Notes on: Murris, K & Bozalek, V
(2091b) Diffraction and respons-able reading of
texts: the relational ontologies of Barad and
Deleuze. International
Journal of Qualitative Studies
in Education. DOI:
10.1080/09518398.2019.1609122
Dave Harris
[I am going to focus mostly on how they describe
diffractive reading and summarise the other bits
where they summarise lots of Barad]
That argument starts with the usual attempt to
separate out a diffraction reading from some
other flawed earlier model — here just called
critique. They draw on Latour and Barad to
criticise one sort of critique. Apparently it
claims to be able to map differences and
similarities objectively, but this involves 'a
"view from nowhere"' (2), as Haraway said. We
need instead '"new" affirmative "patterns of
understanding – becoming"', quoting Barad 2014.
[which already leads to a problem — Barad's
ontology and argument is going to be used as
some master text to handle opposing problems, in
the usual academic way?].
Just below we are told that Hein [who wrote an
earlier paper claiming B and D were
incompatible] finds one position wanting, Barad
as 'falling short' and thus in opposition to
Deleuze. Murris and Bozalek want to put 'the to
philosophers in conversation with one another,
without presuming that as researchers, we are
able to map the differences and similarities
"between" their oeuvres objectively' [so are
they mapping them subjectively? As the voice of
Matter?]. This method apparently is in harmony
with relational ontology. [i.e.agrees with Barad
--not at all the style of D&G]
Diffractive reading means that items are
'respectfully read through each other in a
relational way, looking for creative and
unexpected provocations, strengthening these,
rather than using an atomistic binary logic to
compare one with the other' (2). [It is still
not clear which of these terms should gain the
most emphasis — respectful, creative and
unexpected, atomistic binary logic?. Nor is it
clear how we can judge whether while both
positions have been strengthened.]
Apparently there is a link with being
'response–able' in Barad and also in Despret
[whom I have not read]. It involves 'a form of
becoming–with readers, authors, texts…
Reading one philosopher/oeuvre/text through
another, rather ['than' is missing here,
surely?] seeing them as separate and distant
from each other, or one against the other'.
[Again only mystery awaits for me — since texts
clearly are separate and distant from each other
in one sense, because they are written by
different authors in different contexts and
follow different agendas, it is hard to see how
this is first of all undesirable and secondly
easy to overcome. As I say elsewhere, I am not
at all sure how you read one text 'through
another' — literally skipping from one to the
other? Reading one first and then trying to
alter your understandings when you read the
other? Does it matter which sequence you read
them in?]
They claim to have brought a relational ontology
here to read academic texts, and then re– turn
to the originals by Deleuze and Barad so that
they can 'diffract through their oeuvres' to
create thicker understandings. Positive
differences seem to be important, as well as the
avoidance of reflection in doing ordinary
returning as opposed to re–turning. There is no
need to be 'faithful to the originals', indeed,
this is not compatible with their relational
ontology and its methodology. [so what makes it
a diffraction of actual Deleuze and Barad rather
than a diffraction of their interretations of
both?] 'Our "own" understandings of critical
post-humanism are already threaded through a
diffractive reading of Deleuze and Barad' [and
vice-versa?] (3).
There can be no external 'I' telling the story
says Barad [and Deleuze for that matter,
although he wants to put it differently].
Diffraction apparently is 'indebted' to the
critiques by Marx, Nietzsche and Foucault
[although those are hardly respectful to their
opponents]. Yet there is a different ontology
for Barad. Critique offers disclosure, exposure
and demystification '(destruction)' while
diffraction is more affirmative and engaging
intending to produce new patterns of
understanding – becoming, '(construction and
deconstruction)'. Thus ontology — '(the
subjectivity of the researcher)', epistemology
'(critique in diffraction as method)' and ethics
'(response – able reading of texts)' are all
entangled [well if you accept Barad's line of
argument that involves both strong and weak
forms of entailment). [Again compare Deleuze,
perhaps especially on ethics].
[Then a lot of substantive stuff follows,
including further discussion of brittle stars
and their wonderful capacities — apparently, the
example shows the continuities between Barad and
Deleuze, in that nature '"makes and non-makes
itself experimentally, and that natures
differentiations of its own material were never
binary"' (quoting Olkowsky, whom I have not read
again). I suspect that the rejection of binaries
carries a lot of emphasis here. {For Deleuze
this making and non-making is machinic, and thus
not totally experimental?}. The authors
apparently think Barad is dead serious {I think
it might be playful} about things like how
brittle stars can disrupt Western substance
ontology, and quote her commentary uncritically.
The summary ends by them asking whether this
helps us distinguish Barad on transcendence and
Deleuze on immanence.]
Olkowsky does a lot of work again, blaming Plato
for introducing binary logic and the law of
non-contradiction. This has led to a notion of
difference 'in the sense of exclusion', either
or rather than 'a realistic set of
alternatives' (4). For both Barad and Deleuze,
the point is not to distinguish between
independently existing bodies, to suppose an
external relationship, as 'with metaphor,
similarity, analogy, identity and recognition'.
Relationships are always in flux on Deleuze's
virtual plane of immanence, at least until they
settle into assemblages and become actual.
Barad's intra-action similarly expresses mutual
relationality, no pure categories, always a
relation, not the same as interaction, 'where
discrete entities do not preexist relationships
and come together in relationships'. This is a
rejection of the 'Enlightenment humanist view,
such as that on which human rights is based' in
the assumption that there are autonomous human
actors against some natural environment.
Instead, there is a '"sympoieitic"' view of the
world [attributed to Haraway] [Note 4, p. 13
says 'Sympoieis rather than autopoieisis refers
to making together'] where
everything is mutually articulated… It is
impossible to separate objects, events, beings,
doings and becomings from their intra-actions
with each other… As phenomena' (5) [i.e. if we
define them as phenomena] Difference is
ontologically prior, with both intra-action and
Deleuze on positive difference. It is
'interactions [sic--must be a typo]...
[that]...constitute entanglements' [quoting
Barad 2007, page 33 --but I couldn't find it in
my copy. There are agential cuts but these again
are not absolute boundaries, not dichotomies,,
unlike Cartesian cuts. Deleuze's empiricism
shows the same idea, that concepts are 'human
made enactments', and there is impersonal
individuation and singularities [so does that
square with Barad's feminism?]. Barad's self is
dispersed, indeterminate, dynamic but also
'"materially haunted by" and "infused with" what
is excluded (but cannot be articulated or is not
intelligible)' [means it is pretty safe from
criticism of any kind then]
Western ontology and epistemology has either/or
binary logic, a geometry of exclusion, and this
is what inspires critique. The other is
consigned to the shadow region. As with Trimh
Minh-ha, this becomes a universal structure. For
Barad, implications follow for causality and
temporality. Both Barad and Deleuze question
subjectivity, so where does this leave critique?
The virtual and the actual are both real, and
this means Deleuze can do critique, but based on
positive difference [only? He does conventional
critique of other texts? Not very affirmative
about Freud orLacan --well Guattari anyway] . On
the plane of immanence there are only bodies and
forces, where 'pre-individual singularities'
emerge. This is the same [?] as seeing a brittle
star as an event or becoming actual. This means
it becomes real for empirical humans. At the
virtual level, there is no normal duration or
time. The virtual and the actual provide two
different sorts of identity. In actual bodies,
conventional differences emerge such as the
differences between the brittle star and the sea
urchin, at the virtual level, however there is
'positive difference (differenciation')' [from
one machinic phylum?] (6). Here there are
internal differences which appear over time as
bodies become.
Barad starts with quantum physics and claims it
gives 'experimental evidence that subject and
object are inseparable non-– dualistic wholes'
[a bit fanciful — Böhr explains the interference
of subjectivity with science in terms of the
phenomenon — that concept itself cannot be
empirically validated]. There are no fixed
boundaries before measurement. Bodies are
performances [not the same as actualisation
then?].
As a result of diffractive reading of quantum
theory and queer theory, Barad has 'empirical
evidence that not only the future, but also the
past is open and can be reworked' [what she is
actually done is to claim a connection between
the quantum world and the social world, which
must be a metaphor at best unless she is
seriously into molecular determinism of some
kind]. Re– turning does not change the text,
because there is no stable text [classic weasel,
impossible to understand unless you include
human capacities to alter the meaning of texts
on rereading, which does involve duration and
subjectivity]. This is just asserted to be a
connection between the prehuman and the inhuman.
Colebrook thinks that Deleuze's empiricism is
without a ground outside itself. Morris and
Bozalek take this to be the same as entanglement
in Barad. Overall, both Barad and Deleuze
'trouble individual subjectivity (negative
difference: "differentiation")' [but so do lots
of people]. Olkowsky also says that every living
thing is not a singular entity. There are also
naive scientists and others who believe in a
'humanist, Cartesian conception of the mind as a
"thinking thing" with a separate existence from
the body'. [Deleuze and Guattari are then quoted
from an unusual source in Thousand Plateaus
— the chapter on the
Wolf-Man, and the argument that a single
wolf is always a multiplicity].
Deleuze says thinking is an act but not the act
of a subject, the subject is multiple, and this
is borne out in their co-authoring, or at least
in the quote on page 3 of TP about each of them
already being several.
Both Barad and Deleuze question unilinear
chronological time and space. The brittlestar is
not to be seen as an autonomous entity in a
Euclidean space because 'its body is made and
remade' [so is everyone's] which means it is '"
space – time – matter – in the making"' [quoting
Olkowsky again] (p 7) [they are truly marvellous
these brittlestars]. Identities are only fixed
in fixed time and space. [So much for the great
work of maintaining identities that so preoccupy
the actors in Goffman].
So 'Barad's agential realism resonates with
Deleuze's philosophy of immanence'. Both have a
relational ontology which is non-dualist. Both
move away from human exceptionalism. Barad's
relational ontology leads to entanglement, and
Deleuze's to assemblages. Assemblages are
agential for Deleuze and they include states of
bodies and regimes of signs, so the boundaries
between disciplines and fields are porous and
there are transdisciplinary spaces. The
distinction between nature and culture in
particular no longer matters. Barad says this
too. Entanglements are not just intertwinings:
the whole issue of duality, unity and
multiplicity have to be undone. Deleuze refers
to Spinoza on affects as a 'vital force,
intensity or energy existing in the interstices
of relationality'. Affects can be catalysts [say
Ringrose and Reynold] so the world is not just
controlled by human intentions. There is
'worlding'.
How does this affect research methodology and
reading academic texts? We first assert that a
relational reading asserts [!] and that the
relationship is prior to the text and the
reader, that both are articulated and both are
affected by and affect each other 'as
constitutive forces' this can lead to
'unpredictable and creative provocations and
becomings' and this also applies to writing, as
Barad herself says [although as the quote
indicates, from the preface of the 2007 book, a
rather more mundane way — 'writing is not a
unidirectional practice of creation that flows
from author to page, but rather the practice of
writing is an iterative and mutually
constitutive working out, and reworking of
"book" and "author"' [her p. x, their p. 7].
Both [?] argue that we cannot separate
epistemology, ontology and ethics. We have to
bear that in mind as well when we do academic
reading and writing. This will be 'a
response–able methodology, and we see
diffraction as one of its manifestations… [It]
is affirmative and opens up new possibilities
(the virtual) creative through material
discursive entanglements… It moves away from the
notion of critique so dominant in academia' (8).
By contrast 'most forms of "critique can be seen
as operating outside of ethics of responsibility
and a response–able reading'. The reviewer has a
position of exteriority and superiority, and
poses as 'an intentional critical human subject
viewing the work of others from a distance,
knowing better and being entitled to scrutinise
and interrogate the work of others, while
maintaining anonymity' [did they have anyone in
mind? --early Denzin
on Goffman ?]. For MacLure this is 'a
colonial stance', for Massumi 'almost a sadistic
enterprise'. It has run out of steam. It's
a clinical diagnosis with the critic as
authoritative expert identifying pathologies
after symptomatic readings. A third person
perspective is claimed to be dispassionate and
capable of bringing insight not available to the
writer himself, a romantic image of the "'critic
as heroic dissident"'. There can be
epistemological damage if work is denigrated
'through othering and distancing' says Barad
[via interviews]. Both immanence and diffractive
methodology help us move beyond. It involves
'close, detailed, care–full, respectful reading
of one text through another to create new
insights, rather than pitting one against the
other' it assumes we are 'part of the world
rather than separated from it'.
So they're not going to critique Hein [so far
they haven't even considered him!], but respond
by diffractive reading texts by Deleuze and
Barad, or at least those 'pertaining' to them.
[Then more Barad about extending Böhr's
ontology, moving beyond binaries, drawing on
diffraction patterns when waves overlap, and
generalising to refer to matter itself. There
are two slit experiments, no binary differences
between wave and particle. 'What holds for an
electron also holds for a humanimal' (9)
[apparently quoting Barad on diffracting
diffractions — this is absurd reductionism and
Deleuze would definitely not hold with that]
patterns of difference make a difference and are
fundamental constituents of the world. Quantum
physics has rejected the notion of dichotomy as
absolute differentiation [the authors give us
the Greek word in Greek from which dichotomy is
derived — why?]. Dichotomy is the result from
particular cuts, they've been produced. Cuts
operate 'together – apart, as one move'.
Queering is 'the ethico– political practice of
radically questioning identity and binaries'.
Research grounded in relational ontology
acknowledges the researchers situated in the
world, acknowledges that humans are part of the
differential becoming of the world. This is not
just acknowledging that research is subjective.
The researcher is 'in/determinate' with no fixed
identity. We are part of the phenomena we
investigate [and they say that includes them
with this paper], part of the apparatus, we are
also response-able when we make agential cuts
which in turn make boundaries. These cuts are
normative but not subjective 'in the classical
philosophical sense' which assumes a binary
[strawman again]. Objectivity means being
accountable for materialisations. Diffractive
methodology must be 'attentive to the finest
details' [well, when it is investigating quantum
erasures anyway]. It must make manifest the
liveliness of the world.
Their own diffractive reading is not reduced to
one philosophy to the other nor privileged Barad
over Deleuze or vice versa [oh yes it has —
Barad sets the agenda and Deleuze is fitted in,
Barad has the last word. For that matter we've
seen nothing the differences that Hein claims to
have identified, only nice convergences. [They
have not been nasty to him --but they have
largrely ignored him altogether except for a
couple of notes]. This reading has added force
to both, but not assumed that they are a unity.
They've not [just] theorised the pattern but
'put it into practice in this article'.
It should make us 'feel and think differently
about subjectivity' and critique and its
assumptions about isolated individuals and
'competitiveness'and anthropocentrism. They have
responded to Hein by reading theory with
practice diffractively, focusing on immanence
and intra-action.
This is a part of being response–able. In our
methodology we should also be attentive to fine
details and read care–fully. We should be
affected and affecting, activating the
sensibility of all our faculties as in Lenz Taguchi
[itself horribly vague], 'inhabiting and
becoming with texts' (10), while acknowledging
our own complex history of entanglement. In
Barad's terms we should be open and alive to
each meeting and this will help us in "living
justly"'. We must adopt a stance of radical
openness and respect and do them justice in 'new
scholarly practices' [really?], not seeing
oneself as outside of or superior to the text,
but in mutual constitution.
Once we pay proper attention what should we do?
Responsibility is never finished. Texts are
always in conversation with other texts
including some that 'never have been written'
[so we have an endless research program here].
Accountability is not just down to us but is
co-constituted 'in the entangled relationship
between the reader and text', so it's not just a
matter of conscious or intentional choice. We
have to respond as part of the relations with
the text, being both responsible and accountable
for relationality. This is also taking a risk
[with some stable and naïve identity],
acknowledging entanglements and the absence of
presence. Together we will be constituting
'space – time – mattering in the openness and
indeterminacy of what is to come. The reading
constitutes an active doing or making together –
what Haraway (2016) refers to as sympoiesis'. [I
think this should be much more plausible and
interesting if we did it with texts with which
we profoundly disagree — try and be positive
about Mein Kampf!]
We must render each other capable. We must
be prepared to be 'interpolated by the wonder of
the texts', and encourage some worlds and not
others. We are not doing once- off [one=off?]
readings but rather 'an ongoing and
ever-changing entanglement of experimentation
with the ideas of reason/reading and re/turning
to one's own and others texts' [returning here
has a forward slash instead of a hyphen -- is
this a difference that makes a difference?].
Different sorts of politics follow too, not
involving oppositional critique but rather
'"attention to another way of being"'.
When we read texts and so on through each other
we attend to 'fine details for differences that
matter and inventive provocations' [again
quoting from a Barad interview and adding that
they must be '"respectful, detailed, ethical
engagements"'. This is a move away from critique
and all that it entails and is 'embracing a more
expansive and generous worlding practice', as
Haraway says about Despret [who may have coined
the term response–able?]: We are not out to
uncover stupidity or excessively focused just to
prove a point, but we should enlarge or invent
the competencies of the players including
ourself; we should expand and dilate ways of
being and knowing, exploring ontological and
epistemological possibilities, trying to enact
what was not there before. We should be
'"allergic to denunciation and hungry for
discovery"', prepared to work together with
other earthly beings '"living dead and yet to
come"' (11) [sympathetic critique in other
words, rather like the stuff we practiced at
LSE. Barad herself referes to her
treatment of Butler's performativity as 'a
sympathetic but critical reading' (2007,
p.33) But who is going to judge whether we have
been successful in enacting what was there
before and all the rest of it?].
This makes diffractive reading sit 'very
comfortably' with response-able methodology. We
might 'get a feel for how (positive) differences
are produced'. We read insights through one
another and build new ones. We attentively and
carefully read the differences that matter. This
makes this sort of reading of texts 'ethical' as
opposed to critique which is 'negative and
destructive' [again this emerges in the
interviews, apparently]. We have to make
entanglements visible 'that are always already
there as virtual entities, Deleuze would say'.
Binary logic and analogical thinking can hide
these. We are not just doing unreasonable
engagements at a distance but offering 'knowing,
thinking, measuring, theorising, and observing
[as] material practices of intra-acting within
and as part of the world'. So entanglement
involves 'matters of care' as well
We have to do diffraction to do justice to both
Deleuze and Barad. We assume 'difference without
a negation' [with a reference to Deleuze and
Guattari — but no specific text. This is
presumably what they say about the limits of
dialectic?]. We are interested in differences in
themselves not just as an opposite or negative
[yep]. Barad also sees the need to incorporate
'the "other" within'[are you sure you meant
incorporate? Sounds like colonisation].
Intra-action implies inseparable elements and
relations in a phenomenon.
Overall 'diffracting through'Hein 'produces the
insight' that Deleuze Guattari and Barad reject
the idea of the knowing subject at a distance,
and stresses indeterminacy and multiplicity,
including the researcher herself. It implies
that we need to use a methodology 'that helps to
get a feel for how differences are produced by
paying attention to fine details and the
superpositions produced by investigating how
differences matter, and for whom' [citing Barad
again]. They saw Hein's paper as a springboard
to develop an alternative to critique. They have
intra-acted with Barad and Deleuze and created
'superpositions rather than oppositions'(12). So
have other 'feminist materialists' who have
moved towards 'alternative enactments of
becoming' instead of critical deconstruction and
critique [citing Braidotti]. We agree with
Massumi that we should not pin things down in a
sadistic way. We want to stress entanglement
rather than separating something out.
Diffractive, affirmative and responsible reading
of texts fits with the growing post-humanist
methods. [However it is also] 'this feminist
methodology' and it has at its heart 'notions
such as monism and vitalism' [where did these
come from?]. It wants to move beyond discourse
and Cartesian dualisms and incorporate new terms
like human/nonhuman; it 'disrupts the
anthropocentrism that is at the heart of
critique'.
Note 5 cites Hein's claim 'that the process of
intra-action is itself an identity', but only
'by contrast'. Note 7 says that one of the
reviewers wanted to quote indigenous studies
authors and antiracist social theorists who/ich
argued that Barad and Deleuze and their epigones
are largely white and have not really addressed
racism and colonialism. However they see both
'as resonating with issues which contribute to
decolonisation and post colonialism, especially
their critique of capitalism and progress and
their ideas of thinking differences differently,
and ontological relationality and
indeterminacy'. Note 9 gives the example of how
negative difference can develop postcolonial
theories Note 8 dispels a claim made by Hein
that Barad is a realist. Note 10 says that
Bozalek has talked about
non-binary'readerlywriter' and 'writerlyreader'
[didn't Barthes do this first? He also said that
only some texts were suitably text like to
permit this, as opposed to mere works ]
back to Barad page
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