6/15/2023 0 Comments Diffraction definition physics![]() To rephrase this in more Irigarayian terms: Thinking diffractively steps out of the phallogocentric, reflective logics of producing the Same all over again by acknowledging the differences that exist, while at the same time pointing at where the problematic reductions and assimilations of difference have taken place. Part of her feminist critique and revisioning of objectivity within scientific thinking, diffraction for Haraway is a “more subtle vision” than the traditional reflective scientific forms of optics and thinking that actually spotlights “where the effects of difference appear” (ibid., p. Haraway follows in Minh-ha’s footsteps when discussing diffraction for the first time in The Promises of Monsters (2004/1992): Haraway here explicitly refers to Minh-ha’s idea of ‘inappropriate/d others’ – a notion that expresses how subjects are in a “deconstructive relationality, in a diffracting rather than reflecting (ratio)nality” (ibid., p. After all, the noun ‘identification’ and the verb ‘to identify’ come from the Latin identificare, which combines identitas and - ficare (from facere: to make). Moving through and beyond such a reductive Hegelian Self/Other dialectics, Minh-ha’s diffractive conceptualization of identity and difference focuses on a non-dualistic, non-separational model of identity and difference, in which identity categories, identified groups, and even identified single entities, diffractively crisscross, interfere, and co-establish one another, and differences are respected and allowed to exist and flourish (also see e.g. Although Minh-ha does not explicitly refer to diffraction as such, it is clear that her philosophical approach towards identity and difference is a relational, diffractive one, as it radically steps away from what she understands to be the apartheid-based, segregational type of difference, or, put in different terms, the traditional modern Western philosophical approach in which difference is seen as to-be-captured, to-be-assimilated, and, eventually, to-be-wholly-eradicated (see e.g. ![]() This engagement matters to the tradition of new (feminist) materialism, because the new materialist tradition approaches difference as making a difference in terms of both genealogy, figurative conceptualization, and of matter coming to matter (Butler, 1993 Barad, 2007). Both literary theorist Trinh Minh-ha and feminist science studies scholar Donna Haraway have engaged with the metaphor of diffraction in their oeuvres in relation to thought, difference(s), and alterity. In contemporary feminist theory, diffraction is often employed figuratively, to denote a more critical and difference-attentive mode of consciousness and thought. Seen through the perspective of quantum physics, however, we are invited to think about the inherent diffractivity of sets of waves, of single waves, and of single particles, under the right (experimental) conditions. Waves in fact always already overlap and extend into one another, so even in the classical rendering, when pushed to an extreme, “we can understand diffraction patterns – as patterns of difference that make a difference – to be the fundamental constituents that make up the world” (Barad, 2007, p.72). ![]() ![]() According to classical physics, diffraction is a physical phenomenon that comes into being when a multitude of waves encounter an obstacle upon their path, and/or when these waves themselves overlap.
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