classical distinction between private life and political existence, I felt I needed to perform with my own body and the bodies of my dogs to re-gain our position of power by staging a public performance with a puppy Ada. My own economy of emotions became a molecular process: during a three-month period of seclusion with my dogs, I stimulated my pituitary glands with systematic breastpumping to release the hormone prolactin and followed a diet rich in galactogogues to promote lactation. A side effect was the increase in oxytocin hormone levels, which led to an increase in empathy and my personal resistance to the cynicism of the zeitgeist. By being pregnant with a meaning, and thus becoming (m)Other, I was further drawn to explore my “decolonial reproductive freedom in a dangerously troubled multispecies world“ *(see Haraway, 2016).1 The myth of humanity, based on its uniqueness, has always excluded some that don’t correspond to the ideal, for example animals with regard to parenthood and gender.

*Haraway, Donna Jeanne, author. Title: Staying with the Trouble : Making Kin in the Chthulucene Donna J. Haraway. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2016. | Series: Experimental futures: technological lives, scientific arts, anthropological voices.