Diffracting Structure/Agency Dichotomies, Wave/Particle Dualities, and the Citational Politics of Settler Colonial Scholars Engaging Indigenous Studies Literature

Abstract

Building on Karen Barad’s philosophy of science, this paper offers a diffractive reading of quantum indeterminacy with/across the classic structure/agency dichotomy in social science scholarship. It highlights key parallels between the metaphysics of indeterminacy in both the physical and social sciences. In the course of this analysis, we draw upon relevant Indigenous studies literature. These citations are integrated into the diffractive analysis, both as a source of important and potentially transformative insight and as a performative illustration of enactment of political responsibility under conditions of ontological indeterminacy. The inclusion of the Indigenous studies citations raises questions about how to avoid problematic practices of appropriation and/or erasure. Instead of resolving this question, we will dwell within the indeterminacy it reveals and the responsibility for constructive action it brings into focus.

Diffractive Respondings and Cutting Together-Apart: Toward More-Than-Human Academic Community

“…Walking on, through and with Aboriginal land, these absent presences are colliding with questions raised by Jerry and Mary’s paper on the (in)commensurability of Indigenous knowledges and new materialist ideas (see Rosiek & Adkins-Cartee, 2023, in this special issue). This writing reverberated across my memories of “the void” as painted and storied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists in a recent exhibition of that name (https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Void-Learning-Resource-online.pdf).…”

Not All That Post, Not All That New: The Disruption of Challenging Coloniality

“…Authors associated with posthumanism have grappled with this question. For example, Rosiek and Adkins-Cartee (2023), from a diffractive perspective, interrogate what is enabled by citing (or not) Indigenous scholars in their resonances with a posthumanist framework. They resolve by taking responsibility for their decision of citing Indigenous scholars as a gesture of respect even if it risks appropriation.…”

The Logic of Posthuman Inquiry: Affirmative Politics, Validity, and Futurities

“…The indeterminacy and mutability of the object of study itself are treated as something that can be described. The principle of the excluded middle and noncontradiction is violated with relation to the specific character of the object of the study-for example, the indeterminacy of a subatomic particle's particle and wave nature (Barad, 2007); the inhuman core of the human subject (Colebrook, 2014); the representational and relational nature of thinking (Braidotti, 2019a(Braidotti, , 2019b; the indeterminacy of quantitative data (Dixon-Román et al, 2022) or numbers themselves (de Freitas & Sinclair, 2014); the instability of data in qualitative inquiry (Mazzei & Jackson, 2017); the virtuality of embodied affect (Massumi, 2002); and indeterminacy of inclusion/appropriation in citational politics (Rosiek & Adkins-Cartee, 2023). At a more global scale of this analytic approach, however, the overarching purpose is to map this indeterminacy and mutability as a whole and speculate about its effects.…”

“… 1. It is both a conceptual and a political decision to include Indigenous studies scholarship on nonhuman agency and Black studies scholarship influenced by Sylvia Wynter’s calls for a different kind of humanism within the scope of what we care calling posthumanist inquiry: on one hand, including these literatures risks a form of cultural appropriation and tokenism and, on the other hand, excluding them risks contributing to colonialist and racist erasure of important highly relevant work in these areas of study, work that has deeply influenced our thought. We consider silence and erasure the greater risk, and so opt for inclusive citational practice (Rosiek & Cartee, 2023; Rosiek et al, 2020). …”