Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for invaluable and generous feedback from Fern Feldman, Emilie Dionne, Elaine Gan and Irene Reti. And also to Irene Reti for all the many walks by the ocean and conversations about Gloria Anzaldúa and her writings. Many thanks to Kathrin Thiele and Birgit Mara Kaiser for being wonderful editors, and for inviting this paper and waiting patiently for its submission which no doubt seemed as if it would always remain to-come.

Notes

¹ Etymology: <  Latin diffract-, participial stem of diffring-e˘re to break in pieces, shatter, <  dif-, dis- prefix 1a+ frange˘re to break (OED). The following are the chief senses of dis- in Latin and English: 1. As an etymological element. In the senses: a. ‘In twain, in different directions, apart, asunder,’ hence ‘abroad, away’ (…) (OED)

² While returning might have the association of reflection (how light returns from where it came once it hits the mirror), re-turning, as I hope to develop this notion, is about diffracting. The play here between reflection/returning and diffraction/re-turning, separated only by the mere mark of a hyphen, is an important reminder that reflection and diffraction are not opposites, not mutually exclusive, but rather different optical intra-actions highlighting different patterns, optics, geometries that often overlap in practice. Perhaps this will serve as a reminder that the table in chapter 2 in Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007) is not dichotomous; rather, one might usefully think of the line of separation in the table as a cut that differentiates-entangles – reading it diffractively. I also want to emphasize that diffraction is not somehow contained in chapter 2, but rather diffraction is diffracted throughout the book, the various chapters serving as a diffraction grating for diffraction.

³ See Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, ‘Ethical Doings in NatureCultures’, Ethics, Place & Environment, 13:2 (2010), pp.151–169.

⁴ This will perhaps be more evident when we consider the quantum eraser diffraction experiment, but even before we get “there” “later on”, which is already in “here” “now”, it is possible to have some sense of this.

⁵ Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway; Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come’, Derrida Today, 3:2 (2010), pp.240–268.

⁶ Karen Barad, ‘Nothing Is New/There Is Nothing That Is Not New’, invited keynote for the ‘What's New about New Materialisms?’ Conference, University of California, Berkeley, May 5, 2012.

⁷ Just because the entanglements are infinite doesn't mean the specificity of entanglements doesn't matter; on the contrary, the details matter.

⁸ Trinh T. Minh-ha, ‘Not You/Like You: Post-Colonial Women and the Interlocking Question of Identity and Difference’, Inscriptions, special issues ‘Feminism and the Critique of Colonial Discourse’, 3–4 (1988), < http://culturalstudies.ucsc.edu/PUBS/Inscriptions/vol_3-4/minh-ha.html> [26/02/2014] [my emphasis].

⁹ I am painfully aware of the fact that it will not be possible to do justice to any of the theories mentioned here, let alone the multitudes not mentioned here to whom the notion of diffraction is indebted. I am not aiming to give over what has been said and taught by these theorists; rather, I am trying to help us to re-member by way of constructing thicker understandings of diffraction as an inherited legacy-to-come.

¹⁰ Trinh T. Minh-ha, ‘Not You/Like You’.

¹¹ Trinh T. Minh-ha, ‘Not You/Like You’.

¹² Trinh T. Minh-ha, ‘Not You/Like You’.

¹³ We will soon re-turn to Trinh again to see what she proposes. Subjects, like moments, are multiple and dispersed across/throughout this diffraction pattern.

¹⁴ ‘It has illuminated for us another, fourth way, which we now make known and call “diffraction” [i.e., shattering], because we sometimes observe light break up; that is, that parts of the compound [i.e., the beam of light], separated by division, advance farther through the medium but in different [directions], as we will soon show’. Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Physico mathesis de lumine, coloribus, et iride, aliisque annexis libri duo (Bologna: Vittorio Bonati, 1665), translation from note 2 on < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction> [26/02/2014].

¹⁵ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987), p.49.

¹⁶ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.49.

¹⁷ Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Physico mathesis de lumine, coloribus, et iride, aliisque annexis libri duo (Bologna: Vittorio Bonati, 1665), translated in The Penny Cyclopædia, ed. George Long (London: 1854), vol. 1, p.668; < http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Grimaldi.html> [26/02/2014] [my emphasis].

¹⁸ Thomas Young, ‘On the Theory of Light and Colors’ (proposition VIII), Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts, vol. 2 (1802), pp.162–176.

¹⁹ Donna Haraway, ‘The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others’, in Cultural Studies, eds Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, Paula A. Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992), p.300.

²⁰ Haraway, ‘Promises of Monsters’, p.300.

²¹ To briefly situate my work in physics, feminist theory and feminist science studies, at this “moment in time” that I'm inviting us to re-member, when I had not yet moved to Santa Cruz but was already entangled with conversations at the crossroads, I note one reference point. By the late winter (early spring) of 1991, I had finished writing ‘Meeting the Universe Halfway: Realism and Social Constructivism without Contradiction’ (in Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science, eds Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Jack Nelson (Kluwer, 1996), pp.161–194) – and had already received a couple of journal rejections, which makes for an interesting tale in light of the science wars of the late 1990s. In any case, it did not find a home for another five years, six total.

²² This was one of the most sacred conversations I have had in academia. I treasure this memory, not because Gloria Anzaldúa has moved on to other worlds, but because of the extraordinary quality of our conversation, the joy of it, the recognition of common passions in different languages and the gift of her generosity, kindness and focused presence. I use her first name here because my sense is that using her surname would be too formal, stiff and artificial, and I didn't want to show disrespect in this way.

²³ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.19.

²⁴ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.19.

²⁵ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.19.

²⁶ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.80.

²⁷ My proposal is that what I call ‘intra-action’ constitutes such a radical reworking of causality (see Meeting the Universe Halfway). My account of Bohr's philosophy-physics in this paper, as elsewhere, is not faithful to Bohr (as if it could be), but rather is always already diffracted through my agential realist understanding of Bohr's insights.

²⁸ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.66–67.

²⁹ See Richard Feynman, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, Lectures on Physics (Addison-Wesley, 1964), vol. I.

³⁰ See Karen Barad, Ghostly Times: Entanglements, Intra-activity, and Différance, book manuscript, forthcoming.

³¹ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.19.

³² Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.19 [my emphasis].

³³ See Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.20.

³⁴ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.19.

³⁵ Trinh T. Minh-ha, ‘Not You/Like You’.

³⁶ Trinh T. Minh-ha, ‘Not You/Like You’.

³⁷ Trinh T. Minh-ha, Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism, and the Boundary Event (New York: Routledge, 2011), p.56.

³⁸ Trinh T. Minh-ha, ‘Not You/Like You’.

³⁹ The title of Trinh's 2011 book.

⁴⁰ Trinh T. Minh-ha, Elsewhere, Within Here, p.56.

⁴¹ A key concept of agential realism. See chapter 7 of Meeting the Universe Halfway for some of its political implications (even though it may look to some like a chapter on physics as a pure discipline, rather than a hybridity that is and has been always already political).

⁴² See Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, p.251.

⁴³ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.194.

⁴⁴ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.194.

⁴⁵ Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), p.29.

⁴⁶ Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, p.251.

⁴⁷ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.195.

⁴⁸ Although some scholars have equated deconstruction with academic word play having nothing to do with the real material conditions of people's (and others’!) lives, it is worth remembering Derrida's background and political focus on questions of the other, difference, justice and alterity, including the politics of immigration and citizenship.

⁴⁹ See Karen Barad, ‘Transmaterialities: Trans/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings’, GLQ, Special Issue ‘Queer Inhumanisms’ (forthcoming), with gratitude to Harlan Weaver (2009) for the richly suggestive term “transmaterialities”.

⁵⁰ Trinh Minh-ha, Keynote Panel for Gender and Women's Studies Conference, UC Berkeley, 2011, < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = xZv9WHaB1QI> [12/03/2014], around 38 mins into the video.

⁵¹ Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, pp.25, 27.

⁵² Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx.

⁵³ Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, p.99.

⁵⁴ Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, note 10, p.268.

⁵⁵ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.3.

⁵⁶ Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, pp.25, 27.

⁵⁷ Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, pp.248–249.

⁵⁸ See Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx on hauntology; and Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’.

⁵⁹ For a detailed account of the quantum eraser experiment and its politico-ethico-onto-epistem-ological implications, see chapter 7 of Meeting the Universe Halfway and ‘Quantum Entanglements’. Other key references on the quantum eraser experiment: Yoon-Ho Kim, R. Yu, S.P. Kulik, Y.H. Shih and Marlan O. Scully, ‘A Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser’, Physical Review Letters, 84:1–5 (2000); Marlan O. Scully and Kai Drühl, ‘Quantum eraser: A proposed photon correlation experiment concerning observation and “delayed choice” in quantum mechanics’, Physical Review, A25 (1982), pp.2208–2213.

⁶⁰ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.77.

⁶¹ Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, pp.260–261.

⁶² Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), p.21.

⁶³ This is one way in which diffraction might be contrasted with (some forms of) critique, which is not to suggest that diffractive analysis does not have anything in common with critique, although questions of temporality and ontology figure differently. As Foucault points out, in ‘What is Critique?’ (1978), critique is not one thing, but ‘seems to be condemned to dispersion, dependency and pure heteronomy’ (Michel Foucault, ‘What is Critique?’, in The Politics of Truth, edited by Sylvère Lotringer (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e) 2007), p.25). Diffraction is indebted to forms of critical analysis such as those put forward by Marx, Nietzsche and Foucault. Indeed, both critique and diffractive analysis consider fundamental taking account of the (material-discursive) conditions of possibility in their historical-social-political-(naturalcultural) contingency. However, whereas critique operates in a mode of disclosure, exposure and demystification (see Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003)), diffractive reading might be understood as a form of affirmative engagement. Diffraction is an iterative practice of intra-actively reworking and being reworked by patterns of mattering. A diffractive methodology seeks to work constructively and deconstructively (not destructively) in making new patterns of understanding-becoming. See also, for example, Iris van de Tuin, ‘A Different Starting Point, a Different Metaphysics: Reading Bergson and Barad Diffractively’, Hypatia: A Journal for Feminist Philosophy, 26:1 (2011), pp.22–42 and Martha Kenney, Fables of Attention: Wonder in Feminist Theory and Scientific Practice (UCSC dissertation, June 2013).

⁶⁴ Karen Barad, forthcoming! The reference here is to this very paper. This may seem a bit strange, and the temporality will already be different once you read this, but it is a gesture to include what is also coming from the future.

⁶⁵ The author's names are added in brackets here in order to make the diffractive reading more evident while respecting the style of the journal.

⁶⁶ Gloria Anzaldúa, ‘An Interview with Gloria Anzaldúa’, conducted by Debbie Blake with Carmen Abrego, in Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 14 (1995), p.16.

⁶⁷ Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, p.261.

⁶⁸ Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), p.120.

⁶⁹ Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, p.261.

⁷⁰ Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other, p.123.

⁷¹ Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, p.264.

⁷² Loran Marsan, ‘Creating New Spaces in Third Cinema: Trinh T. Minh-Ha Rewrites the Narrative of Nationalism With Love’, 2011 < http://truthseekers.cultureunplugged.com/truthlowbar;seekers/2011/09/creating-new-spaces-in-third-cinema-trinh-t-minh-ha-rewrites-the-narrative-of-nationalism-with-love.html> [26/02/2014]

⁷³ Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands, p.20.

⁷⁴ Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, p. 264.

⁷⁵ Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, p.xix.

⁷⁶ Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, p.264.

⁷⁷ Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, p.265–266.

⁷⁸ Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other, p.128.

⁷⁹ Karen Barad, ‘Quantum Entanglements’, p.266.

⁸⁰ Trinh T. Minh-ha, Cinema Interval (New York: Routledge, 1999), p.233.

⁸¹ Karen Barad, forthcoming! [see note 64].

⁸² Trinh T. Minh-ha, The Digital Film Event (New York: Routledge, p.2005), p.34.

⁸³ Karen Barad, forthcoming! [see note 64].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen Barad

Karen Barad is Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Barad's Ph.D. is in theoretical particle physics and quantum field theory. Barad held a tenured appointment in a physics department before moving into more interdisciplinary spaces. Barad is the author of Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Duke University Press, 2007) and numerous articles in the fields of physics, philosophy, science studies, poststructuralist theory, and feminist theory. Barad's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hughes Foundation, the Irvine Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Barad is the Co-Director of the Science & Justice Graduate Training Program at UCSC. Email: [email protected]