Techno-visual enchantments and an ethics of mattering

Abstract

This paper makes a theoretical contribution to the socio-cultural geographies of enchantment, and introduces a mode of analysis which grapples with enchanted life as performative enfoldings of matter and meaning which have politico-ethical form, content, communicability, and power. The paper critically interrogates current theorisations of enchantment to expose the ontological, epistemological and ethical fragilities which lie at the heart of the concept, and asks whether enchantment may amount to more than an ephemeral, momentary, and non-representational experience. This prepares the ground for rethinking enchantment through a more inclusive and inventive frame of reference, one which can take stock of different forms of enchantment, specifically those made possible by the innovations of 21st century visualising technologies. Via Karen Barad's new materialist theory of agential realism, and her exposition of an ethics of mattering, the paper goes on to explore the techno-visual enchantments of drone technologies, tracing their ethical effects through dynamic and performative relations of enactment, intra-action, diffraction and difference.