Notes on: Barrad,K. (2014) Re-membering the
Future, Re(con)figuring the Past: Temporality,
Materiality, and Justice-to-Come. Keynote
Presentation at the 8th Annual Conference of the
Feminist Theory Workshop, Duke University.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS7szDFwXyg
Dave Harris
[A gee-whizz romp through some popularized aspects
of particle physics. My own lack of knowledge is
clearly a problem here -- I only read for fun, and
then only occasionally, popular accounts
like Cox and Forshaw The Quantum Universe.
The main argument for me is how this might connect
with social identities. It seem a bit paradoxical.
On the one hand, there are still those who wish to
insist that sexual identities and social divisions
are 'natural', and it might be very useful to them
to hear that modern physicists have a radically
different view of 'Nature' from the usual one,
with unpredictability, uncertainty,
discontintuity, and quite different conceptions of
time and thus of causality. On the other other
hand to insist, as Barad does, that 'quantum =
queer' is still tying identity and division to
theories of nature --but do these theories explain
social divisions etc adequately? Are we just
'natural' ? Of course, Barad goes on to insist
that nature and culture are no longer separated
but intermingle - -something historians of science
have been arguing for a long time -- and this is
an appealing project to put humans back into
nature. Problems remain though, as Lather
and other feminist theorists have noted, because
it invalidates 'objective' feminist research as
well as positivist research. Lather says
feminists, like everyone else, are 'lost' in the
implications of some of the stuff Barad is talking
about. You can't go from arguing for uncertainty
in Nature to certainty in politics -- but you can
certainly use uncertainty to radically undermine
other people's certainties. Finally, the
occasional dead Frenchman crops up in this --
mostly Derrida, even Specters[US spelling]
, the only book of his I have notes on here -- while other
obvious candidates like Latour
or Deleuze and DeLanda remain
outside].
The intention is to be playful in this
account. It is partly inspired by Freeman
[in an article in GLQ, whatever that is]
saying that the time is out of joint, and that
implies that sexuality is out of joint as
well. We can think of time as something
embodied, and if we develop a notion of it as
asynchronous, this can have implications for
Queerness, which can also be seen as a matter of
[intensive not extensive?] erotic difference, and
therefore as something untimely.
There has been a lot of work on nonlinear
conceptions of time, and on the natural as
embedded in universal time. New particle
physics challenges these notions of nature as
something distinct from culture, of nature and
culture as a binary. Perhaps as a result of
experiencing this presentation, we can start to
understand a sense of disorientation that is at
the centre of theoretical physics. [Part of
the disorientation will be not following the
orthodox structure of the standard academic
presentation -we are going to leap backwards and
forwards between examples and between dates, for
example].
Part of the project is to deconstruct science, as
in Derrida, which will lead us to political
possibilities that avoid authority and that stay
radically open, indeterminate, and
self-questioning [we're going to use the annoying
habit of fans of Derrida of emphasizing particular
syllables, as we shall see].
Matter should not just be seen as some inanimate
stuff needing some supplementary force to enliven
it [supplements add nothing, says Derrida] .
Matter is not inert or dispassionate, only
inscribed by culture, something available to be
exploited. Instead we have to think of it as
something becoming [a clear link for fans of
Deleuze and Guattari -- eg Chapter
10 of Thousand Plateaus,or, simpler,
the first few pages of Logic
of Sense], featuring morphological
activity, something alive. We do not need to
differentiate the world along the lines which we
are used to [Deleuzians would say that we need to
think of different sorts of differences {sic},
like intensive differences]. We can talk of
materialization, transmateriality and relational
differences, for example, those across
spaces or between gender and subjectivities.
Seeing Being as becoming can help us live well.
Matter materializes time [sounds like Bergson now] and
enfolds different temporalities, so we need new
imaginaries to grasp this. We can proceed
through consideration of the electron.
Electrons clearly are very important elements of
the physical world, for example in explaining the
way in which the synapses of the human brain
work. They were among the first to be
grasped in quantum terms, their behaviour
unsettled conventional notions of time on all the
scales, from the subatomic to the evolutionary,
and this consideration lead to radically new
thinking about production and reproduction, causes
and change. Electrons are particles in the
micro world, but their characteristics can be
scaled up [to the human and social?].
Starting with considering electrons has the
benefits of us avoiding the premature applications
of the normal social categories - we are 'not
easily seduced' by the behaviour of
electrons. Work on the electron revealed all
sorts of possibilities, different stories and
responses, and a new material imagining.
We're going to indicate some of the difficulties
by using unorthodox pronunciations [and spellings]
such as dis/continuity, dis/jointedness etc, to
show how terms have been 'cut together'[and how
they can be uncut, or do I mean cut apart - this
is Derrida, as above. I have always found it
rather tiresome when it's repeated - just do it
once or twice, and we get it].
There are no simple origins to time, no beginnings
and therefore no simple past, and, by implication,
no simple notion of present or future
either. We should see time as offering a
series of iterations or enfoldings of different
temporal states [clarified a bit more
below]. Neither time nor matter can be
understood in terms of a simple smooth
topology. Dis/jointedness and im/possible
relations are apparent [try Deleuze's book on Leibniz on
the compossible and the incompossible? Yer man
likes the metaphor of the fold too] . We
should not see episodes separated in time as
separate aspects, but part of a 'single event'[the
term 'event' is riddled with philosophical
implications, of course - for example Deleuze uses it to
describe something happening which is by
definition beyond the grasp of normal empirical
understandings, because it trails links to the
past and the future, and the virtual: it is a
multiplicity with an empirical component].
This paper is not to be structured as a history of
science either: there can be no conventional
history of science as some progress towards the
truth through discovery. Instead we are to
embark on an imaginative journey, like the
experience of the electron, featuring
dis/jointedness, entanglements. The
dis/continuity in question is not just the normal
sense of the discontinuity, but itself
discontinuous with normal definitions [presumably,
normally the term discontinuity implies an
inversion of some simple notion of continuity, but
Barad wants to abandon the whole schema and
illustrate what might be thought of as radical
discontinuity]. There is no coherent story
to be told. There is no coherent self.
Instead we experience various temporalities with
different entanglements, differences in the way
time and matter are cut and displaced. Différance,
interactivity, hauntology [all Derrida] .
Something queer [or possibly Queer, depending on
the etiquette].
The quantum troubles the notion of a
beginning. All was well with early models of
the atom, such as those of Böhr, the notion of
particles circulating the nucleus like planets
circulating the sun. However, the model did
not add up with what we observed about electrons:
one problem was that their energy was insufficient
to maintain their 'orbit', and should gradually
diminish until they collided with the nucleus [but
it didn't] , and another was that they did not
seem to describe a continuous wave in their paths.
Planck had already begun to see energy as divided
into quantum packets, and Einstein to see photons
as such quanta [Barad says that it was this work
that got him the Nobel prize, not his work on
relativity]. The new model saw electrons as
occupying discrete energy levels, but also having
the capacity to jump from one level to
another. When they jumped, they emitted a
photon, and the size of the jump affected the
colour of the photon that was emitted. There
seem to be no continuous exercise of this energy,
and there were problems with the line spectra [the
details eluded me I am afraid - I think there was
a difficulty in predicting the exact form of the
line spectra, possibly of the emitted
photon]. Problems emerge with the notion of
the leap as well, especially trying to reconcile
it with classical newtonian physics. The
newtonian schema came under increasing challenge
from this work, with its notion of predictable
movements of particles over calculable amounts of
time, a mechanical model. 'Demons' had
already been identified as having a part to play
in interrupting this mechanical system, according
to LaPLace.
Smooth continuity had always been crucial to
Newton's schema, and was, for example, central to
his work on the calculus [I am very rusty here,
but I think the calculus faces the problem of
plotting the shape of those curves that continued
to infinity {like parabola}: the method involves
calculating the shape of the curve where you can,
and then projecting that on to the bit that heads
toward infinity, which assumes some smooth
continuity with no radical changes in the curve.
This could be Leibniz, not Newton though].
Newton worked with the normal notion of
determinism and with a clockwork kind of
time. The universe was tidy, until the
quantum emerged: even then it was seen as just the
smallest possible unit of discrete matter, a kind
of basic phenomenon [I think they ran out of words
when they found things inside atoms].
However, the notion of a quantum leap introduced
radical discontinuity, especially since leaps from
one level to another seem to occur with no
detectable intermediate stage. The emission
of photons also raised problems with
causality. The proton was, as it were, ready
to be emitted before it actually reached anywhere,
and its colour [detectable in line spectra?] was
pregiven by the leap even though that leap had not
yet happened. The normal [well, the rigidly
logical] notion of causality is destroyed, and so
is the normal [logical] separation of present past
and future. [As I recall, Deleuze says that
philosophers had realized these problems with
causality already, in Hegel if not in the
Greeks. As I understand the problem, it is
that if we observe that whenever X appears, a Y
soon follows it, we can conclude that X causes
Y. However, the implication is that Y is
already bundled up with X, as a kind of potential
in X, so that it becomes difficult to think of Y
as something that is going to happen in the
future: it is contemporaneous with X. Nasty
conclusions follow, since we rely on this strict
difference in time, between present and
future, to infer that one technically causes the
other in the first place. If we can't use cause we
have to talk about something vague like
'unfolding' -- that also heads for infinite
regress if we assume that X is also caused by
something. Of course none of this matters in the
real world where we can use empirical
probabilities -- same goes for quantum mechanics.
Theorists love to play with the abstract
possibilities to shake us normal folk up, though,
just like philosophers always did].
When Heisenberg met Böhr in 1940, he demonstrated
to him the results of his diffraction experiments
[You direct a beam of electrons at a barrier with
two slits in it, and record the patterns made on a
screen behind the barrier. What should
happen is that some electrons pass through the
slits and leave a kind of scatter pattern on the
screen. However, when the beam was aimed at
just one slit, some of the electrons somehow
managed to get through the other slit as
well. This implied that the electrons were
not behaving as particles but as waves - see
below. All sorts of implications
arose]. In particular, light [we seem to
have switched from electrons to photons] must be
seen as having the form of both particles and
waves - that was the only way to explain the
diffraction shapes recorded on the screen.
Before that, particles and waves were thought to
be ontologically distinct. Böhr went on to argue
that language was also implicated in this new
horrible uncertainty [that the observer was
implicated in the observation]: he defined the
phenomenon as an interaction between an object and
an observing apparatus. The next step was to
argue that the concept could be seen as an
observing apparatus.
To leap back ourselves [deliberately as 'play'?]
some time before, in 1803, a scientist called
Thomas Young had invented the whole apparatus with
the barrier with two slits and a recording
screen. He argued that logically [NB]
particles would produce a scatter pattern on the
screen whereas waves would produce
diffraction patterns, like those that appear in
water if you drop two stones in at the same
time. He was so pleased with his apparatus
that he announced this was a way of distinguishing
once and for all whether something took a
particular or a wave form. All was well
until you tried it with electrons or photons 100
years or so later, however.
Getting back to Heisenberg and Böhr, they then
wrote together on quantum physics. There is
also a well-known discussion about whether this
collaboration had a political point, since they
were on opposite sides in the World War 2.
Was Heisenberg sent to spy on Böhr? Was he
meant to warn him about the German military
attempt to build an atomic bomb [a definite
possibility once you can split atoms,although,
happily, hard to actually engineer]? Was the
idea that they should both join together to
persuade both sides not to develop atomic
weapons? This case shows that science and a
sense of justice was combined in a programme of
research, 'inextricably fused' [perhaps an
unfortunate term to use in the context?].
These dilemmas clearly affected their writing and
their research. However we have known at
least since Newton that scientific work was
entangled with political and ethical issues.
[Kuhn's famous account, or Latour's
provide loads of examples]. Newton himself
actually predicted an apocalypse in 2060, showing
his interest in theology - clearly influenced by
Biblical prophecy. He also had to deal with
elements that were occasionally referred to as
'spirits' in his natural philosophy too, and Barad
says one example is his rejection of the notion of
'the ether' in favour of gravity [As I recall, the
ether was considered to be an invisible, rather
magical material that saturated the universe,
especially the spaces between the planets.
Straightforward mechanical forces were transmitted
from one heavenly body to another, the sun to a
planet, for example, through this medium, as one
atom nudged the atom next to it. Newton's
suggestion that gravity was an equally mysterious
force that operated at a distance seemed a lot
less sensible at the time, Kuhn says]. The
ether seemed spiritual because it just seemed to
appear and disappear, it was a vanishing presence,
one of those things that seems to come from a
future and a past.
Einstein referred to God (not) playing dice
[specifically against Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle, I recall, or it could be to support
Schrödinger] . He and the others were engaging in
thought experiments, and the 2-slit apparatus was
important in this work too.Böhr in particular
thought it might be possible to arrange the
apparatus to show that light is first a wave form
then a particle form, and argued that Einsteins's
own work showed this 'complementarity'. He
insisted that measurement was also a variable,
though.
There is no given,fixed time or space, argues
Derrida [still in Specters, and
illustrated with quotes, which I must have missed
altogether]. The point is that the past can
be changed, that being in the past can be
changed. An ingenious development of the
2-slit apparatus produced an apparatus that could
test these thought experiments, designed to
do what was still called meta/physics.
Specifically, it could be used to test the
different arguments of Böhr and Heisenberg about
indeterminacy. For Heisenberg,
undecidability was the result of epistemic
uncertainty on the part of the scientist, while
Böhr saw undecidability as the result of some
indeterminacy in reality, an ontological
indeterminacy. The issue turns on whether it
was possible to observe the characteristics of
light before measuring it. [I think this is
what that bit means about separating the internal
degrees of freedom of the electron to behave while
still inside the atom, as it were, and the
external degrees of freedom which are available to
it once it is emitted and on its way to pass
through slits and impact on screens. Barad likens
the difficulties of separating these two as
driving a car at a steady 65 miles an hour while
chucking stuff out of the windows].
However, it was attempted. First the
electron was made to jump between levels of energy
using a laser to excite it. Then when it was
emitted, it could either enter a measuring device
[I think this is what the 'cavities' are] or
continue to pass through one slit or the
other. [If I have understood the logic of
this, electrons that enter the cavities are still
displaying only internal degrees of freedom.
These are recorded and electrons then pass through
the slits to display the external degrees of
freedom. I could be completely wrong - this
is delivered at a frantic pace]. Anyway, the
results apparently unambiguously confirmed Böhr's
view, that when electrons were detected they
changed. This is not just a disturbance as a
result of passing through the detection mechanism
[because electrons that had passed through the
detection mechanism continued through the slits in
exactly the same way as those that did not,
possibly], but a result of a combination of the
object and the agencies of observation
[presumably, this is one of those cases where the
'scientific community' decides if this is a fair
experiment or not and what the results were -- I
don't think the issue could ever be settled once
and for all, since the validity of the
measurements could always be challenged, and so
on. Both Kuhn and Latour have lots of examples
where apparently 'decisive' experimental evidence
was still being challenged decades later].
The identity of the electron therefore is not
inherent. The electron demonstrates a
certain quality of performativity, that is its
performance is different in different
circumstances. More complications ensued
with increased use of the apparatus. For
example, the detector was switched off immediately
after the electron had passed through it, which
'erased' the information, and then different
patterns in waves were observed, so, remarkably,
the information had somehow affected the atoms of
light, and left its mark, even though it had been
'erased'. This seemed to offer some sort of
strange determination of events after the atoms
had passed through the apparatus [even after any
affects of the apparatus had been switched
off]. Somehow, the experiment itself had
changed the behaviour of the entity fundamentally,
its ontology. This implies that ontology was
never fixed, that it could be reworked. It
also implied that the past can be changed, that
the wave pattern can be 'recovered' or 'erased'.
At this point, we have to question these notions
of recovery and erasure. They seem to depend
on what Derrida calls the metaphysics of presence,
that we get the patterns from results arising from
the behaviour of individually determinate objects
[in his case, he went on to argue that it was
discourses that had their own effects, but I don't
think Barad would want to accept that].
Instead, there seems to be some source of
communication between individual atoms [Cox and
Forshaw have some intriguing examples of this kind
of communication, where the state of one particle
seems to affect the state of another, even though
they are separated by a considerable
distance]. If this sort of communication
exists, we have to substantially modify our
notions of causality [which assume an individual
effect on an individual particle].
Individuals would no longer be actors on the
stage, a particular location in conventional time
and space. We would have empirical evidence
for Derrida's 'hauntology' [operating in nature as
well as with texts - I don't think Derrida ever
claimed that himself], where 'ghosts' continue to
affect the living, because they are never
decisively separated from them. It follows
also that the past is never simply 'there', that
the past and the future are enfolded and iterative
[I think this is the same implication from
criticizing notions of causality that we discussed
above]. It also shows that the effects of an
experiment itself might be offer a possible
intervention. Overall, we have much more
interactive possibilities rather than seeing
matter as something outside and given.
Space, time and matter now perform, as agents.
These implications make us rethink recovery and
erasure, and make us think instead of new patterns
which are produced by specific entanglements which
themselves are somehow 'chosen' by the methods we
are using to study them. There is no simple
erasure [which implies some correct or normal
state of affairs'?]. We should see the
phenomenon as a whole [as a multiplicity in
Deleuze's terms, as above. Politically, the
issue for D and G might be how to bring into being
the more liberating possibilities, which is the
gist of Braidotti's
account]. Phenomena should be seen as
material entanglements enfolded in matter and
time. We can never actually restore the
past, but we can bring change its form: all
possible traces are held in the world; the world
as a kind of memory. When we follow
Derrida's ghosts, we are tracing these
entanglements, although we have to remember that
ghosts are material possibilities.
[Now a substantial -- and for me dubious -- jump
to the social world]. Social justice can
mean not restoring the past, but reworking it, not
erasing it. All possible configurations [of
social justice] are held in the world's
materializations. Time is never fixed [or
acts one way - we are not prisoners of
history]. Our being is inherited as
something irreducibly connected to relations with
others [lots of quotes from Derrida appear on the
screen at this point, but I never noticed them
when I read Specters]. We must take
responsibility for our inheritance and its
entanglements. The indeterminacy of being
influences the self and our responsibilities
towards the entanglement with the others. We
have to trace these entanglements to construct
justice, maintaining our relations of obligation
and othering, because these are naturally a part
of us [pretty dodgy argument in my view, and
open to the counter that aggression and violence,
or the cold indifference of the universe,
are equally 'naturally' a part of us].
The material therefore involves exposures to
others. Responsibility is no longer a matter of
individual calculation, but something that is
already integral. We have to realize new
possibilities and im/possibilities. Justice
should be seen as the rearticulation of
disjunctures [social divisions in the
past?]. We cannot change the past but we
must realise that it is open to
reconfiguration. The point is not to erase
the material affects, but to remember them and try
to incorporate them differently into the
present. We pursue differentiation [from the
present fixities?] to make more connections.
Overall, quantum queers continuity. We
should not see discontinuities negatively, not as
displacements - the rupture itself configures the
here and now. There are no fixed moments
outside this configuration. Causality does
not represent some inevitable sequence of past and
future, but discontinuity and
destabilisation. The immediate is always on
a cusp of instability and possibility, and
this is the basis of the becoming of the
world. We have to think of dis/continuity in
terms of this relation, something that changes
each interaction: something becomes and is
immediately reconfigured, even undone.
Quantum theory can be seen as a history of
discontinuity. The quantum world is itself
disruptive, a stutter [Deleuze like stutters], the
source of impasse, contradiction and aporia, but a
creative one. We should think of quantum
tunnelling rather than closure: the effect
of the quantum is to undo identity.
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