Notes on: Barad, K. (2015)
Transmaterialities.
Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political
Imginings GLQ 21 (2--3) DOI:
1215/10642684-2843239 387--422.
Dave Harris
We start with a metaphor about lightning bolts as
'charged yearnings', excitations of desiring
fields, experimental ways to connect 'in the
virtual exploration of diverse forms of coupling
and dis/connected alliance'(387). This is an
experimental article about matter and its
experimental nature, the way it tests out
impossibilities and unimaginable parts. 'Matter is
promiscuous and inventive in it subject or
wanderings:one might even dare to say,
imaginative'.
Similarly, scientific imaginings are
'clearly material' because they involve electrical
potential buildup and charged particles, with
neurons transmitting electrochemical signals. This
is not just an individual subjective experience
nor 'a unique capacity of the human mind' (388),
nor a passive materialism, or a discussion of
material possibilities. We can see the nature of
matter and 'it's a gent sure capacities for
imaginative, desiring, and are effectively charged
forms of bodily engagements'. We are going to use
zigzagging arguments just like lightning or
electrical energy. This is an experimental piece,
but 'with a political investment in creating new
political imaginary is and new understandings of
imagining in its materiality', imaginary is with
material existences 'in the thick now of the
present', with all sorts of topics joined together
— condensation is, super positions, multiple
im/possibilities, intra-active reconfigurings.
Lightning as 'an energising player the desiring
field… Tortuous path… Electrifying yearning for
connection' it produces images on our I, and jolts
and memories. It 'arouses a sense of the
primordial, enlivening questions of origin and
materialisation… Conjures haunting cultural
images' as in Der Golem and Frankenstein, reminds
us of how life may have started. In 1953 the
[primordial soup approach] marks the beginning of
experimental research into the origins of life.
This is controversial, but persists. One early
scientist, Miller, even informed research after
his death because not all of his data had been
analysed. Scientific American reminded readers of
its Frankenstein connections. Lightning is
therefore indeterminacy, troubling self and other,
past and future, life and death, on the border
between animate and inanimate.
[A long quote from Frankenstein follows].
Mary Shelley was inspired by Galvanism, leading to
accounts of Galvanism on electricity as an innate
force of life (390). Galvani's work spread to
others, including Aldini, his nephew, who went
around trying to apply electricity to the mentally
ill and even executed criminals [described 391].
Bioelectricity was a major topic, and led to some
therapies such as cardiac revival.
A section on the monster as a disrupter of
categories and boundaries, 391F. It's like an
electric jolts it both dehumanises and
demoralises, but also 'it can empower and
radicalise'. Stryker has written a 'powerful and
empowering performative piece' imagining a
dialogue with Frankenstein, showing how
monstrosity can lead to both rage and self
affirmation, political action, inventiveness. She
links it to the transsexual body which is also a
medical product and technological construction.
She is a trans and identifies with the monster,
and feels sometimes excluded and less than human,
leading to range. She tries to discuss the nature
of nature, denying that she has a fixed Nature,
and arguing that all conceptions of it cloak
privilege. We are all constructs. We all need to
confront our own nature.
This helps stave off those who would see
themselves as having natural bodies 'against the
monstrosity of transit embodiment', and show that
we are all a patchwork, a "suturing of disparate
parts". Instead, there is a primordial fecundity
and anarchic womb, which trans people can identify
with as the full picture of nature. Stryker shows
how she shares the pain of giving birth out of
'queer kinship relations', particularly rich and
multiple. She experienced birth as painful and
exclusionary, and somehow, this led to an notion
of 'the womb through which she rebirths herself'
this is 'radically queer configuring of
spacetimemattering… An uncanny topological
dynamic' that breaks with old notions and leads to
new generative tea. There are other
'entanglements', with the notion of Genesis and
the emergence of the world. Which produces nature
itself as 'an originary queerness'', a
'diffracted/differentiating/differnncing
murmuring, and originally repetition without
sameness, regeneration out of the fake and
nothingness'.
Then on to familiar ground with quantum physics,
nothingness and the void. The energy of the vacuum
for quantum physics is not determinable, but not
zero or empty. The void may be the source for
everything that exists, so 'birth and death, it
turns out, are not the sole prerogative of the
animate world; so-called inanimate beings also
have finite lives', and one physicist (the
improbably named A Zee, according to note 19 on
418) is quoted to say that particles live and die
(394). QFT replaced quantum mechanics because it
combines insight from classical theories of
electromagnetism special relativity and quantum
mechanics as well, offering a 'deeper level of
understanding'. It is 'a call, an alluring murmur
of the insensible within the sensible to radically
work the nature of being on time' (amateur
poetry). For QFT the vacuum can never be nothing
because it is allowed to fluctuate.
First we have to understand the notion of a field.
Classically this involves 'a physical quantity
associated with every point in space time… A
pattern of energy distributed across space and
time', like a magnetic field, or an electric field
— 'a desiring field born of charged yearnings'
(395), since particles express desires for each
other. In terms of physics, protons emanate an
electric field and when this reaches the electron
'it feels the protons desire pulling it toward
it'. The electron also has its own field and so
they sit 'in each other's fields.
If we had quantum physics and special relativity,
we can discuss the phenomenon of 'quantising or
making discrete physical quantities that classical
physics assumed were continuous', opening instead
to indeterminacy in energy and time. Special
relativity reminds us of 'matters impermanence',
because matter can convert into energy and vice
versa. 'Putting these ideas together' (not
diffracting them?) We can see that: fields are
patterns of energy which can be quantised. Energy
and matter equivalent, so there must be a
correspondence between fields of energy and
particles of matter. In electromagnetic fields,
there is a quantum of light, a photon,
and electrons which are also quantas of the
electron field. So are gravitons the quantum of
the gravitational field.
With quantum vacuums, indeterminacy is central and
we cannot pin down any states of matter, or no
matter — 'the so-called energy – time
indeterminacy principle', and, because energy and
matter are equivalent, this is also the
'"being-time" or "time-being"' indeterminacy
principle'. So in indeterminacy in the energy of
the vacuum becomes an indeterminacy in the number
of particles associated with it, so the vacuum is
never determined the empty. These associated
particles are called '"virtual particles'…
Quantised indeterminaciess – in – action'. They
are material but 'not present (and not absent)'.
Most of what matter is is virtual particles. We
need to remember they do not exist in space and
time but are 'ghostly non-/existences' between
being a nonbeing (396). This is difficult to grasp
(and I think there is a note that says she is
going to connect this to Deleuze's notion of the
virtual in a future publication).
This makes the void into 'a lively tension… Flush
with yearning, bursting with innumerable
imaginings of what might yet (have) be(en)'. The
fluctuations of virtual deviations or variations
from the classical zero energy state, 'the
material wanderings/wanderings of nothingness… The
ongoing thought experiment the world performs with
itself'. Thus the void becomes 'an endless
exploration of all possible couplings of virtual
particles a "scene of wild activities"'. It is an
ongoing questioning of the nature of emptiness and
of itself, the structure of nothingness. The
vacuum is 'doing its own experiments with
non-/being. In/determinacy is an extravagant
inexhaustible exploration of virtuality, where
virtual particles are… Performing experiments in
being and Time' (note 23 says that this argument
has developed further in the On Touching article
and promises further exploration 'in a forthcoming
publication'. Subsequent notes say that she
borrows sections from that article and also the
one on queer performativity. Note 26 says that she
uses quotations from the Discovery Channel
television programme on lightning). We can
understand the quantum vacuum as 'the ongoing
questioning of itself (and itself and it and
self). It is not like Democritus where particles
take place in the void: they are 'constitutively
inseparable from it'. The void is 'a living,
breathing indeterminacy of nonbeing… An
extravagant inexhaustible exploration of
virtuality' [does any of this bullshit
actually help?]
Let's explore touch — nothing 'but an
electromagnetic interaction' for physics. This
conception does not involve actual contact,
though, and what we actually sense is the
'electromagnetic repulsion between the electrons
of the atoms that make up your fingers [and those
of the object you are touching]'. Decreasing
distance increases the repulsive force, but
electrons can never be brought into contact with
each other. So when we touch, we only feel the
electromagnetic field. Similarly, atoms are mostly
empty space. This is the conventional story, but
it will not wash with lovers (as she has said,
397).
On to lightning a cloud becomes electrically
polarised and electrons are stripped from atoms
and gathered at the lower part of the cloud,
leaving the cloud with 'an overall negative
charge'. 'In response' the electrons on the
surface 'burrow into the ground' to get away from
this buildup of negative charge, leaving the
surface with an overall positive charge. This sets
up a strong electric field and 'the yearning will
not be satisfied without the buildup being
discharged. The desire to find a conductive path
joining the two becomes all-consuming'. At first,
there is a modest spark inside the clouds, with a
spirit of electrons travelling, say hundred
metres, stopping very briefly and then going in a
different direction, again and again. There may be
branches and splits. This is not yet a lightning
bolt but 'barely luminous first gestures —
'stepped leaders'. This is not sufficient to
resolve the buildup of negative charge. The ground
responds next with an upward signal when the
stepped leader is within metres of the ground —
'"the ground is now aware of there being a big
surplus"' [presumably, this is the television
programme]. Some objects can launch streamers
towards the stepped leader — 'assign the objects
on the ground are attending to the clouds
seductive overtures'. Eventually upward responses
meet downward gestures and a powerful discharge
appears — a lightning bolt. Even then, there is no
continuity because the bit nearest the ground
drains first and it progresses upwards, appearing
to show that visible lightning bolts move from
ground to cloud as currents flow down.
A 'lightning expert' explains this 'strangely
animated inanimate relating' (398) [in a
wonderfully mystical way] — the stepped leader has
no 'knowledge' of what is present below, it is
'unaware' of objects until it gets really close to
them, when this happens another spark stretches up
from the point to be struck to meet this stepped
leader. Barad finds this all very mysterious, a
matter of awareness, how an exchanges 'gets ahead
of itself', 'queer communication' where there is
neither sender nor recipient until the
transmission has occurred [I still don't see this
as terribly mysterious — the bolt wanders until it
finds the optimum path — water does the same?].
This is 'strange causality'. There is no
'straightforward resolution of the buildup, no
'unidirectional (if somewhat erratic) path' [why
not]. Instead there are 'flirtations' and
gestures, possible forms of connection. The path
is not predictable. Overall 'it seems that we are
witnessing a quantum form of communication [at a
large scale] — a process of iterative
intra-activity' [bollocks].
QFT demonstrates all sorts of trouble with
classical conceptions, and puts this at the heart
of issues of matter and the void. If we start with
the electron as a point particle, we find that it
does not exist as an isolated particle but is
already 'inseparable from the wild activities of
the vacuum... Always (already) intra-acting with
virtual particles… In all possible ways' (399). It
might emit a virtual photon and then reabsorb it,
'electromagnetically interacting with itself'.
Other possibilities go on in what looks like pure
emptiness: a virtual photon can change its very
identity into 'a virtual electron – positron pair
that subsequently annihilate each other and morph
back into a single virtual photon before it is
reabsorbed by the electron' in fact 'there is a
virtual exploration of every possibility'. All
involve particles touching themselves and then
transmitting the touch, transforming and then
further touching and transformations 'and so on,
ad infinitum). Barad insists that particular
intra-actions offer limits, but that
possibilities are infinite. What we have is 'a
radical undoing of kinds — queer/trans*formations'
[note 32, 419 explains that the * is used as a
deliberate wildcard symbol, 'a term meant to be
broadly inclusive (e.g. transgender, transsexual,
trans-woman, trans-man, trans person and also
gender queer, Two Spirit, genderfuck, gender
fluid, masculine of centre'. Apparently asterisks
are used to indicate there is more meaning to
something, citing an online activist]. Thus 'self
touching is an encounter with the infinite
alterity of the self' [a kind of quantum physics
justification of Levinas?]. Matter is enfolding.
We can see it as 'polymorphous perversity
raised to an infinite power: talk about a
queer/trans* intimacy!' This self is
'dispersed/diffracted through time and being'
(400).
Feynman, a Nobel prizewinner, we are reminded
describe the electron with horror as monstrous and
perverse, even immoral. Similarly, the notion of
self energy and self touching is also monstrous
because it is infinite, incalculable. Barad, this
shows that 'touching oneself, or being touched by
oneself… Is not simply troubling but a moral
violation' [oh dear how revealing]
The perversity of QFT goes deep, especially when
it gets '"re-normalised"'. Some physicists have
tried to argue that we have two notions of
infinity here, one to do with self touching and
another to do with 'nakedness', the 'Infinity
associated with the "bare" point particle'. This
concept was used to rescue the old idea that there
is only one electron, not entangled with the void.
Renormalisation 'is the systematic cancellation of
[these] infinities… Perversion eliminating
perversion'. In other words, electron is 'dressed'
by the contribution from the vacuum, the virtual
particles, and becomes a normal finite electron.
This works mathematically, because you can
subtract infinities to get a finite answer. But it
still leads to queer theory, suggesting that all
matter is essentially 'a massive overlaying of
perversity is: an infinity of infinities' (401)
[Note 34 says this is a sign of 'physics' ongoing
(auto) deconstruction', the way it is constantly
open to new possibilities and reconfigurings].
So 'foundational reductionist essentialism… Is
undone by QFT', and perversity and monstrosity
'lie at the core of being… Threaded through it'.
Touching entails an infinite alterity [so why does
she need Levinas?]. The smallest bits of matter
'are an unfathomable multitude', including all
possible interactions, 'diffracting through being
and Time… an un/doing of identity'.
Electron is a chimera's, crossing species and
kinds, made of virtual configurations and
reconfigurings, across space and time. It is a
'point particle that structure… A patchwork' it
constantly produces new appendages from 'various
particle – antiparticle pairs, producing and
absorbing differences of every possible kind'.
'It's very nature is unnatural' electrons engage
in ongoing recreation and undoing. They are
'always already untimely'. These are not
characteristics, but rather 'what an electron is'.
Indeterminacy is 'a condition for the possibility
of all structures'. Matter should better be
understood as a dynamic player of indeterminacy,
an 'iterative materialisation', always radically
open, never settled, with impossibility and
indeterminacy 'integral ,not supplementary, to
what matter is'. Matter is touching and sensing,
condensing responses, doing 'response – ability'
because each bit of matter is in touch with the
other, 'a matter of untimely and uncanny intimacy,
condensation is of beings and times' [in other
words a haecceity].
Galvanism is still used in more mainstream biology
like gene therapy. It is used to understand
regeneration. Some animals can already regenerate
either parts or even the whole. But in this
particular lab at Tufts University, Levin and
Adams are experimenting and producing new forms.
Their work is based on frogs, a classic model
organism for biology, relatively close in
evolutionary terms to us, showing 'laboratory
co-operativeness' [note 39 explains that they were
used early in cloning experiments], and prolific
in reproduction and as a result of releases from
labs.
The tadpoles of this particular frog, Xenopus, can
regenerate their tails if they are lost early
enough. The tale is a complex organ. Apparently,
they will regenerate later if there is a suitable
electrical field. There are connections between
the old idea of bio electricity and molecular
biology, because there are apparently genetic
components, and a particular protein that is a
'"natural source of regenerative electricity"'.
This protein can be manipulated because it is also
'"an ion transporter"'. A flow of charged
particles works at a molecular level. For the
biologist concerned, large-scale electrical
patterns can play 'a causal role' in embryonic
development and regeneration, and this is
controversial because it introduces something
outside the molecular level. They suggest there is
a '"bioelectric" code of the body' which can be
tweaked.
Other experiments were undertaken and results were
good, including '"the regeneration of complete
frog legs… Providing appropriate electrical
gradients at the frog's wound site"' produced the
growth of a new limb. The researchers could also
grow monstrous embryos, extra heads and limbs.
'Science reporters'got interested, and one
reported the production of a tadpole that could
grow eyes outside its head area. The suggestion is
that cells from anywhere can be used to form an
eye, and that some of them might be able to see.
This is 'rather dramatic evidence in support of
epigenetics'. There is more than a genetic code.
The researchers showed 'a combination of
serendipity and… Scientific instincts'. One left
the camera on to record the early stages of
tadpole development, 'for the heck of it'. The
resultant blurry images could be clarified 'after
computer processing' and turned into a time-lapse
video. [Barad encloses the video — I couldn't get
it to work] it shows two frog embryos, one of it
which develops an electric potential as it traces
out its face. This produces the whole light show,
but the gripping thing is that a pattern for a
face appears before the actual development of the
face, a 'face – to – come of the embryo', before
any actual features, before cell differentiation.
Disrupting this bioelectric pattern affects
subsequent development and leads to abnormality.
Overall 'apparently the genes are activated by the
bio electricity … A bioelectric epigenetic switch
that regulates gene expression', and this is
fundamental to development. It seems to regulate
the whole sequence of events. Bioelectric signals
seem to be required before conventional genetic
sequences produce proteins. One researcher claims
that this will lead to all sorts of gripping
therapies in '"correcting birth defects, or
preventing them"' (406). The director of the lab
likes to pose as 'the errant genius', and a
reporter helps spell out the geewhiz areas of
regenerating limbs in humans, destroying cancer
cells and so on. Barad thinks that 'this
autopoietic framing', can conceal the huge labour
that is also involved, a 'patchwork of entangled
practices', but 'this futuristic imaginary is no
doubt currently sparking the interest of a host of
potential funders'
Her own article is a patchwork, but this is okay
because it hints at 'one or another forms of
original wholeness'. Parts arise from divisions or
cuts, but they do not simply 'break things off
either spatially or temporarily'. Instead we have
intra–actions cutting things together apart. Her
article is not so much a patchwork as a
phenomenon, already holding together, with
different patterns of 'differentiating –
entangling'. Some of these are remembered, but
memory here does not refer to the human mind but
rather 'marked historialities ingrained in the
world's becoming' [definitely bullsjit in intent].
Memory is a field of enfolded patterns, and
remembering is not recollection, not 'assembling
and ordering events like puzzle pieces', but
re-membering, tracing entanglements 'responding to
yearnings for connection, materialised into fields
of longing/belonging, of regenerating what never
was but might yet have been' and she dedicates
this article to those remembering this and
reconfigurings (407).
We can now trace a few entanglements in this
article, between lightning, primordial ooze,
galvanism, monsters, trans rage, quantum vacuum
[and all the others]. So let's go back [oh no] to
lightning. We see something like the flashings of
the embryonic tadpole, and both mark out 'traces
of (what might yet) be–coming'. In both cases,
virtual diagrams are appearing from the play of
electrons and photons, intra-actions, and QFT
tells us that these are 'elemental happenings'.
This makes them 'an intrinsic feature of
materiality: matters ongoing experimenting with
itself — the queer dance of being – time
indeterminacy, the imaginative play of
presence/absence, here/there, now/then, that holds
the disparate parts together – apart' [Jeezus].
A U.S. Air Force research lab use a slow motion
camera to allow us to see what actually happens at
the beginning of a lightning bolt, 'embryonic
lightning'. Again we turn to the Discovery
Channel, showing someone replaying the video. We
are not watching both but rather 'the display of
its embryonic electrical stirrings before any part
of a lightning bolt begins to manifest' (408).
What this actually is is '"a flash of light dart
out of the cloud and zigzagged downwards in
roughly 50 yard segments"'. We are urged to watch
this video for ourselves [about the third urging
to watch video or make observations of our own —
naïvely empiricist]. We can see 'not – yet –
lightning flashes… Erratic, disjointed sets of
flashes tentatively testing out different
pathways'. We are told it is the stepped leader.
If we 'look closely… [We]… Can see that the
so-called back-and-forth motion is a discontinuous
pattern of flashing… And that some of the gestures
are upwards rather than downward', or 'the stepped
leader gesturing toward the earth, variously
expressing its yearnings'. These are barely
luminous. They represent 'the potential face of
lightning yet to be born' a discontinuous
exploration of different pathways.
Apparently, the 'musings' of the stepped leader
are fractal -like, and one hero thinks of them as
electrical confusion, produced by '"possibly
various airborne regions of charge (space charge)"
[this is rapidly replaced by American scientist
baby talk — '"more likely, the leader just doesn't
know exactly where it wants to go"'].
'It is as if' [!] The electrons are trying
different paths 'feeling out', 'exploring
entanglements of yearning'. There is no direct
channel of electrons between cloud and earth. The
ground itself can respond. 'These gestures are
material imaginings, electrical flirtations
signalling connections – to – come… Signals of the
desiring field that animates their interactive
becoming' (409) [note 59 (421) connects this to
the debate about action at a distance in Einstein,
which is now simply understood to be a matter of
quantum entanglements — and she references all her
own early work]. If this is 'reminiscent' of a
quantum phenomenon 'it may not be that surprising'
because lightning is the result of strong
electromagnetic fields where photons and electrons
'engage in a quantum exploration of multiple
temporalities and polymorphous/polyamorous
couplings — the dance of indeterminacy' [so here
are quantum phenomena have caused something macro,
by assertion.
Back to the electronic face of an embryo. One of
the researchers is fascinated, and says that the
features that are shown do not actually exist at
that time, and that genes to produce them hadn't
been turned on, so that they flashes show '"the
ghost of features yet to come"'. They are like the
traces of embryonic lightning. They are 'traces
differentiating materialisation is – to – come,
virtual explorations of making face', exploring
different possibilities [so do they show different
forms of faces?] She is 'drawing on quantum field
theoretic imagery to describe this event' [a lot
less firm than the earlier statement about quantum
phenomena appearing in lightning]. And that in
turn says that there is a 'quantum' feature of
these biophysical phenomena [again descriptive
language does this], adding to the 'emerging
field' of quantum biology. We are not just
describing quantum mechanical effects which have
already been used to explain bird navigational
photosynthesis, but rather 'quantum field
theoretical effects… Virtual explorations of what
might yet materialise… As an integral part of
ongoing processes of materialisation'. Skies and
embryos and quantum voids are 'imagining all
matter of becoming' (410), 'having brain flashes',
experimenting, and these are 'explorations of
possible trans*formations' [and if all this is
right, we might conclude that these are 'integral
to each and every (ongoing) be(com)ing', unless we
thought that in the first place]
Back to Stryker and affinities with monsters, now
seen as 'a regenerative politics' a way of
exploring new ways of being, new possibilities for
kinship. 'Regeneration understood as a quantum
phenomenon brings indeterminacy's radical
potential to the fore', showing 'material
wanderings/wanderings… A virtual exploration of
what might yet be/have been… Condensed into each
material bit – here – now… (Each "dressed
point")'.
Virtual possibilities are not just a collection of
individual possibilities, not what is absent from
the real, not some unrealised potential future
once and actual lived reality has developed.
Instead it is 'a superposition of
im/possibilities, energetic throbs of the
nothingness, material forces of creativity and
generativity… Material explorations… Integral to
what matter is' (410 – 11). Matter is not lifeless
it is a material exploration it is 'creatively
regenerative, an ongoing trans*/formation', a
condensation of multiple dispersed beings and
times 'where the future and past are deflected
into now'. It is caught in desiring fields. It
touches itself 'in an infinite exploration' and
this inevitably involves a partnership 'with
otherness in a radical ongoing deconstruction and
(re)configuring of itself'. It explores
'trans*-animacy [and all sorts of other wonderful
things] but 'not in an autopoietic mode' (411).
'On the contrary' [it operates as] 'a radical
undoing of "self," of individualism'. It is
'uncountably multiple,mutable' it is agentialism,
it does reconfiguring in a radical sense, undoing
fixed notions of this and that, reconfiguring
'spacetimemattering itself' — future past and
present are 'integral to the play of the
indeterminacy of being – time'
[I really think you should go for this. This is
repetitive assertion, conjuration, poetry that
works because it is homonymic and so on].
Electric bodies at all scales are 'quantum
phenomen[a]'. 'Regenerative possibilities are
endless. Fodder for potent trans*imaginaries,
reconfiguring future/past live realities' we might
cultivate the radical potential of bioelectrical
science to offer 'aligning neo-galvanism with
trans*desires, not in order to have control over
life but to empower and galvanise the
disenfranchised and breathe life into new forms of
queer agency and embodiment' we might get a
regenerate the materiality in virtuality to
produce 'what was missing in fleshiness', to make
tangible what we can sense but cannot yet touch
[all in the form of rhetorical questions] can we
reconfigure 'fleshliness bit by bit by slowly
changing the flow of ions'.Can we dis- and
re-member? If all this seems cruel, and requiring
pain to overcome hard reality, we can still think
of a 'regenerative politics with all its
monstrously queer possibilities' which will
'recharge our imaginations and our electric bodies
– spirits'and reanimate ourselves.
This is not just 'an uncritical embrace of
science's utopian promise' (412). We may not get
simple progress and 'there is no illusion of queer
regeneration being a bloodless affair' [getting
really sinister now]. Regenerative medicine 'does
not constitute an innocent mode of engagement with
science, divorced from any heteronormative
reproductive impulses'. It is sometimes openly
normative, with ideas of embodiment and
naturalness. It sometimes seeks to 'eliminate
bodily irregularities in a quest to honour
Nature'. Current studies of bio electrics are
already 'aligning themselves with promises of
curing cancer, birth defects and disabilities',
and there was initial interest in a robot that
could heal itself. Projects are often 'in the
service of the military industrial complex,
capitalism, racism, and colonialism [which] cannot
be disentangled from the practices of modern
science'. Science does try to '"contain and
colonise the radical threats posed by a particular
transgender strategy of resistance"' and it is
aligned to '"a deeply conservative attempt to
stabilise gendered identity in service of the
naturalised heterosexual order"' [it is not at all
clear who is being quoted here, although note 67
refers to Stryker]. However 'this is not reason to
believe that trans*desires can be corralled into
cooperation' and science might invite us to
imagine different possibilities, subverting its
conservative agendas, opening it up from the
inside, 'and serving as midwife to its always
already deconstructive nature'.
QFT suggests that nature 'is an ongoing
questioning of itself', indeterminate, 'an ongoing
deconstructing of naturalness' [that is as silly
plebs imagine naturalness]. The quantum void is
the scene of activity, 'perverse and promiscuous
couplings, queer goings-on that make pre-AIDS
bathhouses look tame'. It is a virtual
exploration. Nature is perverse at its core, so
there is no need for it to be sited as a
naturalised order opposing trends queer and others
in the form of '"hegemonic oppression"'. We should
be naturalised [this] nature and demonstrate its
queerness, its monstrous face, to unlock its
'significant political potential' (413).
The overall picture is of 'monstrously large space
of agency unleashed in the indeterminate player
virtuality in all its un/doings… A
trans-subjective [no*] material field of
im/possibilities worth exploring'. QFT has been
entangled with capitalism colonialism and the
military-industrial complex, but it also 'contains
its own doing — in a performative
exploration/materialisation of a subversive
materialism...[ This]...very undoing is the
im/proper object of study' [note 69 refers to her
ongoing book manuscript — oh no — Infinity,
nothingness, and justice to come].
We are not trying to 'make trans or queer into
universal features and dilute their subversive
potentials'. We have to undo universality in
favour of 'radical specificity of materiality' nor
is trends some abstraction, 'sacrificing its
embodiment inappropriate if embrace of the latest
theory trends' (413). We need instead to make
alliances, building on a radical tradition that
goes back at least to Marx, to challenge
naturalness. Science has its own political agency
from its own deconstructive forces that help us
imagine new possibilities and provide new
understandings.
'Queer kinship is a potent political formation'
says Stryker, and we might extend this to kinship
with nature, 'to reclaim our trans*natures as
natural', refuting essences and the past history
where nature was mobilised for oppression. Instead
we can see ourselves as part of nature's doings.
Stryker's work 'reverberates' with this
[followed by a quote where she thinks of her body
as a matter of movement, able to explore the
boundaries]. This is a 'topological dynamic
[which] reverberates with QFT processes', as in
interactive becoming reconfiguring and the like.
Stryker rights of transgender rebirthing. 'Her
voice solicits me to defer actively intercut her
words of there... [Below] with those... Of an
electron I imagine to be speaking contra
punctually of its own perpetual (r)ebirthing' (414
in case I forgot to mention it). [Note 71
apologises to Stryker for disrupting her poem and
thanks for a corporation and openness to this
'experiment in entangled poetics' (422)]
[Some truly awful shit follows about how she is an
electron seeing shimmering lights, living in the
void — it reminds me of my own parody about the
talking condom. Then chunks of Stryker's text with
bits added, such as '[void]' close, then another
bit about how the electron wants to interact and
become multiple, until 'a raging scream without
sound'erupts (416), just like Stryker's rage. It
is awful.
Notes start by saying that Stryker has accepted to
have 'some of her poetics differ actively read
through mine'. Note to says that her 'ontological
– political project resonates with Marco
Cuevas-Hewitts' call for something — a 'futurology
of the present" to identify alternative futures.
The notes often reference herself. Darwin is
dragging in note 4. Various magazines including
Smithsonian magazine and scientific American other
sources for some of the stuff about primordial
soups. Note 16 quotes Judith Butler on the suspect
universality of the category of sexes, although
she wants to explore much more as she does in the
2007 book. Note 17 confesses to a 'political
investment in enlarging the scope of my project to
include quantum food field theory [because it
helps] trouble the underlying metaphysics of
colonialist claims such as terrae nullius' (417) —
do aboriginals need that?. Note 20s says that QFT
has helped her to 'further articulate the agential
realism' because it offers radical deconstruction
of identity and the equation of matter with
essence even better than quantum physics does.
There's lots of borrowing from your own work. Note
28 acknowledges Kirby (2011) on lightning and its
connective engagement. Note 29 also says that it
shows that quantum phenomena are not just
restricted to the micro-domain. Note 34
understands renormalisation as 'a sign of physics
ongoing (auto)deconstruction'. Note 35 says that
she did not choose electrons arbitrarily, but
because we are made up of them. Arguing that
electrons are trans-material configurations 'is
not to naturalised trans (or queer for that
matter), but rather to acknowledge the radically
transgressive potential of nature itself…
(Sufficiently subversive, in this case, to instil
"horror" and those who would propose to know it
fully)'. Note 36 refers to a talk she gave in
Australia 2013. Note 45 cites Tufts Journal as the
source for a geewhiz E bit about regeneration, and
note 54 refers us to a news release. Note 60
argues that quantum effects are found at larger
and larger spatial scales, including the molecular
in this case, 'orders of magnitude larger than the
atomic scale' (421). Note 62 is an indication of
Donna Haraway are monsters. Note 63 refers to
collapse as a matter of superposition of
possibilities shown in the wave function diagram
in her book. It also says that 'the notion of the
virtual discussed here is based on my
interpretation of quantum field theory. It is not
the same as Giles Deleuze's notion of the virtual,
although there are some interesting residences. I
discuss this further in a future publication [oh
no again] (422). Note 65 says that 'scale is only
materialised/defined within particular phenomena'.
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