Diffractive Reading Research Articles

Making Kin With Comprehensive Exams: Producing Scholar in Intra-Action

This article is the response to a comprehensive exam question, and it exposes what is produced through the formal and informal practices of comprehensive exams and, further, asks how we might start somewhere else with comprehensive exams—a place that takes into consideration the exam as part of a posthuman, performative, and productive intra-action. The manuscript is an experiment in diffractive writing drawn from diffractive reading practices. The texts and images foreground comprehensive exams as all-encompassing and inseparable from all the myriad stuff of life, even as we are encouraged to put our lives on hold to get them done.

Willystine Goodsell (1870–1962) and John Dewey (1859–1952): history, philosophy and women’s education

ABSTRACTThis article explores the work of history and philosophy in publications by Willystine Goodsell, professor of history and philosophy at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the entanglement of Goodsell’s approach to scholarship with that of her doctoral supervisor John Dewey. The article experiments with diffractive reading to examine Dewey’s and Goodsell’s approach to history, as well as Goodsell’s configuration of women’s historical and contemporary participation in education. It looks at Dewey’s comment that women’s ‘philosophising’ would not be the same ‘in viewpoint or tenor’ as that composed from the ‘different masculine experience of things’ and investigates the principles that order liberal and vocational education in Goodsell’s view of a reformed education for women. The conclusion asks whether diffractive reading is an enhanced form of intertextuality.

Anthropocentric Wreckages

This article introduces the methodological tool of diffraction (Barad, 2007) to re-imagine the performance-based work of two artists, Kyoko Hayashi and Ana Mendieta. Both artists' work are investigated in terms of wreckage. There is the individual wreckage of the body; Kyoko is a hibakusha - she has survived the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. Mendieta met her death as she fell from a window, her husband inside the room of the window she fell out of. Both women explored colonial wreckages, performing their bodies as sites of such wreckages in unique installations and performative journeys. The two artists are diffracted through one another in this article. Having no relationship in time or space, their works are used here as prisms through which to investigate the phenomena of wreckage at the individual level: the performative body, and the phenomena of large-scale wreckages wrought by the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene refers to our geological era - an era in which the performativities of Mankind have actually penetrated the Earth's crust, changing its chemistry forever (Crutzen, 2002). Engaging in a diffractive reading of Hayashi and Mendieta, allows for new light to emerge around their stories and works, light that is concerned with matters of decoloniality, the body and time as performative entanglements of justice-to-come (Barad, 2007).

Feminist Documentary Cinema as a Diffraction Apparatus: A Diffractive Reading of the Spanish Films, Cuidado, resbala and Yes, We Fuck!

Following Karen Barad’s diffractive methodology, we encounter feminist documentary cinema as a diffraction apparatus: that is, as technologies that make part of the world intelligible to another part of the world in specific ways, by means of intra-actions between human and non-human agencies and objects of observation. We propose three analytical tools: materiality, emotionality, and performativity. In this article, we analyse two Spanish documentary films that render visible the potential of feminist documentary cinema for building alliances from and against precarity: Cuidado, resbala and Yes, We Fuck! Reading the insights and patterns raised in each case study through one another (i.e., diffractively), we discuss the intra-actions by which each of these films participates in co-creating the real. We end up describing three possible effects of feminist material-discursive practices in documentary cinema.

Engaging with the Beyond—Diffracting Conceptions of T-Learning

This paper develops a theory of transgressive learning (t-learning) as it was experimented with in the International Science Council t-learning network. The method applied is a diffractive reading of conceptions of transgression in academic publications emerging from different cases. The results show that there can be no definite conduct to or understanding of transgression, as transgression itself entails a subversion of rules, contexts, and borders. Instead, the results document several overarching categorical positions and axiomatic understandings of transgression that emerge from the background of context-specific wicked sustainability issues. Transgressive learning can be understood as a set of contextually diverse techniques and practices that attempt to bring about change through and in learning. Transgressive learning can result in experiential learning excesses where the excess is the very source of difference and makes change possible. The diversity of conceptions of transgressive learning open up new entry points for engaging with sustainability-oriented learning and education that is open to change rather than to reproducing unsustainable social structures and dynamics.

Diffraction and response-able reading of texts: the relational ontologies of Barad and Deleuze

In this paper, we use a diffractive reading developed by feminist philosopher and quantum physicist Karen Barad, as part of a response-able methodology, in order to consider the claim made by Serge Hein in his paper ‘The New Materialism in Qualitative Inquiry: How Compatible Are the Philosophies of Barad and Deleuze?’ (2016) that the philosophies of Barad and Deleuze and Guattari are incommensurable. Our point of departure is from a stance which is quite different from that of Hein’s – we propose that it is indeed productive to put the work of Barad into conversation with that of Deleuze. As an alternative to critique used by Hein to engage with the work of Barad and Deleuze, we consider how a response-able and diffractive reading of notions of critique could provide a more affirmative and productive way of reading academic texts, including those by Barad and Deleuze.

Afterword: turning and twisting histories of women’s education: reading reflexively and diffractively

ABSTRACTThe Afterword discusses continuities and differences in how researchers are positioned in feminist themes and emerging feminist perspectives as they play out in debates around researcher reflexivity and diffraction as methodological strategies. The first section of the Afterword highlights the ongoing commitment to reflexivity when generating knowledge in women’s and gender history. The second part focuses on the challenge to reflexivity posed by diffractive methodologies that argue that knowledge is created from being entangled in the world, rather than reflecting on or during the production of historical work. This section discusses two examples of diffractive practice in archival research taken from the special issue. The third section outlines diffractive reading in more detail and provides two examples of diffractive reading of texts. Finally, the Afterword invites readers to undertake a diffractive reading of the articles in the special issue and provides some questions about diffraction for consideration.

Diffracting diffractive readings of texts as methodology: Some propositions

Re-turning to our experiences of putting a diffractive methodology to work ourselves, as well as engaging with the writings of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, we produce some propositions regarding a diffractive methodology for researchers to consider. Postqualitative research disrupts the idea that educationalists can be given tools or techniques to investigate the world objectively, independently and at an ontological distance from the researcher. Therefore, avoiding prescription and a rush to application, we take up Stephanie Springgay’s proposal (drawing mainly on Whitehead) to diffract a non-hierarchical list of propositions through the text that disrupt the theory/practice binary and activate a self-organising potential for adopting a diffractive methodology in research. We use a diffractive methodology (spatial and temporal), theory and practice as a way of activating experimentation with the affirmative method of diffractively reading texts, oeuvres and philosophies through one another. Propositions generated as part of a published example of a re-view of three books on posthuman non-representational research are also diffracted through the text. These two entangled ‘sets’ of propositions creatively engage with the in/determinate direction of what a diffractive methodology might look like in practice, while at the same time being cognisant of the complex discussions about the appropriateness of referring to ‘methods’ or ‘methodologies’ as human-centred activities.

Dancing Contact Improvisation with Luce Irigaray: Intra‐Action andElemental Passions

This article takes as its point of departure Luce Irigaray'sElemental Passions, in which a woman‐speaker tries to make her lover and the discipline of philosophy understand that she is not how they have imagined her to be; that she is not at all but that she keeps becoming through perpetual movement. The article investigates Irigaray's investment in a form of materialist difference feminism that offers conceptual links to the posthumanist work of Karen Barad's agential realism, especially her theorization of intra‐action. The link between Irigaray and Barad is established via a diffractive reading that incorporates the dance/movement research practice of Contact Improvisation. Although expressed through written language,Elemental Passionscreates the impression of the woman‐speaker dancing, of encountering herself, her environment, and her lover through moved and moving contact, searching for a practice of moving‐together, feeling‐with, and feeling‐between that can be experienced in an improvised dance duet. Exploring how touch and the sharing of weight in Contact Improvisation challenges boundaries and establishes ever‐changing configurations and entanglements between dancers, the article proposes that Irigaray's woman‐speaker envisions herself as a posthuman/ist woman and that improvised dancing offers a practice of intra‐action through which she can encounter the world in her becoming.

Incubating a slow pedagogy in professional academic development: An ethics of care perspective

The current neoliberal impetus in higher education has effects on all aspects of academic life, including professional academic development. These effects include increasing workloads and more casualisation of academic work, particularly teaching and a greater emphasis on quantification of scholarly outputs. The Slow movement provides an alternative way for valuing academic life (Berg and Seeber 2016; Bozalek 2017; Hartman and Darab 2012; Martell 2014; Ulmer 2017), as does the ethics of care, which has been used as a normative framework to evaluate and re-imagine academic development from a different perspective than that of neoliberalism (Bozalek et al. 2014; Tronto 2010). To date, however, there has been little engagement with how Slow pedagogy (Berg and Seeber 2016) might be put into conversation with an ethics of care to re/configure professional academic development. Our paper addresses this gap by diffractively reading the political ethics of care (Tronto 1993; 2013) through the concept of a Slow pedagogy in order to reimagine creative provocations for academic development. Experiences of a group of participants, who attended inter-institutional academic development courses in Cape Town, are drawn upon to illustrate the superpositions of these diffractive readings. The intra-actions in face-to-face and online meetings and artefacts are analysed to see what was helpful for the development and flourishing of the small group of participants using the new insights gained through the diffractive readings. Findings show how a professional development course, informed by elements of care ethics and Slow pedagogy, enhance the sustainability of professional learning communities.

Julianne Lynch, Julie Rowlands, Trevor Gale, Andrew Skourdoumbis (eds.): Practice theory and education: diffractive readings in professional practice

Julianne Lynch, Julie Rowlands, Trevor Gale, Andrew Skourdoumbis (eds.): Practice theory and education: diffractive readings in professional practice

Signals Falling

This short essay reads diffractively key texts by British novelist and writer Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) and French psychotherapist and philosopher Félix Guattari (1930–1992). The diffractive reading methodology was first proposed by Donna Haraway and Karen Barad. Experimenting with the methodology in single- and coauthored pieces, I have further developed diffractive reading for the immanent epistemology of new materialism. This essay demonstrates through a diffractive reading practice how incorporation and externality, as well as ecology and entanglement, play important roles in a new materialist epistemology.

Reading two rhizomatic pedagogies diffractively through one another: a Reggio inspired philosophy with children for the postdevelopmental child

After situating the figuration of the postdevelopmental child in the context of hegemonic colonising developmental discourses about child rearing and education, I engage with posthumanist perspectives that rupture the binaries, power relations and age discrimination these discourses assume. Developmentalism raises concerns about how child as knower is positioned. Drawing on the ground-breaking work of feminist philosopher and quantum physicist Karen Barad, an affirmative diffractive methodology is used with two approaches to teaching and learning: Reggio Emilia and Philosophy with Children (P4C). Through the experimental diffractive reading of the rhizomatic concept development that is core to both educational philosophies, new ideas are proposed for postdevelopmental curriculum construction. A new pedagogical practice of working with concepts is created, thereby deterritorialising what conceptual knowledge is. By putting philosophy at the heart of deterritorialising knowledge, room is made for children as knowledge producers, rather than knowledge consumers.

Productive Aporias and Inten(t/s)ionalities of Paradigming: Spacetimematterings in an Introductory Qualitative Research Course

We seek to illustrate the inten(t/s)ional ways we tried to create spaces for thinking about paradigms as polyphonic and proliferating. We also share the joyful tensions of this work (hence, inten(t/s)ionalities) and specific pedagogical practices that we believe created a space for students to lean into and explore paradigms not only as a thing but also as a doing—paradigming. Our focus is to discuss (a) how some of Barad’s posthumanist theoretical concepts (e.g., ethico-onto-epistemology and intra-action) became pedagogical inspiration, and (b) through a diffractive reading of data with Barad’s concept of spacetimemattering, we were able to explore what was produced in the course. As we read posthumanist theory, the concepts not only shaped our methodology (i.e., diffractive analysis) but also became pedagogy. A posthumanist paradigm shaped our pedagogical practices as we believe that students are (becoming) qualitative inquirers through a knowing/being/doing in a material world of humans and nonhumans intra-acting.

Bergson before Bergsonism: Traversing “Bergson’s Failing” in Susanne K. Langer’s Philosophy of Art

How did the philosophy of Henri Bergson look before Gilles Deleuze’s Bergsonism? This article provides a situated answer to that question by performing a close reading of Susanne K. Langer’s early engagement with Bergson in her monograph Feeling and Form from 1953. Both Bergson and Langer argue against polemical philosophizing. Such polemical modes of doing philosophy distort insight into the thought of the philosophers in question and in philosophical questions per se (such as questions about artistic creation). My reading of Langer’s Bergson is therefore infused with what is nowadays called a new materialist impetus of non-linearity, a non-oppositional philosophizing, and the reading follows the methodology of diffractive reading, a thinking outside fixed and fixating schools of thought. I argue that in spite of Langer’s explicit, i.e., polemical objection to Bergson’s work and to its use by artists, it is a Bergsonism with which Langer’s work is infused.

Whiteout

This article shares an experimental poem created by three poet-researchers using an online word processor to collaborate within a single document. We attempt to blur the line between creative and academic writing, focusing on the possibilities for writing as a method of inquiry and the opportunities for different perceptions of being that it suggests. Our project unfolds as we also produce a brief diffractive reading that does not mirror or deconstruct the poem, but thinks it in an alternative way, as a broader collaboration, or intra-action between entities, both human and non-human. We avoid determining how our purported individual voices merge to form any united voice. Rather, we are alert to agencies and flows that complicate understandings of us as three rational, discrete, fully formed human figures articulating coherent narratives. We therefore offer a response to theoretical calls to explore collaborative writing as inquiry, through sharing our practice.

Reading Diffractive Reading: Where and When Does Diffraction Happen?

Reading Diffractive Reading: Where and When Does Diffraction Happen?

A diffractive reading of dialogical feedback through the political ethics of care

ABSTRACTWith regard to improving higher education feedback practices, there is an increasing interest in using the efficacy of dialogue rather than the more traditional unidirectional approaches. We build on this impetus by considering how the ethics of care can be used to analyse the dialogical aspects of feedback. By diffractively reading insights of Boud and Molloy [2013a. “What is the Problem with Feedback?” In Feedback in Higher and Professional Education: Understanding it and Doing it Well, edited by D. Boud, and E. Molloy, 1–10. London: Routledge; Boud, D., and E. Molloy. 2013b. “Rethinking Models of Feedback for Learning: The Challenge of Design.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 38 (6): 698–712] on dialogic feedback through the moral elements of care ethics, this paper proposes a novel way of discerning the extent to which the dialogical giving and receiving of feedback contributes to learning. To illustrate this, we draw on experiences from an Emerging Technologies professional development course for higher educators. We examine our own dialogical interactions of giving and receiving feedback using the moral elements of care ethics – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust, to provide a concrete example of how the ethics of care can be used productively for evaluating feedback practices.

Cyborg and autism: exploring new social articulations via posthuman connections

This paper explores the connections a young man with autism spectrum (AS) made using cyborg imagery having attended school in Nova Scotia, Canada. Cyborg is applied as a conceptual approach to explore the young man’s connections to human and nonhuman elements. We also make use of rhizomes as a methodological framework to support the exploration of the young man’s multiplicity of experiences with cyborg configurations. Data are drawn from a semi-structured interview with the young man where he demonstrated his capacity to employ cyborg imagery as a means to rearticulate his social identity when experiencing school on the periphery. A diffractive reading of the data produced alternative understandings outside contemporary thought on his schooling experiences. Findings challenge educators in applying cyborg to cut across static social categories and theorize new social knowledge on the experiences of students with AS.

Discursive entanglements, diffractive readings: Weight-loss-surgery narratives of Girth & Mirthers

ABSTRACTBuilding on Barad’s (2007) discursive entanglements, we explore discussions about weight-loss surgery among Girth & Mirthers, a nationwide social club of big gay men ostracized from the larger gay community because of their size. They promote size acceptance, but are suspicious of surgeons promising social normality through gastric bypass. In interviews, they revealed positions regarding weight-loss surgery such as respect for others’ personal choices, soft opposition to invasive surgery, comparison to sadomasochism, and matters of attraction. Their positions coincide somewhat with those of feminist fat activists. Their live-and-let-live attitude can also be understood as a claim of control over one’s own body.