What if reflexivity and diffraction intra-act?

Abstract

Diffraction has emerged as a concept and methodology through opposing reflexivity. In this paper, I argue that reflexivity and diffraction are not external to each other. In contrast, I propose that they blur into each other and so we do not find ourselves using pure reflexivity or diffraction. Furthermore, I contend that categorically distinguishing reflexivity and diffraction can generate practices of exclusion and the unwitting reproduction of what we would like to avoid. Through letting reflexivity and diffraction intra-act, I develop my notion of a diffracted reflexivity. A reflexivity that acknowledges that in reflecting about ourselves we are not representing something but producing something; specifically, we are relating to ourselves in ways that are relationally, culturally and materially enabled, continuously producing ourselves and the world in that process of relating. Consequently, I propose to meta-reflexively focus the attention on the ways of relating that we enact and what they produce.

Keywords:

• Reflexivity
• diffraction
• meta-reflexivity
• intra-action
• diffractive reading

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the feedback on this article provided by Jonathan Wyatt, Liz Bondi and the three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interests to report.

Notes

1 Intra-action is a neologism introduced by Karen Barad (2003, 2007) to differentiate it from interaction. Interaction points at two units relating with each other whereas intra-action points at how the relationship is ontologically prior. It is ‘intra’ because there is not an outside of the units but a relating as the space where the differentiations emerge: difference within rather than categorical difference.

2 I bracket the word ‘with’ because it implies the union of two or more distinct entities, whereas the concept of intra-action is emphasising how the entities are always in the process of being formed. If the sentence is read without the word ‘with’, it can convey intra-acting as an action that directly shapes an entity (in this case myself).

3 Barad (2007) conceptualises agential cut to refer to the boundary that is produced within a particular configuration and that enables the, always temporary, emergence of entities. Barad assumes that these boundaries are always shifting and in process. Matter is agentic it is always in movement and not simply divided in distinct units that we can disentangle.

4 Using performative meta-reflexivity, I ask myself: How am I relating to the concepts in this sentence? It seems that I am opposing performative meta-reflexivity to positional reflexivity, producing another dichotomy. However, I think that both reflexivities are ways of relating that produce. That is, I believe that to make explicit the author’s position is also generative and in many contexts, can be more useful than other kinds of reflexivity.

5 Interestingly, it is precisely through a critique to this belief that reflexivity is called forth: to think about how we are representing and how this affects what we represent.

Additional information

Funding

I have written part of this paper while undertaking my PhD funded by the Principal’s Career PhD Scholarship and the Edinburgh Global Research Scholarship. Both schemes belong to the University of Edinburgh.

Notes on contributors

Jacqueline Karen Andrea Serra Undurraga

Jacqueline Karen Andrea Serra Undurraga is lecturer in counselling and psychotherapy at the University of Edinburgh. Her research inquires into re-thinking about how we make sense of ourselves through reconceptualising reflexivity and experience.