Notes on: Hollin, G., Forsyth, I., Giraud, G., & Potts, T (2017). (Dis)entangling Barad: materialisms and ethics. Social Studies of Science 47 (6): 918 – 41. [Repository copy]. DOI: 10.1177/0306312717728344. Dave Harris There will be at tension between quantum physics and macro phenomena. There are 'both frictions and unacknowledged affinities' with STS, especially when discussing reflexivity and diffraction. Agential realism both includes and excludes, and although the latter has been neglected, this might be its greatest utility in STS. It is now possible to play 'Barad bingo' in a wide range of options and articles. It is both surprising and striking that the work has been taken up in so many different fields [good list, page 2], while being treated more ambivalentlly in mainstream STS. 'Mainstream' STS implies that feminist STS might be marginalised. Haraway claims feminist techno-science is both inside and outside classic STS, but care should be taken not to cut it away, although both Haraway and Barad discuss the relation. Barad's influence has grown since she changed disciplines and developed materialism. The output is still fairly small, however, although there are many citations. There are implications for social science, especially hybridity and ANT, but Barad (2007) herself argues that her work also contributes to the field of science. She is used to understand the Anthropocene, and epigenetiscs, which involve an apparent collapse between nature and culture. She has also supported inter-and transdisciplinary work, which, happily, matches recent calls to integrate social sciences and humanities in publicly funded research. Nevertheless this entanglement also produces ambivalence. We can start by looking at the role of quantum physics. For Barad, this is not just a metaphor but 'rather [it] underpins agential realism's articulation of how the material world is brought into being'. This provides a realist material base and that gives it stability which helps 'avoiding dangers associated with both social constructivism and relativism' (5). However, there are still questions about changing scale. Then we go on to examine reflexivity and whether Barad has grasped its heterogeneity especially within STS. Then we discuss agential realism and the argument that one reality excludes another when it is brought into being — this is the ethics of inclusion and exclusion. This is going to be a more important discussion than that featuring the other concepts. This reading will show how work can problematise as well as use Barad and place it in a broader context. Possibilities and provocations for the future are produced. In the 2007 book, a secure guarantee seems to be offered by quantum theory on the relationship of matter and meaning. This needs to be interrogated to make sure it is not just 'the new case of physics envy — of the quantum variety' (6) [explained in the next paragraph as admiration for the ontological hardness of physics]. Barad avoids naive positivism but says her work offers a way to undo constructivism and its anti-realist implications. She wants to correct positions where '"language has been granted too much power"'. This hardness has attracted economists or even positivists and behaviorists, but Barad offers 'a rehabilitated objectivity: an objectivity resting, oddly, upon principles of uncertainty, paradox and "quantum weirdness"' (7). This draws upon Böhr's '"philosophy–physics"' which rejects Newtonian mechanics and instead advocates principles of uncertainty and indeterminacy. The universe is an entangled one governed by subatomic particles. Measuring instruments become 'inextricably snagged' in their actual experiments. The scientist is a productive force in experiments [partly, it seems because they feel they are doing science — 'the sensorium of the laboratory']. Nevertheless there is still objectivity because measurements can be reproduced and communicated via '"permanent marks… left on bodies which define the experimental conditions"' [Barad]. This predictability lends 'strange stability'. It helps us move beyond deconstruction or social constructivism by showing that we can engage with the ontology of the world again, while avoiding positivism Chaos theory has had a similar trajectory in social and human sciences, but this time 'used to establish prestige, additional understanding, or methodological innovation'. That can be both fruitful and dangerous. However, Barad insists that there is a continuity between quantum theory and the macro realms — 'quantum physics is not a metaphor, but is instead an instance of matter with which Barad is working' (8). The same rules apply in micro and macro domains. The results in physics apply to other domains too. However, responding to early criticism, Barad argues that agential realism is still '"vulnerable to empirical results… [and] could ultimately be proven wrong"' [in  Barad K (2011) Erasers and erasures: Pinch’s unfortunate ‘uncertainty principle’. Social Studies of Science 41(3): 443–454.]. Like Lather, Barad supports offering realism as '"ballast"' against post-modernism. This can then produce a number of political projects ranging from cultural geography to Harding's new science, to materialist feminisms [in Alaimo again --  Alaimo S (2008) Material Feminisms. Indiana: Indiana University Press.]. For Barad, there is 'a lively and worldly substratum… which is testable and trustworthy'. There are demonstrable material practices produced performatively which provides a link with political actions and ethical implications. On the issue of scale, Barad draws upon Böhr to argue that 'the micro and macro worlds are entangled with one another… And that the same rules apply both domains'. This compares with Everett and the many worlds hypothesis and Bohm's mathematics and lots of other interpretations in the physics community. It makes scale particularly relevant in discussing Barad's work. She resists '"geometric"' readings of scale [apparently around page 245] which assume that micro is always smaller than macro. Scale is instead an outcome of worldly processes of production and reproduction. This draws upon the work of a geographer, Smith, who also argues about the 'givenness of scale' and argues that it is constructed through a social process [but in interaction with geographical structures]. Barad and Smith both argue that diverse scales are not real, but are rather '"nested"' — 'exteriorities–within–phenomena', so the proper argument should be directed to boundaries, collectivities and exteriority, or what Barad calls topology. Smith also sees that there are radical political issues in reconstructing scales. Barad endorses this and often jumps scales herself. Agential realism in particular is deployed across a range of scales. Some physicists have questioned this argument, though, including a certain Tsing 'with whom Barad also shares a great deal'. Jumping scales without changing the research question is common in modern knowledge, she argues, but she implies a negative connotation and urges us to address scales that do not nest. Something might be lost in the transition between scales — 'those specific qualities which are valuable precisely because they are not scalable' (10) [for me that would be all the human qualities — even if they are just questions of scale, they are obviously crucial in differentiating us from starfish]. There might still be a political purpose in jumping scales, and Barad's wide applicability might be one consequence, but 'political and ethical potential' is lost and should be revisited. Barad has not received total support within STS, especially outside feminist techno-science. Barad sees criticisms as based on separation and reflection and argues for the creative undoing of any mirroring. Reflection still keeps the world that a distance, offers only mimesis, or when the subject is placed back in the picture, mirroring. This is the '"same old geometrical optics of reflections"'. Some people have argued this is an unfair picture of constructivist views, or that reflexivity is still useful, for example in making us think about the influence of their own activity. For Barad this is only '"turning the mirror around'" (11). Diffraction, after Haraway, is both a methodology and a 'way of viewing the world' and is based on the ways in which particles encounter each other and the way this is different with waves. They can occupy the same point in space and time — 'this is called superposition', and the emergent wave shows properties resulting from the combination of the two, as in waves in water. A diffraction pattern is produced, after diffraction apparatus has brought the two waves together. We can learn from the actual wave pattern about the diffraction apparatus, and this is one of the benefits of diffraction — it is 'a much more useful way of bringing the method, the apparatus, into focus' (12). Diffraction then becomes a matter of reading insights through one another, and attending to details and specificities of relations of difference, 'coming together, and entanglement and emergent difference' and this is applicable to a range of disciplines. STS is too limited by being confined just to science. After diffraction, a new object of investigation emerges which will be neither sociology nor science. There is obvious appeal for transdisciplinary research. However, Barad neglects some differences in reflexivity, numerous categories with subcategories. Not all are based on optical metaphors as Zizek argues with Hegelianism notions. Reflexivity can be associated with ethnomethodological  enquiry into the mutual constitution of both accounts and reality — '"constitutive reflexivity"' for Woolgar, where distinctions between things and what is said about them is an actively created achievement, the result of discursive work [which is probably why that won't do]. So it is misguided to talk about a single methodology of reflexivity, and more needs to be done on examining the alternatives especially in STS. In STS, there is already some criticism about '"playing the stranger"' in physics, and about the unambiguous communication of laboratory results upon which objectivity is founded. There is rejection of the '"strong program in the sociology of knowledge"' because phenomena can emerge. The new materialism runs the risk of '"universalising metaphysical claims about the nature of matter"', and simply taking '"scientific truth claims about the world at face value"' [quoting a recent article]. Barad's text is 'less critical about contemporary physics, nano science and genetic modification than we expect from STS' (14), and does not demolish certain speculative scenarios and myths, especially of 'biotechnical revolution'. What we should be looking at instead is attempting to incorporate both reflexive and diffractive approaches, including agential realism — for example by examining more carefully scientific apparatuses, already a significant question for some strands in STS. Agential realism shows how the problems come together, since it reworks the notion of a scientific apparatus in an important move. There is nothing in the metaphysics of seeing things in themselves as separate from representations, a mistake both naive scientific realism and social constructivism make. Tools of measurement are not entirely separate from the thing being measured and do not just convey neutral information, as in realism, nor is language the primary source of knowledge with inaccessible matter for social constructivism. Both depend upon representation. Barad apparently sees the origin of the problem in Kant. Diffraction sees no given distinction 'between worlds and words' (15), and entanglement is the way forward. This draws upon Böhr and his solution to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The difficulties of measuring all the properties of a particle, both its momentum and position is usually seen as an 'epistemic problem'in that the act of measuring itself disturbs the particle. This is representationalism, though. Böhr argued instead that we are looking at 'ontic indeterminacy' instead, whether measurement itself fixes the states of the particle, measurement makes some properties become determinate. Both position and momentum are 'complementary states' where the existence of one property 'necessarily excludes the other'. Measurement is an intra-action, and we can generalise from this to get to phenomena where relata are entangled with relations. Any separations, including those 'between words, things, and knowers are real enough but… Are effects of particular engagements with the world' (16) this is agential realism — all the elements in experimentation, the particle, the measuring apparatus, the conceptual frameworks and the scientist do not preexist the entangled state. However, particular combinations will produce reproducible results — 'same matter, same apparatus, same outcome'. This reading of Böhr is used to address unhelpful binaries between nature and culture in social science, in Foucault or Butler, for example. But Böhr also has to be extended. The apparatus is not just a laboratory set up, as illustrated by the contingencies of the Stern-Gerlach experiment which included cheap cigar smoke. It follows that there is 'no intrinsic outside to the apparatus' which extends infinitely. Here we go beyond mere methods advice. There are affinities with ANT and other approaches to materiality. Strangely, though the implications have not been pursued in human geography even though they have already taken a step towards nonrepresentational theories. By contrast, those who focus on the nonhuman see Barad as 'neither seismic nor entirely novel'. (17) However, there might be an outside nevertheless even though it is not intrinsic — someone using a stick to navigate a dark room shows the possibilities — the stick is both measuring apparatus and an object of investigation, depending on the agential cut. Those cuts produce exteriority as 'a boundary making practice' (18), and we have some control here — if we  bracket out some factors, we need to be accountable, such as when we omit gender or other social variables, [or just see them as passive variables with no emergent effects of their own which led her to the performativity of gender]. This notion of exclusion is what makes Barad's work 'distinct and important', especially its ethical component. Agential realism is also a matter of leaving things out, 'absence'. When one apparatus cuts to produce a particular world, 'another is necessarily excluded'. This has implications when we jump scale but it has been relatively neglected with Barad, less so with Haraway. Haraway has now adopted the term intra-action and used it to explain relatons with companion species. It's been adopted in feminism, although ethical implications less so, missing some of the more radical demands. Entanglement has been overemphasised by comparison. Barad's intra-action goes beyond hybridity, which implies relations shape entities, however intra-action is not entirely novel [references, page 19 include ANT] in stressing the agency of nonhuman entities and their effects on humans. Seeing this as enactment helps break the usual ethical hierarchies between humans and animals. Barad might be part of a broader '"turn to ontology in STS"' [quoting Woolgar] to indicate that things might be otherwise — a 'long-standing core slogan' for STS. The ontological and epistemological have been collapsed before, and the performative composition of reality also noticed. Nevertheless it is a novel emphasis on ethics. Barad can be read as insisting instead on the 'relative stability afforded to matter after it has interactively emerged' (20). Things could indeed have been otherwise, but the emphasis is on how things congeal in specific forms [not enough on this for my money], how the specific intra-actions have produced distinctions between subject and object, or object and measuring agency. This brings with it 'particular sets of ethical responsibilities' since we are accountable for these cuts [so humans are radically different after all]. In particular we need to focus on 'constitutive exclusions'. Haraway focuses on ethics in the animal laboratory, first decentring the human and then problematising humanist ethics to rebuke ideas that human good is more important or that animals have rights. Haraway stresses that we must generate here from these encounters, be open to learning from them, formulate new kinds of interest and attempt to 'understand how nonhuman needs are articulated' (21) to produce 'cosmopolitical ethics that creates room for nonhumans to impose their own "requirements" on humans' [apparently attributed to Stengers]. If we cut things differently, we can redistribute agency 'in ethnically significant ways'. This has been taken up in a series of debates in ethology, such as the ethics of allowing birds to imprint on humans. When Lorenz encouraged imprinting, he also found himself having to fulfil the needs of the geese, so they affected him and changed his identity. Others have seen this is a more violent kind of exclusion of other ways of being a goose. Haraway uses cuts to de-naturalise distinctions between humans and animals by pointing to their common entanglement. Barad adds another dimension in discussing the exclusion of whole realities. These may be difficult to reverse 'especially if they are instantiated through vast sociotechnical networks' [indeed — she never discusses this though]. We see this with the commercialisation of laboratory animals, links with military apparatuses or agriculture, even disability politics. We learn that 'certain responsibilities and manifestations of agency could have already been foreclosed by a succession of cuts' (22). The conclusion emphasises that quantum physics is not a metaphor for Barad. She has not been entirely successful in jumping to sociocultural contexts though. She overdoes the criticisms of reflection, and does not see that diffractive approaches are actually close to 'work grounded in "constitutive reflexivity"' (23). Apparatuses might not have an intrinsic outside, but there is an outside nevertheless, beyond the boundary produced by the cuts and this needs to be emphasised, especially in applications. Complementarity and necessary inclusion are crucial if we are not to 'uncritically celebrate relationality and hybridity without consideration of alternative worlds lost at the moment of emergence' (24). Agential realism has potential but we must not be uncritical. It is not that radical a break from feminist STS and there are linkages with longer standing work. Rose, for example, borrows some bits of Barad to produce 'partial, plural and attentive research', but she also maintains elements of the old reflection model. This suggests thjat Barad's work might be used as a tool, building on pre-existing conceptual developments rather than a break. She should not be a 'tome to cling to but a tool to synthesis' (24). social theory