Notes on: Barad, K (2014).
Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together –
Apart. Parallax, 20 (3): 168 – 87. DOI:
10.1080/13534645.2014.927623.
Dave Harris
[I think this is a very useful piece to focus more
my emerging criticisms upon, so I have been really
nitpicking and there is as much of me as there is
of her.]
[Let's start with the title. If you can diffract
diffraction, can you then go on and diffract the
result of that diffraction, ad infintum. Is
diffraction in principle infinite? If so how do
you manage it in practice? If I think of it in
terms of the old-fashioned notion of the slow
accumulation of academic understanding from
reading a variety of books and periodically
considering the implications, it's clear there is
both an arbitrary and the motivated way to
diffract. Presumably, Barad diffracts only stuff
she already agrees with, or that suits her
project. As I said in my comments on Murris's
diffraction, the diffracters never seem to
choose texts that are opposed to each other, and
so as a result the diffraction is actually rather
fractional, focusing on agreements, amplifications
and not bits where texts might cancel each other
out]
'Diffraction owes as much to a thick legacy of
feminist theorising about difference as it does to
physics' (168) [still a bit vague — which came
first? Which is the more important, should they
ever disagree?]. There is a need to re-turn to the
past, to intra act with it and diffract anew in
order to produce new diffraction patterns,
'spacetimematterings' [all these terms support
each other and I doubt if they have any separable
meanings]. We will discover a 'multiplicity of
processes'[a deleuzian one or a merely
quantitative one?]. We can compare this with what
earthworms do when they turn the soil over. It is
okay to use organic metaphors because diffraction
is general and destabilises [all?] binaries
including organic/inorganic. We are also going to
trouble the notion of dichotomy — 'cutting into
two', 'a singular act of absolute differentiation,
fracturing this from that, now from then' [but
where do we find these absolute differentiations
as opposed to the much more common normal working
differentiations where similarities are still
acknowledged just temporarily suspended — more
below. Interacting with diffraction like this can
be seen as diffracting diffraction. [Using
complementary terminology] 'agential cuts… Do not
produce absolute separations but rather
together–apart (one move)' [quoting herself]
There are no absolute boundaries anywhere, not
between the new and the not new, or the here and
there. 'Matter itself is diffracted' [who
diffracts it, and again is this continual and
infinite, or are subsequent diffractions
constrained by earlier ones, as in
'compossibility'?] There are 'materialising and
sedimented [so both active and passive?] effects
of iterative reconfigurings', traces of what might
have happened in 'an open field'. 'Sedimenting
does not entail closure. (Mountain ranges in their
liveliness attest to this fact)' [so what is the
difference between materialising and sedimenting?
What is she banging on about with mountain
ranges?]
Spacetimemattering is dynamic. Diffractions are
untimely, because time itself is broken in
different directions and 'each moment is an
infinite multiplicity' (169). The now is therefore
an 'infinitely rich condensed node in a changing
field' [so what does stabilise? How actually does
this fit with normal notions of time, the notions
that innocent feminist activists might be
interested in?]
Let's return to the past 'in order to see the
infinity that lives through it' [we're going to
see infinity — or just an aspect of it guided by
feminist politics?]. This will be a thick [not infinite?]
moment, but we can designate it by space-time
coordinates, such as 'Santa Cruz, CA late 1980s'.
This is a moment where and when 'questions of
differences broke through the breakwater of
Universal Sisterhood' and renewed 'the lifeblood
of feminist theorising'. The background was
'enormous labours and persistence of women of
colour'. This breakthrough moment is
'dispersed/diffracted' [so those terms are the
same now? Or is this an invitation to disregard
the difference between them?] throughout the
paper. It is an example of 'a diffracting
condensation, threading through of an infinity of
moments–places–matterings, a
superposition/entanglement, never closed, never
finished' [in other words it's had widespread
implications, but claiming that it goes on to
infinity seems a bit ambitious]
At that space-time coordinate, in 1988, Trinh
Minh-ha is presenting a paper to a cultural
studies meeting, on difference, saying that
sometimes it leads to apartheid, but there are
other implications — it refers to '"differences as
well as similarities within the concept of
difference"' [Deleuze gets into the same sort of
difficulty in trying to argue there are different
sorts of differences]. Trinh is obviously
attacking colonisation where others are separated
from selves through an 'absolute boundary, a clear
dividing line' [so this might occur with apartheid
regimes, but how common is it to have such an
absolute boundary?]. Trinh also argues that
identity is taken as something '"essential,
authentic"', hidden to consciousness, but
requiring '"the elimination of all [sic] that is
considered foreign or not true to the self"'. This
inevitably leads to a relation of dominance. It
[this absolute notion] clearly presupposes 'a
clear dividing line' between categories like I and
not I, he and she, depth and surface, vertical and
horizontal identity' (170).
There is an 'impenetrable barrier between self and
other in an attempt to establish and maintain…
hegemony' [this might be what ideologists of
domination and oppression aim at, but how
successful are they in establishing such hegemony
is surely the issue]. There is a geometrical
optics here, where the other is located behind a
mirror. Others become the Other [Lacanian?] and
difference becomes apartheid. Binaries are
therefore instrumental to the workings of power
[but hang on, even apartheid in South Africa was
not just based on notions of binary identity, but
on other forms of division as well to which they
were related but not reduced? Is this case to be
taken as typical, where tight binary divisions
line up to tight social divisions and hegemony is
always achieved? Can such a nice collusion ever be
resisted or denied by experience? Did white South
Africans never encounter black South Africans who
did turn out to be talented or deserving? Did none
of them ever have doubts about apartheid?].
So '"divide and conquer has [been] his [the
Univesal male coloniser?] formula of success"'
[but are there no other political strategies? What
about all those clever analyses of how hegemony
actually works, in Thatcherism for example? Is
there some logical or socially-grounded reason for
the dominance of divide and conquer — is the
tendency to make binary divisions necessarily,
solely and chronically likely to lead to such a
strategy?] There is however [somehow] another
'"terrain of consciousness"' for Trinh [so where
did that come from?]. This sees '"dualistic
oppositions"' [less opposed than binary ones?] Binaries
are occasionally useful for analysis but 'no
longer satisfactory if not entirely untenable to
the critical mind' [in other words to the few who
are able to break through the sad ideology that
imprisons the rest of us?]. So we must disrupt
binaries and think of difference differently [here
we go again], not opposing it to sameness and 'not
in any absolute sense' and not leading to
separateness. How might we do this?
[We're not going to get an answer directly, but we
are provided with some more material to think
about. Maybe we are being invited to diffract?
Barad has provided us with this material herself,
of course]
F Grimaldi develops the field of optics, noticing
that the boundaries of shadows are not sharply
defined and suggesting that the laws of ray
propagation have to be amended. He 'observes
distraction fringes — bands of light inside the
edge of the shadow', with no sharp boundary
separating light from dark. He makes a
breakthrough by imagining that light is behaving
as a fluid and coins the term 'diffraction'.
Back to Santa Cruz again and return to the work of
a certain G Anzaldúa [I'm gonna call her GA]. She
writes a foundational text in feminist studies, Borderlands.
Barad quotes her talking about the need to change
the old boundaries of the self and cross over,
escape. This is just like Grimaldi breaking
through barriers. GA even describes colonisation
in terms of darkness and light, with a Christian
inflection about primordial darkness being split,
and darkness subsequently being identified with
evil forces with '"the masculine order casting its
dual shadow"'. Back to Grimaldi and his interest
in passing sunlight through two adjacent pinholes
as a of anticipation of two slit experiments. He
notices that additional light actually also
increases the obscurity of the body [by producing
more interference effects of darkness?] This
'queers the binary light/darkness story' [without
invoking quantum physics at all?]. Darkness is now
good, 'an abundance' not an absence. We can now
'call for a rethinking of the notions of identity
and difference'.
[Let's review what has gone on. Barad seems to be
offering a diffractive reading of Grimaldi on the
one hand and GA on the other. The whole thing
seems to depend on a use of similar terms, optical
metaphors of darkness and light. There are
differences, but these are not particularly
emphasised — for example only GA goes on to draw
conclusions about identity, Christianity and
colonisation. Barad packs in behind by suggesting
that GA offers the more general ontology, like her
completing Bohr. This might be an interesting
three wave diffraction — I'm not physicist enough
to know what sort of patterns result from three
waves. It actually looks like a classic
interpretation, where the general ontology
identifies particular characteristics lurking
within the specific examples: as with all
essentialism, it is almost certainly a tautology.
Barad's pattern seems to be illustrating simple
agreement via shared metaphors, not much more than
Lacan's homonymy, relating the two uses of the
word 'darkness' Neither Grimaldi nor GA seem to
have relied on quantum physics. Grimaldi got to
his conclusions using classic scientific
experiment: GA got to hers in some unknown way —
intuition? Experience? Through writing a novel?].
On to another early commentator on diffraction,
Young, identifying possible combinations of two
sets of waves, and noticing that the length of the
path between light and slit, and whether the waves
arrive in phase or not can affect the results. 'In
this way, one might say that Young gives us an
understanding of diffraction as the effect of
differences' (172) [so it's now an effect as well
as a cause of differences? The two are
interchangeable for Barad of course]
Back to Santa Cruz and Haraway this time. Haraway
reads Trinh 'through the figure of diffraction'
[so she did it first?] — Haraway points out that
diffraction maps interference and does not produce
replication or reflection. It '"maps where the
effects of difference appear"'[and where they
don't?] . Trinh is disrupting 'taxonomies that
locate subjects according to natural kinds' [and
is not the first to do so — but is this Haraway
generalising and essentialising? We might note
that this is a dangerous kind of naturalism,
unlike the nice critical naturalism embraced by
Barad. Haraway goes on to describe the
inappropriate other in Trinh as indicating '"a
diffracting rather than reflecting (ratio)
nality"' [I just love those split words], since
'"to be inappropriate/d is not to fit in the
taxon, to be dislocated from the available maps…
Not to be originally fixed by difference"' [but
does this necessarily mean locatable in a
diffraction pattern, rather than other ways of not
fitting?]
Back to Santa Cruz and a conversation with GA
'about quantum physics and mestiza consciousness'
[a conversation between equals? An alternating
monologue?]. Barad's theory class is studying Borderlands.
They discuss the two slit diffraction experiment
and what GA calls mita'y mita [which I
gather means 'half and half' and which refers to
the experiences of dislocated persons, neither
male nor female, for example — apparently they
attracted a 'horrified' response and were seen as
a natural --but see below] Barad says that
electrons are queer particles also mita 'y mita,
doubled, 'a theoretical impossibility (at least
from the point of view of classical Newtonian
physics)' (172) [classical Newtonian physics still
seems necessary as a kind of residual straw man —
is it assumed that that is the conception of
physics shared by advocates of patriarchy or
apartheid? Any realists at all?]. Electrons are
both waves and particles. This is originally
labelled a '"wave – particle duality"' and
appeared as a 'disturbing paradox'. GA is quoted
as saying that half and halfs are not confused,
but suffering from '"an absolute despot duality"'.
For Newtonian physics [it is the same --but hardly
despotic?] — particles were supposed to be
separated from waves, but electrons behave like
both, 'each individual electron is somehow going
through both slits at once', if we had a
which-slit detector, this can itself produce
particle behaviour 'impossible they say, but this
is the electron's lived experience' [electrons now
have lived experience, just like ambiguously sexed
people]. GA says queer people are like that, both
male and female in one body [again long
recognised, surely, not least by Freud]. Bohr
explains the behaviour of electrons by reworking
the classical world view. GA argues for mestiza
consciousness to rework the subject–object duality
[so they are both in the same line of work
really]. [This reworking is possible because it is
grounded in experience that resists these idiotic
dualities, which raises the whole question of who
believes in them in the first place]. Bohr is
really saying that electrons can 'perform
particle-ness in this under certain experimental
circumstances, and wave-ness under others' [fully
exploiting the ambiguity of the term 'perform',
which means both releasing behaviour and choosing
behaviour]
[Barad adds her interpretation to explain the
similarity between Bohr and GA — both reveal 'a
contingent iterative performativity… An
understanding of difference not as an absolute
boundary… But rather as the effects of enacted
cuts in a radical reworking of cause/effect'(
173--4) [and there was silly old GA just thinking
she was raising the consciousness of mestizas by
giving a bit of encouragement. But, GA also]
believes 'in an ordered, structured universe where
all phenomena are interrelated and imbued with
spirit' [is this the same as Barad then or a
different Christian interpretation?]. GA also uses
the term 'performance, and says that objects and
events are '"enacted"… Both a physical thing and
the power that infuses it"' (174).
Back to the two slit experiment and its deep
mystery. Mystery is apparently still 'alive and
well in physics', and there is even a tradition of
it, as when spirits were a part of Newton's
science and had to be banned in favour of 'spooky
action–at–a–distance. Physics has always been
spooked' [so why present it earlier as operating
with oppressive binaries?] Similarly, GA notes
that the half and half's were also sometimes seen
as possessing supernatural powers [so not entirely
stigmatised then?]
Newtonian physics is binary, quantum physics is
queer. There is no 'line in the sand' between
micro and macro [straw men argue that?] But rather
'an ongoing reconfiguring of spacetimemattering'.
Similarly, queer people can claim to be a
combination of opposite qualities for GA
[alternating ones as with waves and particles?
Some entirely new transcending identity?]. When
opposite qualities combine they do not flatten out
or erase each other but maintain a 'relation of
difference within'[well that's one possibility. I
thought waves did cancel eachother out in
diffraction].
GA again describes homophobia as a fear of going
home [weak pun?] and proposes instead queer
political identity that remains fluid, living
between worlds [being a nomad] this shows she
'understood the material multiplicity of self, the
way it is diffracted across spaces, times,
realities, imaginaries' [or is this Barad putting
words in her mouth?]
Back to Bohr and the need to rethink matter as
waves and particles. Barad generalises to a more
general 'rethinking mattering – what it means to
matter, what matter means' [classic exploitation
of the ambiguity of the English term 'matter'.
Especially in 'Mattering is a matter of what comes
to matter' (175)]. This means that differences are
material and so 'meaning is material' [alluding to
différance? Derrida awaits us
below. We might have suspected that with all
the stuff on spooks and spirits?]. Difference is
not fixed but is the product of 'specific
interactions that enact cuts that make separations
— not absolute separations, but only contingent
separations — within phenomena' [but do cuts
persist once we have made them and therefore cease
to be contingent, as in reification?]. Oppositions
are inside, there is '"no real conflict"' between
objective and subjective. Difference is really the
result of a process of differencing, intra
activity within phenomena that are entangled. This
is 'just as much about electrons with one another
as it is about onto–epistemological interactions
involving humans' [well, I think we need more than
an assertion here?] Similarly, insiders can step
outside, at least temporarily, and occupy
threshold places able to drift between other and
same, affirming similarity and persisting
indifference. This unsettles the usual definitions
of otherness for GA [describes a rather common act
of playfully alternating identities, as in role
distance? Or living in double cultures like
working class grammar school boys or socially
mobile proles?]
For Barad this shows in/determinacy, and the
notion of the unified self [who exactly holds this
notion? Political economists? Surely it was blown
up by Freud?]. The self as a multiplicity [and
getting gee- whizzy] 'a superposition of beings,
becomings' with no oppositions [idealist,
voluntarist and utopian in my view — as soon as we
enter relations with other people, the abstract
possibilities vanish]. We can have a conception of
two that does not imply separateness, and of one
that does not exclude multiplicity, says Trinh
[but Irigaray said it first?].
We are talking of entanglements not simple
unities, the preservation of differences,
'differentiatings entail entanglings' [especially
if you define them to do so] and this leads to the
famous 'one move — cutting together–apart].
Differentiations [in human affairs again] can be
made, but 'culture has never been monolithic'
[just now it was dominated by nasty binaries and
oppression].
Differences multiply as well, and include those
inside apparently separate entities like insiders
and outsiders. So difference is not universal but
is itself a multiplicity, 'difference itself is
diffracted. Diffraction as a matter of differences
at every scale' (176). [While we are here] 'each
moment of time, each positioning space is a
multiplicity, a superposition/entanglement of
(seemingly) disparate parts' [implies inevitable
perspectivalism?] There is a thick web of
specificities, 'unique material historialities'.
In the words of Trinh, we live in many worlds but
they are all in the same place, the place we are
in here and now.
Quantum physics clears diffraction and moves to a
deeper level, of course 'without ever leaving
classical understandings behind; rather they are
always threaded through.' We now think of cutting
together–apart rather than breaking apart, to
'agential separability' rather than differences or
combinations between light and dark.
Superpositions are 'not a simple multiplicity, not
a simple overlaying or a mere contradiction'. They
are not inherent but the effect of agential cuts,
'material enactments of
differentiating/entangling' [still leaves the
question of who the agent is — nature itself?
God?]. Quantum theory has undone classical notions
of identity with terms such as superposition and
indeterminacy between being and becoming — for
example Schrödinger's cat cannot be described in a
determinate way as either alive or dead [Derrida
this time, en route to play about ghosts and
haunting].
GA agrees that people can experience mixed
identities, including being half and half [is this
more rigid than general indeterminacy?]. [The
diffraction between GA and Derrida seems to turn
on them both using the term 'neither']. This does
not mean there are no facts or histories or 'no
bleeding'. Instead indeterminacies constitute 'the
very material of being and some of us live our
[missing word] with pain, pleasure and also
political courage'. GA supplies some coping
strategies for mestiza in the form of a poem [this
discussion is long overdue as a form of resistance
to binary divisions, of course]. We are not
talking about dispersion because the disparate is
held together still. Separability of agents is
enacted by agential cuts and cutting
together–apart [so two sorts of agents — one makes
the cut and produces the other kind of agent?].
Separability, even of agents is 'the agentially
enacted material conditions of
exteriority–within–phenomena' [again I'm not sure
if this is just the logical point that says that
any attempt to separate implies that things were
connected in the first place].
The disparate 'itself holds together' but without
dispersion or the [bad kind of] difference,
without defacing the heterogeneity of the other',
citing Derrida. Quantum entanglement calls into
question 'the very nature of twoness, and
ultimately of oneness as well'. The old terms are
undone like duality and unity, even [numerical]
multiplicity, and 'between' will need to be
reconsidered. We need a different arithmetic and
'a different calculus of response – ability'.
GA tells us [again] that survival for mestizas
involves living in the borderland. The same goes
for 'trans/queer/intersex consciousness.
Transmaterialities' [citing a note saying Derrida
was interested in real material conditions as well
as just wordplay when he describes deconstruction,
and referencing one of her own earlier pieces on
transmateriality]. [There is another rather
baffling quote from Derrida's Spectres about
justice not just repairing injustice but offering
some excess from dislocation in being and in time
— pass].
Indeterminacy is a dynamic allowing the return of
the excluded, and anything determinate is
materially haunted by what is excluded and
unintelligible. We see this with the dispersion of
the wave packet [!] We see that the self is also
dispersed by 'being threaded through by that which
is excluded' [sounds more like Freud on the return
of the repressed]. Nothing is ever absolutely
outside. Indeterminacy opens up to things to come
permits surprises and interruptions — ghosts never
die for Derrida. Agential cuts continue for Barad
in 'an uncanny topology: no smooth surfaces,
willies everywhere [sic]' [discussed apparently in
her piece on quantum entanglement, which also
cites Derrida and hauntology]. This is like a
'ghostly causality'(179).
A poem from GA, one verse of which is in Spanish,
refers to the permeability of borders, probably,
and resistance to white colonialism from Mexicans
and Indians. A border culture has apparently
developed, meaning the border is no longer a
simple division but rather something 'vague and
undetermined' [another example of a non-binary
division?], in transition, home to the
marginalised.
Back to the Derrida quote, this time extending to
justice in relation to the other is also being out
of joint or dislocated.
[This gets her to] quantum dis/continuity as a
non-doing. The term itself is 'redundant and
contradictory' referring to 'the smallest unit, a
discontinuous bit… of discontinuity'. [A whole lot
of witty contradictions ensue, most of them
depending on our unconscious use of classical
terms which can be shown to be inadequate. It
reminds me of sessions in English Literature where
the pot was kept boiling because there were always
distinctions or implications. The whole point
there was to suggest that only the right sort of
chap can tolerate all these ambiguities. I think
it is another example of academic exclusion, to go
with the Spanish verse and the irritating constant
references. God knows what ordinary feminists
would make of this as examples:] 'each designation
marking a disruption, bringing us up short,
disrupting us, disrupting itself, stopping short
before getting to the next one. A rupture of the
discontinuous? A disrupted disruption? A stutter?'
(180). We are also told that logical disjunctions
or impasses derive from the Latin a poria,
that quantum tunnelling does not imply porosity —
'no w/holes are needed' and this is 'a possible
impossibility and impossible possibility'. The
whole poetic stodge is claimed to be
'empirical evidence [Jesus!] for a hauntology'.
[Does Derrida value or require empirical evidence?
Aren't all these possibilities really rooted in
language? The whole thing for him also turns on
playfully Marxist terms like fetishism in religion
and in commerce. Barad does not seem to be
interested in diffracting Marx]
Another node joining Santa Cruz and other places
involving experimental meta/physics [why not
'met/a/physics' — much more thought-provoking],
two slit diffractions, and the which–slit detector
experiment which itself seems to produce scatter
rather than diffraction. Then a shift back to a GA
poem about how mestizas alternate between cultures
because they are in all cultures at the same time
[this is diffraction by adjacency — stick two
pieces together and invite the reader to see a
connection. Readers will see quite different
connections, probably, so does this mean there are
different diffractions? For Barad, however, the
poem {?}] 'is direct evidence of Bohrian
complementarity' — 'the atoms perform wave or
particle in their interaction with the apparatus.
The apparatus is an inseparable part of the
observed phenomenon'.
We can add an eraser to remove which-slit
information, after a particle goes through one
slit or another. However, 'remarkably', the
diffraction pattern reappears. This is a re-turn
rather than a simple return. It appears only after
quantum entanglements have been traced [in what
sense of trace?]. [Barad glosses this as] 'it is
possible to determine after the particle has
already gone through the slits whether or not it
will have gone through one slit or the other (as a
proper particle will do) or both slit
simultaneously (as waves will do)!' (181). This
means 'it is possible to not merely change what it
will have done after-the-fact but to change
who/what it will have been, that is, its very
ontology (wave or particle)!'
This might be 'empirical evidence that it is
possible to change the past', but that might
assume that the experimenters change the past had
already been present. Instead, '"the point is that
the past was never simply there to begin with"'
[quoting her quantum entanglements piece].
Similarly the future is '"reworked and enfolded
through the iterative practices of
spacetimemattering' which includes gathering
which-slit information. '"All are one phenomenon…
Space and time are phenomenal… Interactively
produced in the making of phenomena [they do not]
exist as determinate givens, as universals,
outside of phenomena"'. The past is never been
present and never will be, and nor is the future
production of presence [citing Derrida, this time
in Margins of Philosophy who uses the idea
of presence as a metaphysical assumption produced
by language?] What we get is 'indeterminacy all
the way down. Empirical evidence for a hauntology
[again]'.
There are also implications for diffraction and
its connection with 'difference/différance'. The
experiment 'brings to the fore questions of
temporality, materiality and justice' that have
always been implied in discussions of diffraction.
[And now an aside]. This paper is a diffraction
experiment. It would be wrong to see it as an
narrative produced by an I 'since this position is
counter to diffracting. There is no I that exists
outside the diffraction pattern, observing it,
telling its story. In an important sense, this
story in its ongoing (re)patterning is
(re)(con)figuring me' [so what are the material
and social factors that produce a sense in which
there is an I, Karen Barad? Can we dispense with
the subject altogether? What is the agent that is
producing the story? Why should a quantum
interpretation be preferred over a much more
workable commonsense interpretation of the subject
in political terms?]. Her I is 'always already
multiply dispersed and diffracted' [this is just
an interesting philosophical position like
doubting the existence of tables that is
totally unworkable without some process to limit
the possibilities].
Then some more diffraction by homology. Barad says
that nothing is actually erased in the quantum
eraser experiment, and GA says that myth
recaptures history that has been erased. Barad
says that memory is never erased but is found in
'sedimented enfoldings of iterative intra activity
— is written into the fabric of the world'. The
world is a materialisation of its memory [?] Trinh
says that history could never be simply the
accumulation of facts based on some notion of a
fixed past present and future, and that we must
reveal the relations between them. Barad says that
past and future 'are iteratively reconfigured and
enfolded' and phenomena are 'material
entanglements' Trinh again says that '"every word
involves our past, present and future"'. Barad
says that time cannot be fixed. Somebody called
Marsan, expounding Trinh, says that storytelling
and retelling shows that there are '"endless
connections… The possibility of unending
meanings"' [why stop there? Oh she doesn't…]
[An unusually clear bit]. We need 'to take
responsibility for that which we inherit' for
entanglements of inheritance. And there are more
philosophical responsibilities too — to the
future, to the 'non-contemporaneity of the
present' to risk openness to indeterminacy.
Derrida says that responsibility lies at the heart
of justice beyond those living at the moment, to
ghosts including '"those who are not yet born"'.
Barad adds that the past is never closed 'but
there is no taking it back' [which seems quite an
important point]. Traces of past configurations
are enfolded into materialisations of the past
present and future.
Responsibility is not an obligation but 'rather an
incarnate relation that precedes the
intentionality of consciousness' [so this is a
very abstract notion, well away from any idea of
personal ethical commitments. It is still not
clear whether this responsibility is a part of
nature. We must remember that there is also an
ambiguity here, since responsibility also means
response–ability]. It is integral to becoming. It
is iterative, 'an enabling of responsiveness' [so
response – ability] [This whole thing is another
annoying philosophical game of words really]. It
is a matter of 'the iterative reworking of
im/possibility', a matter of 'topological
reconfiguring of the space of response – ability'
[so much a repetition of the same basic argument
in more obscure terms that it's getting close to
deliberate bullshit. The continual repetition with
slightly different uses of key terms also means
she is not too sure herself she has pinned them
down -- and that only she is in charge of them, an
admissionthat this is not an approach that can
ever be shared. It's a private language]
Trinh agrees that the self is released and
absorbed, woven with other stories and lives [she
also likes split words, including a-new and
a-gain]
To differentiate is to make connections and
commitments as well as to separate. There are
interwoven threads, where interweaving breaks
linearity. This results in '"a story… told mainly
to say that there is no story' [Trinh] (184), such
a complex 'tissue of activities and events' that
there can be 'no single explanation' [OK if
the ambition is to exhaustively describe
everything, but whose ambition would that be?]
Barad quotes herself as starting in the middle [oh
no, implicit Deleuze and Guattari?], and 'going
forward to the past' by re-turning [revisiting the
past really — going forward by deciding tomorrow
to revisit the past]. There we will find '"rich
soil from which ideas spring… uncountable gifts
given"'. Trinh agrees that time leaves traces in
layers: thus 'everything is time' [well everything
has the traces of time would be simpler, much less
poetic obviously].
Back to her conversation with GA in Santa Cruz,
thinking of diffraction and entanglement. The
'memory of these explorations' is held in the
landscape itself [ie prompted by looking at the
landsape] . The whole multiplicity is condensed
into a moment of here and now because 'each grain
of sand, each bit of soil is diffracted/entangled
across space-time'. When we revisit the past
[re-turn if you must] we rediscover 'thick tangles
of spacetimematterings' [but we can't investigate
those tangles very far, except in our minds. We
can't experience any concrete manifestations of
them except by the usual processes of assumption.
This will inevitably be a subjective
reapprehension of the past, or a Bergson
revisiting of pst realities if you want to deny
subjectivity]
[And then it ended, thank God. The
acknowledgements also mention conversations about
GA. We would normally call this intertextuality?
Note 4 gives an example of this marvellous time
travel: the reader will eventually get to the
example of quantum erasure, but, in a very real
sense of course, that's discussion is 'already in
"here" "now"' (185). Note 7 insists that
entanglements are infinite but the specific
details of them still matter — quite a research
programme. Note 9 declares that our purpose is to
give thick understandings of diffraction. Note 21
says that her work is situated 'in physics,
feminist theory and feminist science studies' now,
but her discussions in Santa Cruz were more
preliminary although she had already half finished
writing the 2007 book and it got a couple of
journal rejections. Note 22 describes the
conversation she had with GA as 'one of the most
sacred conversations… The joy of it, the
recognition of common passions in different
languages… Generosity, kindness and focused
presence. That's why she uses her first name
because using a surname would be 'too formal,
stiff and artificial, and I didn't want to show
disrespect' (186). Note 27 says she is obviously
not naive enought to think she is being simply
'faithful to Bohr' but is diffracting his
work 'therough my agential realist understanding'
-- so she diffracted Bohr when she read him or
afterwards? Note 41 says her 2007 book is 'a
hybridity that is and has beenalways already
political' -- pretty evasive and stops it being
judged as either. Note 48 is where she says that
Derrida takes deconstruction to be relevant
to real lives. This is because we know of
his 'background and political focus'. It is not
just 'academic wordplay. Note 63 points out the
difference [sic] between diffraction and 'some
forms of critique' -- 'questions of temporality
and ontology figure differently' (187). Foucault
notes that critique varies but tends to be reduced
to '"dispersion, dependency and pure heteronomy"'.
Diffraction is indebted to the forms of Marx,
Nietzsche and Foucualt [equally?]. Diffraction
also wants to take account of
'(material-discursive) conditions of
possibility...historical-social-poltical
(naturalcultural) contingency', but critique
offers 'disclosure, exposure and demystification'
and diffraction 'an iterative practice of
intra-actively reworking and being reworked by
patterns of mattering'. It works 'constructively
and deconstructively ( not destructively)' [seems
to be a licence to do what the fark you want
really]. Note 64 also plays a linguistic trick
with time when this paper is cited as
'forthcoming' [in a bit where she is quoting
herself]. This is not just careless editing though
-- oh dear me no.: it is 'a gesture to include
what is also coming from the future'. Note 83 uses
a more conventional term to reference her own
work, however -- ''forthcoming'. Note 65
explains that she includes the authors' names in
brackets after the extracts 'in order to make the
diffractive reading more evident while
respecting the style of the journal' My word she
is so clever!]
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