Notes on: Barad K (2016) What
is the Measure of Nothingness? Infinity,
Virtuality, Justice. I00 Notes,No 99,
dOCUMENTA (13) Hatje Cantz. Online:
http://deeptimechicago.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/barad-k-what-is-the-measure-of-nothingness.pdf
[also in German]
Dave Harris
We should 'let the emptiness speak for itself'
(4). Nothingness may have 'nuances and subtleties'
but how could we listen to them? What does define
scale in the void? What is the measure of
nothingness. There are paradoxes with
investigating vacuums — illuminating one
introduces photons, for example. We end with 'the
mutually exclusive conditions of im/possibility'
in Böhr.
Measurements involve measurement apparatuses,
which are themselves 'agential practices…
performative' (5), both constituting and being
constituted, that is intra-actions. Matter and
meaning 'are co-constituted in measurement
intra-actions'. Thus it matters how we explore
something, as in the two slit experiment
variations — the objects are different, we are
grasping 'the very nature of nature'(6) With
quantum ontology there are no pre-existing
individual objects determinate qualities, nor
concepts with determinate meanings. The specifics
are 'enacted through specific intra-actions', (7)
and phenomena are 'contingent configurations of
mattering '. There is inherent ontological
indeterminacy, only partially resolved in
materialisation of phenomena, and this determinacy
always involves 'constitutive exclusions (that
which must remain indeterminate)'. Intra-actions
make a difference, cut together–apart, and
tangling–differentiating as 'one move'.
Intra-actions are not limited to human practices,
but are 'ontologically poignant matters that go to
the very nature of matter itself' (8). Ontological
indeterminacy is at its heart. The very nature of
existence and nonexistence is the issue, and the
conditions and possibilities that produce either.
So the question can be what generates 'the
structure of nothingness' — 'the vacuum is no
doubt doing its own experiments with non/being'
[typical exaggeration and homonymy, referred
to her own work and saying 'the larvae of sunburst
diving beetles come equipped with bifocal lenses',
and photons of different frequencies 'are capable
of probing different length scales without any
human assistance' {so zooming in, which stands for
human exploration here is not uniquely human}].
There is non- ending dynamism between determinacy
and indeterminacy.. We cannot definitely assert
that there is zero energy in the vacuum, so the
void is not just nothing '(while not being
something)' (9), and this may be 'the source of
all that is, a womb that births existence'
[followed by another exaggeration 'birth and death
are not the sole prerogative of the animate world…
Particles can be born and particles can die {she
is quoting another quantum physicist here}, and
this is what has led to the development of QFT].
[Really good bit here] QFT combines
electromagnetic theory, special relativity and
quantum mechanics and helps us understand the
quantum vacuum and its implications. There are
fluctuations of the quantum vacuum 'around a value
of zero for its energy' [note 8 explains]. What
are these fluctuations? We need to grasp the
nature of a field, 'something that has a physical
quantity associated with every point in
space-time' (10) [with the illustration being the
pattern made by iron filings as marks of a
specific configuration of a magnetic field]. We
can think of a field as 'an infinite drumhead that
can be assigned a time–varying displacement value
at each point in space'. Zero values mean no
displacement or vibration, when the drumhead is
static, nothing vibrates, no waves of energy flow
outwards and no waves move across the surface. In
classical field theory, the perfectly still
drumhead represents the classical vacuum, but in
quantum physics, we are going to assume that 'only
certain discrete vibrational states exist'
[because we have quantised]. If we add the notion
from special relativity that energy and matter are
equivalent, vibrations of the field carry energy
in discrete states so we can assign a mass value
to each energy state — we have the equivalent of
'existence of particles of matter with a
particular mass' (11).
There is no drummer tapping the drum, and yet we
cannot be sure that the drumhead is still —
'rather, there is no determinate fact of the
matter'. We are left with 'indeterminate
vibrations of the vacuum or zero energy
state'(11). The mass values can be seen as virtual
particles, 'quanta of the vacuum fluctuations…
Quantised indeterminacies–in–action'.
Usually virtual particles are very short lived so
they can't really be detected 'and hence are
[deemed] not real', but we can re-conceive
virtuality away from classical physics — instead
of a rapid popping in and out of existence, we can
see this as 'the indeterminacy of being/nonbeing,
a ghostly non-/existence' (12). The classic view
can ignore these divergences from pure nothingness
because they are so rapid, but this implies seeing
nothingness as operating like 'a financial wheeler
dealer' but this is 'ethically questionable'.
[Note 10 says that the whole issue of energy time
uncertainty is far from settled, and there is
recent research that talks about indeterminacy
instead of uncertainty, and ontological matter not
epistemological doubts — a certain P Busch is
quoted, as his her own work on Heisenberg versus
Böhr --especially good in Barad 2010].
[Back to one of her favourite metaphors] 'not even
nothing can be free of ghosts [note 11 points to
her own materialist readings of Derrida in Barad 2010,
and here they are referenced properly — is the
Astrid Schrader the same Schrader referred to as
guiding the experiments on quantum erasure?]. 'No
determinate words are spoken by the vacuum, only a
speaking silence that is neither silence nor
speech', but only conditions of im/possibility.
There is an infinite number of these 'but not
everything is possible' because the vacuum is not
empty but neither does it have anything in it
[still vague and mysterious, and still no
allowance for the possibilities of constraint by
what has been made possible before].
Virtual particles are 'of the void' (13) on the
edge of non/being. The void is in tension, 'the
vacuum is flush with yearning, bursting with
innumerable imaginings of what could be'. There is
a cacophony in the silence, 'ready to erupt, but
simultaneously crosscut by a disruption,
dissipating, dispersing', a blank page with
'would-be traces' of equations and words. ' A
jubilation of emptiness'.
There are material effects of yearning and
imagining [daft Really means -- 'what I have
called yearning etc has a material explaination in
later work] . Virtual particles are still real,
with a reference to an article in New
Scientist [Battersby, November 20, 2008]
where protons and neutrons acquire mass not from
quarks but from 'contributions from virtual
particles'(14). For classical physics particles
stand on their own in the void, but for QFT the
particle is 'inseparable from the vacuum', for
example the electron is structureless, and gets
'dressed' following 'intra-actions with virtual
particles' which also mediate exchanges — 'for
example, an electron may intra–act with itself
through the exchange of the virtual photon or some
other virtual particle, and that virtual particle
may further engage in other virtual intra
actions'. The number of possibilities is infinite
[in principle] although 'not every intra-action is
possible'.
The mass of the electron is composed of 'the
energy–mass of this infinite number of virtual
intra-actions', although the mass of the electron
is 'clearly finite'. The explanation is that the
lone or 'bare' point particle's contribution to
its mass is infinite as well, but infinitely
negative — so we add the two infinities together
to produce a finite number, one that happens to
match the empirical mass of the electron [note 13
explains that not all infinities are the same size
— the number of real numbers is larger than the
number of integers, because the former cannot be
counted] [sounds suspiciously neat]. So electrons
actually contain a cloud of virtual particles, and
this is apparently supported by measurable
consequences like the Lamb shift [note 14 refers
us to a Wikipedia explanation which is 'relatively
accessible'].
So small bits of matter are actually an enormous
multitude, and each individual one 'is made up of
all possible histories of virtual intra-actions
with all Others' [are not at all sure why this one
is capitalised]. We have put indeterminacy at the
heart of identity and nonbeing. We can agree with
Derrida that identity only confirms itself by
opening up to a difference from itself or with
itself [although of course he meant entirely
humanistic selves and others in a social context].
We are all in debt, one 'that is the condition of
possibility of giving/receiving' (16).
So paradoxically indeterminacy, infinite openness
'is the condition for the possibilities of all
structures' (16). Matter itself 'is a dynamic play
of in/determinacy', never settled, never closed
because indeterminacy is integral to it, 'not
supplementary'. Nothingness is not absence but
rather 'the infinite plenitude of openness'. We
have also materialised the notion of infinity and
stopped it becoming 'mere mathematical
idealisations'. It is now an 'incarnate mark[s] of
in/determinacy' [a great example of abduction
here, following through implications as if they
were real and then thinking implications back to
theory -- we can solve problems of the electron's
mass if we work through the business of
subtracting infinities, and when we have done
this, we have materialised infinity]. 'Material
"finities" [are] af/finities'.
This shows the inadequacies of representation,
because it cannot convey 'even the palest shadow
of the Infinite' and has abandoned any attempt to
deal with the transcendent. [She seems to mean
Plato here — he is the archetype naive realist and
representationalist?] But there are 'whispered
murmurings of infinity immanent in even the
smallest details'. Infinity 'is the ongoing
material reconfiguration of nothingness; and
finity is not its flattened and foreshortened
projection on a cave wall, but an infinite
richness'. (17). Finitude is not a lack. The
finite can hold the infinite, because 'infinite
agential resources of
undecidability/indeterminacy… are always
already at play' (18). We should not see infinity
and nothingness as the termination points on a
line — they are 'infinitely threaded through one
another so that every infinitessimal bit of
one already contains the other'. [Then some
bolt-on ethics depending on all that stuff about
responsibility towards others and respect for
difference — 'the possibilities for justice – to –
come reside in every morsel of finitude'.
[Really interesting elaboration of the argument in
earlier pieces, like Barad 2010
about vacuum fluctuations. Some excellent examples
of exaggeration as well and homonymy with Derrida]
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