Emergence

Abstract

Histories of science in the past decade have increasingly used the language of “emergence” to explain the effects of which their histories give account. More than a linguistic fad, this word registers an intentional, persuasive, and important theoretical position and ethical stance that is located in critical relation to causal accounts of history. Attending to the death of Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) helps make apparent the key criticisms of causal models of history—namely, that they are often reductive, indebted to projects of settler colonialism, and inadequately equipped to address the surfeit of possibilities that historical materials make available to scholars. For historians of science, Karen Barad’s “agential realism” offers the most relevant, if challenging, articulation of emergence theory and relational visions of history. It posits that establishing difference—individuation—is part of the process of “emerging” and that different states or objects continue to be “entangled” even when their distinct contours appear. The approach is appealing because it understands historical scholarship not as a thing of the past but as an ethic of the future—opening worlds of possibility in a political moment that demands better ways of living and dying together.