 |
 |
Well, I must admit Barad was one of those I was thinking of when I asked whether we could also see an 'arbitrary closure' (what, following Barad, we might think of in terms of a 'cut'?) at work in the way the intellectual theoretical work that is most acceptable and feted today is often quite materialist in tenor. I guess not knowing, for me, would not exclude knowing. While it is of course necessary to know as much and as best as we can, not knowing is something that can't be removed from (or simply contrasted to) the process of knowing. But this is certainly something Barad can help us to understand and think about: 'Knowing is not a bounded or closed practice but an ongoing performance of the world.' (Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, p.149) Or, for a much longer extract from the same book that more clearly relates to Helen's reference to the process of 'diffraction' (as well as Bauwens' emphasis on the possibiity of creating a world based on a new logic he associates with peer-to-peer networks of production): 'First and foremost, as Haraway suggests, a diffractive methodology is a critical practice for making a difference in the world. It is a commitment to understanding which differences matter, how they matter, and for whom. It is a critical practice of engagement, not a distance-learning practice of reflecting from afar. The agential realist approach that I offer eschews representationalism and advances a performative understanding of technoscientific and other naturalcultural practices, including different kinds of knowledge-making practices. According to agential realism, knowing, thinking, measuring, theorizing, and observing are material practices of intra-acting within and as part of the world. What do we learn by engaging in such practices? We do not uncover preexisting facts about independently existing things as they exist frozen in time like little statues positioned in the world. Rather, we learn about phenomena-about specific material configurations of the world's becoming. The point is not simply to put the observer or knower back in the world (as if the world were a container and we needed merely to acknowledge our situatedness in it) but to understand and take account of the fact that we too are part of the world's differential becoming. And furthermore, the point is not merely that knowledge practices have material consequences but that practices of knowing are specific material engagements that participate in (re)configuring the world. Which practices we enact matter- in both senses of the word. Making knowledge is not simply about making facts but about making worlds, or rather, it is about making specific worldly configurations-not in the sense of making them up ex nihilo, or out of language, beliefs, or ideas, but in the sense of materially engaging as part of the world in giving it specific material form. And yet the fact that we make knowledge not from outside but as part of the world does not mean that knowledge is necessarily subjective (a notion that already presumes the preexisting distinction between object and subject that feeds representationalist thinking). At the same time, objectivity cannot be about producing undistorted representations from afar; rather, objectivity is about being accountable to the specific materializations of which we are a part. And this requires a methodology that is attentive to, and responsive/responsible to, the specificity of material entanglements in their agential becoming. The physical phenomenon of diffraction makes manifest the extraordinary liveliness of the world.' (Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, p. 90-91) -- Gary Hall Research Professor of Media and Performing Arts Director of the Centre for Disruptive Media School of Art and Design, Coventry University Co-editor of Culture Machine http://www.culturemachine.net Co-founder of the Open Humanities Press http://www.openhumanitiespress.org Website http://www.garyhall.info