Diffraction
If the goal is to think the social and the natural together, to take account of how both factors matter (not simply to recognise that they both do matter), then we need a method for theorizing the relationship between “the natural” and “the social” together…What is needed is a diffraction apparatus to study these entanglements…A diffractive methodology provides a way of attending to entanglements in reading important insights and approaches through one another. (Barad, 2007, p. 30)
As is described in this opening quote by Barad (2007), diffraction is a way of knowing the world from within and as a part of it, while providing a theoretical position to allow for ‘new’ knowledge to emerge. It offers a way of understanding the relationality of bodies, objects and spaces through their materiality. Diffraction is a term borrowed from classical physics to describe the pattern of overlapping waveforms that disturb a field. Diffraction denies any separateness between entities (e.g. there is no distinct outside) (Barad, 2007). Barad (2014) explains that “a diffraction pattern does not map where differences appear but…where the effects of difference occur” (p. 172). Diffractive waves reinforce to produce the bright lines, and waves cancel each other out in the dark lines. Diffraction illustrates disruption or interference but also intra-action and therefore, the entanglement of matter, and describes the relationality of matter where relationality challenges particularism and supports the view of intra-activity and emergent beings and phenomena (Barad, 2007).
Haraway (1992) introduced the concept of diffraction into the social sciences through her seminal work The Promises of Monsters, an essay that writes and maps theory with/in and through nature scapes as they err into science fiction and possible futures. Diffraction as concept and as methodology offers “a way of understanding the world from within and as part of it” (Barad, 2007, p. 88). Diffraction acknowledges the space it occupies in the genealogical evolution of reflection and reflexivity by highlighting the researcher as an inherent part of the research; the researcher is always entangled with the data, which is a pivotal aspect of the data and not one that requires justification or accountability, where “securing objectivity in research is not about disentangling and disengaging the subject from the object (as in much research), but ‘taking responsibility for one’s entanglements’ (Barad, 2007, p. 453, footnote 1)” (Murris, 2020, p. 8). Or, as stated by Haraway (1992) and reiterated by Malone (2018), diffraction is about acknowledging differences and making mark of what matters in order to trouble the data, while inevitably being with/in it. I do not attempt to position myself as researcher as an outsider, but accept my position as part of the research becoming.
Barad (2007) brought diffraction to the methodological fore through the introduction of a diffractive methodology. Barad (2011) describes this as,
…a practice of simultaneously attending to important differences among practices and their specific entanglements by reading respective insights through one another in a way that does not build in foundational distinctions and separations before the analysis gets off the ground, and that is responsive to our intra-active engagements with our subject matter, including attending to what gets excluded and how it matters. (p. 10)
Barad’s account of a diffractive methodology highlights the importance of considering the materiality and relationality of matter. Adopting diffraction as a methodological approach to this study enables the decentring of the human, by bringing attention to the materiality of all mattering, for example, the human/nonhuman, seen/unseen, nature/culture. Relationality is brought to the fore and, in line with posthumanist thinking, the human “subject no longer lies at the centre of all meaning-making, and is no longer, collectively, the sole agent commanding the worlding of the world” (Davies, 2021, p. 140). Relationality adopts a relational ontology that starts with difference instead of identity such that it “troubles the idea that there are (i.e., exist) preexisting, separately determinate entities of one kind or another that exist prior to the relations they are part of” (Murris, 2020a, p. 8). Diffraction from a relational ontology puts human privileging on notice such that nonhuman agency is enlivened, as was practised in this study. The significance of this point is discussed in greater detail below (see principle four, the choice of data matters).
The influence of Barad’s seminal work is demonstrated by the huge upwelling of social science research based in diffraction over the last decade (for example see Barad, 2014; Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017; Elfström Pettersson, 2017; Kaiser & Thiele, 2014; Lennon, 2017; Lenz Taguchi, 2012; Malone, 2020; Murris, 2017, 2020c; Murris & Haynes, 2018a; Sehgal, 2014; Taylor & Blaise, 2014; C. A. Taylor, 2013; van der Tuin, 2011). Moreover, it has become increasingly popular in educational research (Bozalek, 2017; Larson & Phillips, 2013; Malone, 2020; Murris & Haynes, 2018a; C. A. Taylor, 2013) including the introduction of diffractive pedagogies (Moxnes & Osgood, 2019), which establish alternative ways of understanding a range of educational practices and exploring future possibilities. For more in-depth exploration, see the principles of diffraction (below).
In further justification of diffraction, Murris (2020c) stresses how this methodological approach could offer an education revolution since,
…diffraction helps materialize important new insights for posthuman schooling. It disrupts the idea of humanist schooling that knowledge acquisition is mediated by the more expert and knowledgeable other; schooling as a linear journey from child to the more “fully-human” adult. Importantly, the diffractive teacher can be human, nonhuman or more-than-human, contributing to a reconfiguration of the world in all its materiality – a process of “worlding.” Importantly, this process is always relational, not individual. (p. 21)
Here, Murris decentres the human and enacts the agency of matter including the role of the nonhuman, for example, the role of nonhuman nature in being an educator and teacher for children and students. As such, diffraction allows for the complex layering of perspectives and conceptualisations to be explored.