Notes on: Barad, K. (2010) Quantum
Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of
Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime
Enfoldings, and Justice to Come. Derrida
Today 3 (2) 240--68 DOI:
10.3366/E1754850010000813
Dave Harris
Continuity is a major idea and it is a good
experiment to think what would happen if we
disrupted it. We have to develop a participation
'more akin to how electrons experience the world
than any journey narrated through rhetorical forms
that presume actors move along trajectories across
a stage of space-time'. (240) Analogies between
macro and micro are 'flat-footed' and already
presume a spatial scale. We need to think about
dis/continuity, dis/orientation and
dis/jointedness — quantum dis/continuity, with no
overarching temporality or continuity, but a
series of different temporalities and
reconfigurations, threaded through one another.
This will help us feel différance, interactivity
and 'agential separability—differentiatings that
cut together/apart' (241).That will be hauntology
Derrida is quoted about ghosts as others and how
we must do justice to them [Spectres
I think]. This leads to a reconstruction of
'Elsinore by way of Copenhagen', a reconstruction
of when Heisenberg met Böhr in 1941, with
references to Frayn's play. We're going to
diffract events through 1927 and then 1945.
[Frayn's play is quoted, leading up to the
question of whether physicists have the moral
right to work on applications of atomic energy]
Why did Heisenberg go to Copenhagen? Was he trying
to find out what Böhr knew about the bomb project,
or to warn him that he was involved in the German
project but would try to delay it? Was the
conversation to be about physics or ethics or
both? They are 'inextricably fused'(242) for
Barad.
Another act and scene [hers?] — Events diffracted
through the play and through the moment in 1927
when quantum physics was first developed and
Heisenberg and Böhr disagreed. Followed by various
thought experiments including quantum erasers and
entanglements, diffracted through her own book.
Here, 'diffraction as synecdoche of entangled
phenomenon [sic]… Reading texts interactively
through one another, enacting new patterns of
engagement, attending to how exclusions matter'
(243). Then diffracted through Derrida on
spectres, itself diffracted through Hamlet and the
1848 manifesto. Newton in 1687 is diffracted
through '2060 '[Newton's prediction for the end of
time, 'derived… from biblical prophesizing,
calculation, anti-speculative speculating']. Or
Böhr's Nobel prize-winning explanation in 1912
diffracted through Schrödinger and the cat in
1935, and then the dropping of the atomic bombs in
1945 — [to give you an example of the style:
'/diffracted through 1945 [dropping of atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: cities populated
with the living dead; a ghostly/ghastly scene;
hauntings]/…/Wartime/science
time/space-time/imaginary time/mythic
time/storytime/inherited time/].Time is out of
joint
This is a beginning already threaded through with
anticipation of where it's going and 'of a past
that is yet to come'. We are talking of 'multiply
heterogeneous iterations' rather than linear
unfolding, threading through (244), a topology.
Disjointedness itself is under question [the
relation between joining and disjoining which she
expresses as dis/joining]. Intra-action is a
single event, cutting together/and the part 'not
separate consecutive activities'. The relationship
between continuity and discontinuity is not just a
simple negative opposition but rather 'of
im/possibilities'.
She tries to write this paper so as to disrupt
historical narrative forms that underpin
scientific progress, discoveries that lead out of
ignorance and uncertainty. This instead is 'an
imaginative journey that is akin to how electrons
experience the world', disorienting, entangling,
dis/continuous, in a way which goes beyond normal
definitions [or as she puts it 'which is neither
fully discontinuous with continuity or even fully
continuous with discontinuity']. There is no
overarching time or place. Readers are not assumed
to be in the here and now. Individual scenes are
'not wholly separate, nor parts of a whole' and
there is no smooth topology. Instead 'each scene
diffracts various temporalities, iteratively
differentiating and entangling… Across the field
of spacetimmattering'. Scenes are constantly
reconfigured dispersed and threaded. 'The reader
should feel free to jump for any scene to
another... and still have a sense of
connectivity'(245). she hopes there will be
'a felt sense of différance, of interactivity, of
agential separability – differentiating is that
cut together/apart' [could be very pseudy and
risks adverse reader reactions — like mine]
A new scene comparing Derrida on the exit and
re-entry of the ghost, with Einstein saying that
electrons cannot choose of their own free will,
and if they did, he would rather be a cobbler.
Particles have 'paroxysms — spasmodic bouts of
e-motion or activity'. They seem to resist notions
in classical physics of mechanical forces and
supply instead 'strange agency' it is
'passion–at–a–distance' [referenced to a certain D
Mermin]. Böhr's first model in 1912 was based on
the planetary model of orbiting electrons, but it
has problems in retaining its energy and avoiding
spiralling into the nucleus. Planck in 1900 had
quantised energy into discrete packets, and
Einstein in 1905 proposed that light is quantised
in photons, and it is this that gets him the Nobel
prize.
Böhr replaces his original idea with one where the
electrons do not orbit the nucleus, but rather
reside in particular energy levels, only emitting
photons when they jump from one level to another,
for example from a higher to a lower energy state.
This preserves the electron's energy and the
stability of the atom. Each atom displays a
discrete pattern in its spectrum [rather than a
continuous emission of light uncomfortably
predicted by the ball model]. Predictions match
experimental results for hydrogen winning Böhr the
Nobel prize, and showing that atoms have parts.
However 'spectres abound' — what is the nature of
these jumps? A quantum is the smallest possible
unit [she quotes Wiktionary here!], implying a
discrete quality to nature. However electrons jump
in a discontinuous fashion — 'initially at one
energy level and then it is at another
without having been anywhere in between' (246).
This is 'particularly queer' and challenges easy
dichotomies between dis and continuity, and
dichotomy for that matter. Quantum queerness is
further developed, and here she means not 'simply
strange' but the very 'undoing of identity' a
crucial dis/continuity.
Further work displays more of the 'spectral
quality of this process' (247). Rutherford thought
that electrons would continually emit light across
their range of energy values, but Böhr suggest
that electrons only occupy a discrete set of
energy levels and light is emitted in a packet,
'all at once as a photon'. This must happen at
some moment in time, but investigation shows that
'the situation is quite spectacular'. In a given
energy state, there is no energy change and so a
photon cannot be emitted, except as the result of
the jump itself — but the electron is never
anywhere in between the energy states. Indeed,
atoms emitting photons of a given colour imply
that the electron is going to 'already wind up
where it was going… before it left' [apparently,
the conservation of energy means that it can't
produce several variants]. This is 'a queer
causality indeed!'. For Barad, this paradox in
causality 'derives from the very existence
of a quantum discontinuity in the cutting
together/apart that is the nature of all
interactions'.
This is a new kind of dis/continuity, not just a
displacement in space through time. The rupture
itself involved in a jump 'helps constitute the
heres and nows' — here and now there and then
'have become unmoored' (248) — if we cannot decide
where and when quantum jumps happen, we cannot
deploy simple notions of causes and effects.
It is difficult to see how such a strange unstable
process leads to stable existence. We can
certainly see the world as 'an open-ended
becoming'[but we have still not explained
stability]. It is even more complex because there
is no stable notion of change either — it 'changes
with each intra-action', it has 'a dynamism that
operates at an entirely different level of
existence' from the usual conception of matter in
space and time. This implies that we have to
rethink space and time as well, so that 'what
comes to be and is immediately reconfigured
entails an iterative intra-action becoming of
spacetimemattering' . We have a radical notion of
undoing, a rupture, a disruption 'a cut raised to
a higher power forever repeating', a irresolvable
internal contradiction, logical disjunction or
impasse, seen in quantum tunnelling which rejects
simple notions of closure and wholes and produces
'an impossible possibility'.
A new scene discussing Newton and the diffraction
offered by Laplace and his thought experiments
which extend to every particle and make time
calculable, entire. These conceptions have
affected our very understanding of change.
Continuity gave Newton the calculus and thus a
deterministic world, 'at Man's feet' (249),
clockwork nature. Thus a radical difference
between continuity and discontinuity 'is the
gateway to Man's stewardship' and produces a
'God's eye view of the universe' escaping from
perspective, producing unmediated vision and
knowledge. Nature is split from culture.
Objectivity is secured. However, this tradition is
'not one but many' (250)
Another scene referring to Schrödinger in 1935,
which Barad links to a section in Derrida where
living is somehow between life and death, and thus
implicated with ghostliness. The cat is superposed
in life and death, its fate decided by a
radioactive atom. Schrödinger wanted to make a
point about measurement, and to point out that we
feel sympathy for cats but not for electrons or
other 'critters that populate the world of the
nonliving', which can include the undead, spooks —
that line is one of the most sacrosanct of all.
The atom is itself indeterminate, both having
decayed and having not decayed, so the cat must be
superposed between alive and dead. 'Before it is
observed, there is no determinate fact of the
matter about its condition' (251) superposition is
one of these nonclassical relations between
different possibilities — it does not imply that
cats are both alive and dead simultaneously, nor
partly one and partly the other [mostly because
death and life are defined as exclusive]. All
these ideas of identity and being are undone —
'being/becoming is an indeterminate matter'.
However when we do take a measurement there is a
kind of '"collapse" — or rather, resolution… Into
a determinate state', but we may have no
calculable means to understand this. [Penrose
rejected then].
Entanglements are 'generalised quantum
superpositions', not the intertwining of two or
more states, but 'calling into question the very
nature of two-ness' and oneness. 'Between' needs
to change as well. Commonsense notions of
communication between entities are defied, we need
a new 'calculus of response–ability' [both
required and inspired by quantum entanglement]
Einstein saw entanglement as spooky action at a
distance, but it is even more spooky these days
because the action seems to work '"beyond the
grave… After the link between objects is broken"',
and entanglements have been detected over some
geographical distance.
Another scene. Derrida on being haunted, inherent
in every concept, stabilised only by 'the movement
of exorcism' in conventional ontology. Derrida
realises that this is a condition of possibility
of an event but also a condition of impossibility
— we seem to need experience of the impossible.
This also informs our sense of justice.
So light behaves as both a particle and a wave,
and so does matter. Waves and particles were
previously ontologically distinct. The new
empirical evidence threatened 'any consistent
understanding of the nature of light'. Böhr
address the problem by attending to language (252)
how concepts are used and meanings made — what we
mean by particle and how can we meaningfully use
scientific concepts [including 'how do they
matter']. Böhr said we should understand concepts
'to be specific material arrangements of
experimental apparatuses' (253) — without
apparatus, for example we could not understand the
concept of momentum. Any use of concepts outside
these material conditions would be unintelligible.
When determinate meanings are given to particular
concepts, this always produces 'its constitutive
exclusion… an equally necessary "complementary"
concept which is thereby left outside the domain
of intelligibility' [we can logically infer them
or induce them, surely?]. Böhr called this
complementarity. 'This is how every concept is
haunted by its mutually constituted excluded
other'. Discourse and materiality are intimately
related — and not just because 'writing and
speaking are material practices'. If we are to
understand concepts in this materialist way, and
combine that with quantum discontinuity, we can
have no apparatus–independent distinction between
subjects and objects. The material–discursive
apparatus gives meaning to concepts but also
'enacts a specific cut' between what is observed
and the agencies of observation — apparently
individual entities are a product of this cut.
They do not interact but are co- constituted, the
result of 'specific intra-actions'. [Note 1, page
267, says intra-action is the key concept of
agential realism, unlike interaction it suggests
that distinct entities and agencies emerge from
intra-action, that is distinct agencies 'are only
distinct in the relational, not an absolute sense…
In relation to their mutual entanglement'. This
will involve a radical reworking of traditional
notions of causality] Boundaries and properties
are made determinate, but within the
phenomenon, which does not separate object and
agency — similarly, concepts and their objects
'enact the differentiated inseparability that is a
phenomenon'. Only interaction produces determinate
facts or descriptions. Being is 'not simply
present'(254). Mattering involves the 'becoming
determinate' of matter and meaning. This also
explains impossibility, because interactions
'necessarily entail constitutive exclusions' [but
again we veer from this to the joys of 'an
irreducible openness'.] The concept breaks the
'binary of stale choices between determinism and
free will, past and future'.
Another scene, the two slit experiment by Young,
proceeded by a quote from Haraway about the need
to look at how the disparate holds itself together
without defacing heterogeneity [originally
Derrida], and how this leads us to diffraction as
heterogeneous history not replication, hence it is
a technology '"for making consequential
meanings"'.
The two slit experiment. Sound waves from speakers
form sonic diffraction patterns [for Young's
listeners]. The two slit device is described, and
differences in patterns explained. As the audience
leaves, it also radiates outwards forming a
pattern of bands [this is presumably Barad's
imagining]. The ghost of Einstein and Böhr appear,
and they both do thought experiments with two slit
apparatuses.
Böhr argues that light behaves as both a wave and
a particle and that these differences are produced
following intra-action with the apparatus [so is
Böhr the originator of the term?]. Both Bohr and
Einstein agree that entities show a diffraction
pattern when seen through a two slit apparatus but
disagree about what would happen if we modify the
apparatus so as to detect which slit an entity had
gone through. For Einstein, this would show how
the entity behaves like a particle at the
slit and like a wave at the screen, and this would
oppose quantum theory [ontological
indeterminacy?]. Böhr thinks that which slit
apparatus would stop the entity behaving like a
wave, to justify his principle of complementarity
[the apparatus and its measurements decide whether
the entity behaves like a wave or particle].
Heisenberg agrees with Böhr that reconfiguring the
apparatus will disrupt the entity, but otherwise
they disagree — Böhr thinks that
measurements do not just disturb what is being
measured, but rather that the apparatus itself
cuts objects from agencies of observation and
these do 'not exist prior to the intra-action'
(256) — no determinate features are given. What we
are seeing is an entangled phenomenon and when we
set up an unmodified two slit apparatus we get a
wave phenomenon, while a modified apparatus
produces a particle phenomenon — 'entities do not
have an inherent fixed nature'. Einstein asks
whether the nature of the entity, its ontology
actually changes as a result of the experimental
apparatus, or whether the argument is that nothing
was actually there before being measured [see the
objections in the New Scientist articles
--what exactly is a measuring apparatus --
anything sentient or did we need humans to come
along before particles became waves].
Another scene on Newton and his strange
predictions. Derrida spells out what is meant by
ghost — where what seems to be the future comes
back to provide a sense of dispersion, a feeling
that there is more than one [of us]. It settles
down to discussion of time in Newton, a
deterministic universe with a predictable future,
which means, for Barad that 'the future has
already happened' (257). He also sees an end of
time based on biblical prophecy. This must have
been in conflict with his natural philosophy —
celestial spirits offering 'a vanishing presence.
Re-appearing absence'. This calls into question
all his empiricism and positivism, determinism and
mechanism — 'other ghosts' undo all of these. For
Barad these are 'superpositions, not oppositions.
Physics has always been spooked' (258).
Another scene starting with Derrida about
presence, and how it can never fully grasp that
which will never be, or a past that never been
present. Barad quotes herself to say that this is
like phenomena never situated in the present
because they entangle different acts. We now have
'empirical evidence' that it is possible to change
not only the past but being itself when it was in
the past.
Technological innovation on the two slit apparatus
led to it being capable of deciding between Böhr
and Heisenberg in a kind of 'experimental
meta/physics'. Heisenberg sees measurements as
disturbances, while Böhr sees measurement as a
matter of 'semantic and ontic determination'
implying indeterminacy in the conventional sense.
They disagreements turn on what happens when
measurements are absent, before measurements, say.
We can now devise an ingenious experiment. The
'inner workings of the atom (that is, its
"internal degrees of freedom")' (259) can leave
behind signs of which slit the atom passed
through. These do not disturb the forward momentum
of the atom '("external degrees of freedom")'.
Apparently, we can make an electron jump to
release a photon behind at just the right time [by
'tinkering only with the atom's internal degrees
of freedom'], while the atom then continues
unaffected by this release.
The result was 'unambiguous confirmation of Böhr's
point of view'. The which slit detector changes
the pattern from diffraction to scatter, wave to
particle, but this is 'not a result of
disturbance'[because this particular disturbance
does not affect the future path of the particle? —
It is a 'shift by design']. This apparently
clearly shows that the shift in pattern 'is the
result of the entanglement of the "object" and the
"agencies of observation"'. This is evidence for
'Böhr's performative understanding of identity' —
identity is performed differently in different
experimental circumstances.
Implications follow. If we modify the which slit
detector to erase the sign after the atom has gone
through, we find a diffraction pattern again, just
as if there were no which slit detector. It
doesn't even matter when the information is erased
— 'it could be raised after any given atom has
already gone through the entire apparatus and made
its mark on the screen' (260). Somehow, we have
determined the behaviour of the entity after it's
gone through the apparatus, after it's gone
through as either a wave or a particle already —
'the entities' [sic] very identity has been
changed. Its past identity, its ontology is never
fixed, it is always open to future reworkings'.
It looks like it's possible to change the past,
but early understandings talk about a diffraction
pattern this having been recovered, while
information had been erased, but these assumptions
have been further questioned. They assume 'the
metaphysics of presence' where individually
determinate objects exhibit behaviour and release
information. This is to be rescued from
alternatives such as supposing 'instantaneous
communication… Spooky action at a distance'.
Instead, we have 'empirical evidence for a
hauntology'.
The experimenters did not change a past 'that had
already been present'. The past was never simply
there to begin with. Past and future are
'iteratively reworked and enfolded through the
iterative practices of spacetimemattering' (261),
and the apparatuses are all included in this
phenomenon. Space and time are 'phenomenal, that
is, they are interactively produced in the making
of phenomena', and do not exist as universals
outside of phenomena.
There is further evidence that traces of the event
are not erased when information is destroyed. The
subsequent diffraction pattern is not the same as
the original, for example, but this is not evident
without explicit efforts to trace the
entanglements. These traces remain when the
information is erased and require work to make
them visible. This makes the general point that
the past is not closed and cannot be fully erased.
It follows that '"past" and "future" are
iteratively reconfigured and enfolded through the
world's ongoing intra-activity'. There is no
determinate relationship between them. Phenomena
are not separate entities but material
entanglements 'enfolded and threaded through the
spacetimemattering of the universe'. If a
diffraction pattern returns, it has not gone back
to restore a past in the present. Memory is a
pattern of sedimented enfolding, it is apparent
'in the fabric of the world' — memory is the
world, '(enfolded materialisation)'.
Another scene, beginning with Derrida on
responsibility attached to inheritance, and
justice as responsibility to everything, ghosts
who are not born who are already dead [seems he is
implying that there is some commitment to the
social in general rather than to specific
individuals?]
Subsequent deaths in atomic warfare can be seen as
ghosts, as can animals, ghostly entanglements with
the original Copenhagen physics. Cope and harden
itself should not be understood as a simple place,
but 'rather a non-place and non-time', a
disjuncture or opening. Ethics is more than just
rights, blame or innocence [the themes of Frayn's
play] it is not a matter of restoring justice to
Heisenberg or culpability to Böhr. Frayn says that
we will never know Heisenberg's intentions, which
might have helped humanity — but once again this
is centred on Man. Uncertainty itself does not
disrupt the usual story, and it lives only inside
the human mind for Frayn.
Heisenberg's paper about uncertainty means he is
certain [!] that uncertainty is inevitable in all
measurement, but there is a postscript, where this
belief falters, and he admits that Böhr is correct
about complementarity. Frayn picks this up and
makes it a key scene, but misses its importance —
irreconcilable disagreements between the two which
will affect the whole of the apparently unified
Copenhagen interpretation.
The play and the events have fractures and
disjunctures rather than unity, haunted by 'ghost
that is the very spectre of multiplicity itself'
(263). We should see this as pointing to
indeterminacy rather than uncertainty,
'hauntological multiplicity' that is not just
about Man. What if we played out some of the
possible scenarios in Frayn's play, reading them
as hauntological not epistemological? We would see
that these are indeterminate matters not human
uncertainties, showing 'coexisting multiplicities
of entangled relations of
past–present–future–here–there', that what we take
as just things in the present are really 'worldly
phenomena', that there were 'iterative
materialisations', 'contingent and specific
(agential) reconfigurings, including
reconfigurings of the past and the continual
reopening of what might yet be'.
This aligns with Derrida's view of justice as more
than a matter of repairing injustice or trying to
work out what must be in the present disjoined
time, what a relation to the other presupposes if
we no longer understand being and time in the old
ways. We can't make amends. We must take ghosts at
their word, and see the past is never closed or
never finished 'but there is no taking it back,
setting time right, putting the world back on its
axis… no erasure'. All enfolded materialisations
are present in all reconfiguring is. We can't just
reconstruct another narrative but instead we must
be properly responsible for what we inherit [which
is a very abstract way of saying we shouldn't be
nasty to earlier thinkers?]. We are entangled. We
are not just present. We should risk ourselves and
open to indeterminacy in moving toward the future.
Responsibility itself is 'an asymmetrical
relation/doing, and enactment, a matter of
différance, of intra-action, in which no one/no
thing is given in advance or ever remains the
same'. This is responsibility to the entangled
other without easy dismissal.
Entanglements are relations of responsibility with
no dividing lines. After quantum theory,
'Cartesian cuts are undone'. Agential cuts are not
absolute but also hold together the disparate
itself, and thus do not efface heterogeneity
[agreeing with Derrida]. Agential separability is
produced as well as entangling, relations of
joining in this joining are radically reworked.
Any agential separability must involve
'irreducible heterogeneity', regardless of
'relations of inheritance' that have produced what
we currently take to be disparate. Entanglements
are not just 'the interconnectedness of all being
as one' but specific material relations showing
'ongoing differentiating', relations of obligation
because we are bound to the other and are
ourselves 'enfolded traces of othering'. This also
depends on the view that 'ethicality entails
non-coincidence with oneself'.
Ethics is integral to diffraction, not just 'a
super imposing of human values onto the ontology
of the world (as if "fact" and "value" of were
radically other)'. Matter itself always involves
'an exposure to the Other' [capital letter shows
the shift to the most abstract form? --it leads to
Note 11 so maybe it means matter itself as well as
human others?]. It is not just an obligation but
'an incarnate relation that precedes the
intentionality of consciousness' [this same phrase
crops up several times].
Responsibility is not a calculation but an
integral relation to the world and its becoming,
and opening up to 'an enabling of responsiveness'.
It's based on the whole 'iterative reworking of
im/possibility', connected to a topological notion
of 'respons-ibility' [sic, with an i].
For Derrida, inheritance is not simply given but
is something that relates to our questions of
being a subject, our very being. We need an ethics
of entanglement to uncover 'possibilities and
obligations for reworking the material effects of
the past and the future' (266). As in the quantum
eraser experiment, there is no given past to be
changed, because the past is already open to
change. 'There can never be complete redemption'
but we can reconfigure spacetimematter as we
realise new possibilities and impossibilities. We
still have marks on our bodies, on the flesh of
the world. We have a debt to those who are dead
and those not yet born, and this is who we are. It
follows that 'differentiating is a material act
...is not about radical separation, but on the
contrary, about making connections and
commitments'.
Note 2 (267) says that this paper is diffracted
through the book, and notes that there are
'multiple interpretations of quantum physics' –
and then she gives some references. Note 7 (268)
says that making sense is a material matter, that
we have material obligations 'bound by
responsibility'. It goes on to say that matter is
not as Newton or Marx imagined it, separate from
the meanings of language, but rather has 'a
general textuality', enabling us to rework both
materiality and discursive beauty. Note 8 explains
that Heisenberg's motives were not just unclear,
but were 'multiple, indeterminate, spooked, not
his alone'. Note 9 says that agential cuts can
always be iteratively reworked, for example
undoing inside and outside. Constitutive
exclusions are the conditions of possibility for
this openness, so we have 'an uncanny topology: no
smooth surfaces, willies everywhere' [weird].
Differences in habit everything and they are
always being reworked and reconfigured, threaded
through each other. Note 10 refers to Levinas on
responsibility as the key to ethics, and Barad
says her book tries to do without 'the humanist
foundations that have been an integral part of L's
philosophy. Note 11 says that matter is dynamic,
agential, always reconfiguring, so that
deconstruction is not a human method or technique,
but rather 'what the text does, what matter does,
how mattering performs itself'. This means it is
'ongoing hauntological transformation' nature
itself 'rights, scribbles, experiments,
calculates, thinks, breathes and laughs' with a
reference to something by Kirby forthcoming. Note
12 insists that it is not just one possibility
realised in actuality — 'rather, im/possibilities
are reconfigured and reconfiguring with each
intra-action' [so no compossibility -- at least in
principle].
back to Barad page
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