Notes on : Geerts E & van der Tuin I (2016) the Feminist Futures of Reading Diffractively: how Barad's Methodology Replaces Conflict – based Readings of Beauvoir and Irigaray. Rhizomes, 30. [No page numbers] DOI 10.204115/rhiz/030.e02 Dave Harris [A critique of Zizek and his attack on Barad — sketched out very briefly in a tedious YouTube video as well, but mostly developed in his 2012 book Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. Then an attempt to find common ground between de Beauvoir and Irigaray,  despite them usually being seen as generational rivals. I got the gist but lack the detailed reading of either. I am still unsure what is 'diffractive' about this as compared to conventional ways of uncovering common ground] We should see Barad as offering a quantum leap herself. We should not see diffractive reading strategy as a mirror of the physical phenomenon of diffraction because this would 'indeed be representationalist'. She has reworked it herself into a methodology can challenge various 'canonisation practices' in feminism, including the work of Beauvoir and Irigaray, which is a 'conflict – based narrative', generally a negative effect in feminist theory. If we reread their work diffractively we can bring them together. Zizek offers a 'blatant sexist and homophobic attitude' in his [bloody awful] EGS video [true] but he makes lots of mistakes. Barad is read 'in an Oedipal and unashamedly confrontational manner'. He questions her seriousness. He refers to post-modern jargon and lesbian sexuality as an insult to all men [as a joke and provocation]. We have to respond to fight sexism and homophobia. Lots of other feminist work has also been 'read through an Oedipalised focus' including Beauvoir and Irigaray. The readings have misconstrued feminist theory as a 'domain of women engaged in bitter, dividing debates'. We can expose the underlying Oedipal structure of Zizek, and also see how we can end Oedipalisation via an affirmative strategy of diffraction, of feminists and within feminism. Zizek's book Less than Nothing… claims to be a description of Hegelian philosophy and its traces in Western philosophy. Strangely he leaves out Beauvoir and Irigaray, important Hegelian followers. He also engages with speculative materialism and agential realism, the first largely through Meillassoux (M), the second with Barad. The point of the book is to see how Hegel has been interpreted and to what extent the authors are still Hegelian. M first. The argument is that M's work ends in an idealist blindspot, still trapped in the question of the subject while trying to eliminate anthropocentrism. This is still dependent on '"the masculine side of Lacan's formulae of sexuation"' and to Hegelianism. M is unable to move away representationalism and its effects in Leibniz, Schelling, Nietszche, Bergson and Deleuze. However, it also implies that M cannot follow up the implications of quantum physics, its uncertainty principle, and its apparent transcendentalism, although in quantum physics the observer's role is 're-inscribed' in physical reality. Zizek makes a lot of mistakes and misquotations when dealing with Barad, for example implying that her implicit naturalism disregards sexual difference, or arguing that entanglement has led to hierarchical reasoning, where classical physics cannot understand quantum physics, but not the other way around. [The actual quote seems to assign quantum physics to a feminine principle but then argue that it can't just reduce masculine totalisation is as an illusion, because sexual difference itself is a primary fact — pass] Feminist philosophers have dealt with sexual difference and psychoanalysis, however, including defining the Real as symptoms to claim the empirical. They have demonstrated that sexual difference is already a result of diffraction. We can see this when we look at the work of Beauvoir and Irigaray, although the usual reading sees them as disagreeing over things like the mother-daughter relationship, so we have to diffractively reread them. They quote Barad on diffraction as a metaphor — '"reading insights through one another in attending to and responding to the details and specificities of relations of difference and how they matter"'. They are going to discuss the nature of sexual difference in differing feminist philosophies. Feminist Freudians have sometimes suggested a feminine Oedipal complex to explain what B and I see as structured tensions between mothers and daughters. The mother-daughter divide might be the abiding theme in Beauvoir and Irigaray, and might also explain 'feminism's generational matricide'. Beauvoir and Irigaray are seen as opposed, although they are both said other similar things about mothers and daughters — Beauvoir says that daughters will rebel against their mothers and this is because women are seen as phallic mothers, Irigaray sees patriarchy destroying fulfilling relationships between women leading to a fight for the attention of fathers and men, and eternal rivalry. There are Oedipal undertones, and indeed Freud never really got to explore the Electra complex but described it still in masculinised terms: there is still no struggle specifically over the autonomy of the child. Irigaray has identified this masculinised thinking and wants to revalue relationships between women, stressing the '"body to body encounter with the mother"'. The relation between them has been seen in Oedipal terms, with Beauvoir as the mother of feminism and Irigaray as the 'un-dutiful daughter'. Irigaray has moved beyond humanist equality and has dealt with Freud and Lacan. They often seen as opposed as a result, stressing equal rights on the one hand and a feminism of difference on the other. But there is a more dynamic reading. Irigaray herself acknowledges the role of Beauvoir in encouraging feminism, but then explains Beauvoir's rejection of feminist stances like her own as the result of a 'particular philosophical and psychoanalytical background'. Irigaray rejects equality feminism since ther are disparities between 'equality' and 'women'. However, we could see her work as working through Beauvoir, 'in a critical yet productive manner', transforming it from the inside, not rejecting it totally. There are differences between them but it would be wrong to Oedipalise these or see them as conflict based. Irigaray herself sees a continuity with Beauvoir. However, 'it is in the nature of feminist philosophy to be generational' but this can be actualised in different ways. They need a method to reread Beauvoir and Irigaray 'in a more continuous manner' braking from the usual conflict between equality and difference. This would be a feminist reading strategy going beyond Oedipal scenery and generational tensions and open up both to each other's ideas, a 'more open and fluid reading method' than, say critical discourse analysis. This involves embracing another kind of critical consciousness, as in Haraway, stressing difference not Same. The usual method reduces each approach to an [inverted] replica of the other. Haraway shows the way building on master-slave dialectics, and arguing that 'any perspective is always already embodied' to break with usual notions of vision and objectivity. Location becomes crucial, situated politics and epistemology. Haraway mentions diffraction in her Promises of Monsters and defines it as 'a mapping of interference, not of replication, reflection, or reproduction… [It] maps where the effects of difference appear'. This is opposed to reflexivity in the traditional sense. Classic physics examples of diffraction are extended by quantum physics and the two slit experiment. Diffraction 'creates change and upholds differences' and is therefore a useful metaphor if we want to 'make difference'. Reflexivity by contrast prefers semiotic to material, and splits a subject and its object of research. Haraway instead addresses our attention to boundaries and their generative and productive properties, familiar meanings and bodies. In a recent interview she says that we should combine different fields of study and acquire different reading skills to interrupt each other productively. This will help us avoid the tendency to reduce the other to the self as in the master slave dialectic, or to split natural objects from designed products. This even goes beyond feminist standpoint theory '(which is a Hegelianism)' and embraces non-linear logic. It avoids Oedipalism and tackles the usual either/or readings of Beauvoir and Irigaray. We need to flesh this out with Barad and intra-action. She begins by criticising representationalism, where the knowing subject is separate from the object that is being represented. This involves a '"geometrical optics of reflection"' where representations mirror reality and this can guarantee pure and objective knowledge. Barad replaces reflection with diffraction and moves to 'an agential realist onto–epistemology'. She reads Foucault and Butler on discursive practices and the relation to power and matter and this helps deconstruct nature/culture dichotomies and anthropocentrism. She develops relational ontology, where 'phenomena and discursive practices are always already in a relationship of "intra-action"'. Thus matter matters — 'i.e. that "materiality is an active factor in processes of materialisation"', that nature is not passive until it receives the mark of culture, and that discursive practices and materiality are related. Interaction assumes 'ontologically separated objects' while intra-action focuses on boundaries between objects, and sees phenomena as always already entangled. It is through these specific intra-actions that agency operates to produce difference [if that is what she means by '"a differential sense of being is enacted in the ongoing ebb and flow of agency"'] So we could look at intra-activity between Beauvoir and Irigaray and make both more powerful theoretically and politically. Barad uses diffraction herself as a critical reading method. Performativity is a diffraction grating helping us to read different oeuvres through each other [we focus on what they do?]. We don't just compare nor just add together or simply oppose different approaches. Instead we have to base reading on 'the transdisciplinary and conversational approach' avoiding 'negational logic' [so this is what feminist ethics means?] We need to attend to specificity and detail, and avoid hierarchical logic, so we cannot simply prefer Irigaray or Beauvoir. Instead we should look for ways in which they can 'cross fertilising each other, without having to fear that they will eventually get caught up in a reflective logic of sameness' There is one philosophical issue that separates them — 'different conceptualisations of alterity'— but we can also break out of an either/or approach. The differences seem to be unbridgeable — Irigaray says Beauvoir stays in a phallogocentric model which takes the mastery of the masculine subject for granted, and wishes to manage female otherness by demanding equality. Subjectivity is '"a singular model"' and we need instead to move forward to '"a model of the two"' that preserve differences. Irigaray claims her own notion of otherness is completely different to Beauvoir, and that we have to be radically other to escape. [Then there is discussion about whether Beauvoir uses immanence or transcendence to describe women], which implies that equality would lead to the neutralisation of the sexes, and this in turn would be 'reductive and masculinist conceptualisation of transcendence'. Yet both have a Hegelian heritage and this can be used to restart dialogue. Beauvoir is accused of adopting the master slave dialectic with woman as Other meaning slave. If so, she might have been 'also infected by Hegel's phallogocentrism'. Her use of the master slave dialectic is actually ambiguous — she says woman has always been man's slave, she sees the Other as a servant to man. If women are the link between man and nature and therefore 'doomed to reproduction', she explicitly cites Hegel and the master slave dialectic. This entails that women have already been mastered by men. However she recognises that there is also a master slave dialectic between men which helps women escape slavery, and that women can keep men dependent on them — 'the relationship of asymmetrical, but reciprocal, codependency'. Women, like slaves do not just demand reciprocal recognition but remain as an absolute Other. We need diffractive reading. Irigaray has always criticised Hegel for his patriarchal ideas about women, as have most of her commentators. She's been more explicitly critical of master slave dialectics. She sees Hegel as rendering Antigone [in Sophocles play] as only a living mirror, not having full subjectivity. For Irigaray, Antigone is indeed '"the antiwoman"', not just produced by a culture written by men. However, Antigone has a subversive aspect too — for example she ' resists becoming a phallic wife and mother by committing suicide', escaping being either master or slave. It is possible that Beauvoir can also be seen as heading in this direction. She certainly places women outside master slave dialectics and if we diffractively read her 'through Irigaray's idea of how culture is established itself on a metaphysical matricide', we can see her as arguing in effect that master slave dialectics never completely describe relations between women and men. Women have always been interdependent but this is never been acknowledged. A more simple dialectics of otherness has been imposed. This still makes women different from slaves — their relationship is more asymmetrical, because there is a neglected and silenced aspect of 'men's dependence on women'in patriarchy. This might help Beauvoir attain the 'reciprocal erotic ethics in which the alterity of the other would be respected' which is the whole aim of the Second Sex. So we have diffracted  B through an Irigarayian perspective. We've not yet got to realise a more complex dialectics to explain relations of men and women. Irigaray claims that it would need to be a double dialectics, fully acknowledging the different worlds of each subject. A longing for this double dialectics 'could be diffractively read into Le deuxieme sex' too, where Beauvoir refers to a future woman, still in the making, still searching for a way for women to assert their subjectivity, and become genuinely transcendent like men. This is not saying that women should become like men in every respect — sexual difference remains. Women 'as an absolute and inferior Other is what needs to be transcended', 'and this becomes clear when read through an Irigarayian perspective' [ie. Irigaray is right to see Beauvoir as too limited] In Irigaray, each subject follows a dialectic, and there is a double dialectic between the two sexually different subjects. There are always two worlds. We are always affected by the existence of the other. There is a '"double human subjectivity"', although this is never been fully acknowledged. If we take her position 'through which we are reading Beauvoir's project' we will be upholding 'the negative between subjects', not Hegel's negative, but an acceptance of limits and '"recognition of the other's irreducibility"'. This irreducibility has to be respected by subjects if the other is to be an other, with their transcendence [of normal social definitions?] recognised. Only then could a proper relation of between-us occur. It is difficult to push Beauvoir's notion of transcendence towards this notion, but we can conclude that Beauvoir goes beyond masculine conceptualisations and she is heading toward a female subjectivity and a double dialectics. [Some sort of teleology here?] We can push both philosophies further on erotic ethics and sexual difference. Carnal love is recognised in Beauvoir as a movement towards the Other, with erotic attraction deepening if subjects recognise each other as equals. This complements Irigaray on sexual ethics, although, being based on a future double dialectics, it is still yet to be discovered. If we understand sexual difference properly it will 'radically alter our ontology, ethics and politics', and also produce new thinking about desire, suggesting a double desire 'in which both subjects are able to find each other'. This will respect otherness and transcendence, subjects will have a place for each other 'without destroying "the interval (of attraction)" between the two'. There would be interconnection in a genuine union. We would have to step out of single dialectics focused on oneness, where women envelop men. Sexual difference must be seen as '"loving as two"', mutual envelopment, male and female subjects recognising one another. There are some elements still in Irigaray that seem obscure [!] such as how this new ethics could come into being, especially how men themselves can break out of objectifying tendencies and patriarchal powers. We can diffract Irigaray through Beauvoir and her emphasis on 'touch, losing oneself and fusion'. Irigaray bridges feminist philosophy and female sexuality differently — women are others in themselves, possess sexual plurality, and know what otherness is because they have always had to 'envelop man and his offspring'. Women also have a 'more dialogical way of communicating' between subjects even when addressing others. They are somehow more approximate to otherness. Irigaray focuses on carnal love between male and female subjects — 'a heterosexist philosophy'. Sexual difference is the most important kind of difference, but can same-sex couples also love each other? There might be a queer space in Irigaray which will help the conversation with Beauvoir, because Beauvoir does talk about lesbianism, even in a problematic way. She claims that lesbian women can live together and that same-sex love can be passionate, even less colonising, respecting alterity because women 'can be "subject and object same time"'. Irigaray might agree that this reciprocal recognition can occur: she acknowledges that carnal love need not be reproductive. However the ontological foundation of sexual difference is still the starting point. 'But that, of course does not mean that her project also has to stop there'. So this has been a productive dialogue. We have broken through earlier Oedipal accounts. We have used both to push towards a more radical feminist philosophy, where women become sexual subjects of their own, and also develop a dual mode of recognition. We can even argue 'that the structure of sexual difference is already that of diffraction, of creating change and upholding difference'. We have also showed that diffractive reading can focus discussion about sexual differing. Barad herself addresses sexual difference in an essay, referring to sensuality of the flesh, exchange of warmth, proximity of otherness when people touch. If people touch their own hands this can produce a sense of otherness of the self. The sensation of closeness is relevant to much discussion and policy. So for Barad touch has implications for a number of disciplines. Touch helps us discover something about our own embodiment and their own becoming. It focuses on limits or boundaries and their possible generativity. It focuses on the inhuman in us. Reverting to Zizek, there are clear differences between Barad and M, precisely on this notion of becoming of the subject, '"the trans-subjective process of the emergence of the subject"' which Zizek says that M misses. Barad's work on touch offers precision on this issue of trend subjective reality. It argues for a science focusing on the ways in which beings stray from calculable paths through the 'radically permeable and unpredictable affair of touching (and being touched)' we can argue that Beauvoir and Irigaray and their philosophies of sexual difference also touch even though they are not the same, and can be made interactive 'in a non-conflict based, feminist setting that could turn out to be the future playground of feminist theory' [Well the most impressive attempt so far to diffract. Again there is a rather easy strawman to deal with first, the Irigaray is the unfaithful daughter to Beauvoir. Nor can I quite see why this familiar exercise of finding grounds for possible agreement depending on how you read different people should be deemed as a wonderful new diffractive method — philosophers do this all the time, not least Deleuze joining Nietzsche and Spinoza. I think Barad is admired because her work on touch seems to go a long way to explain how all sorts of opposites are reconciled in sexual touching] back to social theory