DOCSLIB.ORG

A Feminist Approach to Teaching Quantum Physics

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Feminist Approach to Teaching Quantum Physics CHAPTER 2 A Feminist Approach to Teaching Quantum Physics Karen Barad On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quan­ tum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will findher a de­ lightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possi­ bly avoid it, "But how can it be like that?" Because you will get "down the drain," into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. (Feynman, 1965, p. 129) And Von Neumann gave me an interesting idea; that you don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in. So I have developed a very power­ ful sense of social irresponsibility.... It's made me a very happy man ever since. -Feynman speaking of advice given to him by the mathematician John von Neumann while they were working together at Los Alamos on the atomic bomb (Schweber, 1986, p. 467) In the physics community, Richard Feynman is a hero. In different ways, the quotes above speak of a yearning for innocence, a boyish play­ fulness that won't quit even in the face of life's most serious moments. Feynman, the self-proclaimed enfant terrible, portrayed himself as a fun­ loving kind of guy, thumbing his nose at responsibility and taking advan­ tage of every opportunity to persuade Nature herself to yield to his charms. Richard Feynman was not your stereotypical physicist. He was the non­ quiche-eating real man of the physics community: a kind of James Dean, John Wayne, and John Travolta hybrid. His rebel-without-a-cause, rugged­ individual, cool-and-unpretentious-New Yorker-womanizing personality stood in stark contrast to the asexual, nerdy, last-pick-for-the-ball-team stereotype. Central to his personality was a need to impress others with 43 44 Physics and Engineering his cleverness. But underneath it all, he cared deeply about understand­ ing quantum mechanics, if not the fate of the world. My purpose here is not to speculate about, psychologize, or debate the nuances of Feynman's personality.Myinterest is not in Feynman the man but in Feynman as a symbol of the dominant culture of U.S. post-Sputnik physics. In particular, I think it is important to ask why Feynman is a hero of inordinate proportions. That is, what, aside fromgenius, makes Feynman a superhero in the eyes of the contemporary physics community? Which aspects of the Feynman legacy have been appropriated and integrated into the culture of U.S. physics, and which have not? How is this culture per­ petuated in the classroom, and what does it mean for students? "Whatever else Dick Feynman may have joked about, his love for physics approached reverence" (L. Brown, cited in Lubkin, 1989, p. 23). Anyone who has watched the "Nova" interview, "The Pleasure of Find­ ing Things Out," will testifyto the sheer delight this remarkable scientist found indoing physics. His energy, enthusiasm, and love for physics have endeared him to students and colleagues alike. Dick Feynman epitomized the "Physics is Phun" pedagogical approach of post-Sputnik science in the United States-what I like to call the "Boys Just Wanna Have Fu-un" (a gender�reversed appropriation of Cyndi Lauper' shit tune) approach. This approach may have worked well for the particular purposes the physics community had in mind in the period immediately following the success of Sputnik, but its flawshave been more than evident in the post-Challenger period in which we now live. The contrast between the 1950s Sputnik suc­ cess and the 1980s Challenger disaster serves as an interesting metaphor for what can happen when pedagogy becomes inflexible in the face of rapidly changing demographics.1 For more than two decades, feminist science studies scholars have been offering increasingly complex and sophisticated accounts of the role of gender, race, sexuality, and class ideologies in the production of scientific knowledge. As testimony to the depth and effectiveness of these critiques, it is important to note that feminist studies of biology and primatology have already led to marked changes in the actual content of these natural sci­ ences (see, e.g., Bleier, 1984; Fausto-Sterling, 1985, 1987; Haraway, 1986, 1989; Hrdy, 1986; Hubbard, 1990; Longino & Doell, 1983). However, few analyses have focused on the physical sciences. Does the scientific method simply "work better" when the subject matter is the physical world rather than the biological or social ones, or are the issues simply less obvious? It would be ironic to find that the physical sciences, those sciences that have traditionally been most exclusive of women and people of color, are un­ marked by the politics of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and other critical social variables. Feminist Approach to Teaching Quantum Physics 45 The analysis I present in this chapter relies on a feminist reading of Niels Bohr's philosophy of physics, the details of which I present in a com­ panion paper focusing largely on the epistemological issues (see Barad, in press). This chapter focuses on pedagogical issues, outlining an alterna­ tive to the "you don't have to be responsible," "just relax and enjoy it," "Physics is Phun" approach to teaching. Recognizing the diverse popula­ tion of students that will become future scientists and their serious con­ cerns about the complex world for which they must share responsibility, we must clearly try different approaches. Although there are models avail­ able to reform introductory science courses, most of these approaches leave the remainder of the curriculumintact. The entirecurriculum must be trans­ formed; it is not sufficientto put all our efforts into the introductory courses and then go on with business as usual. I therefore use an advanced phys­ ics course for junior and senior majors as an example here. Although a course on quantum physics relies on a certain level of mathematical sophistication, I have tried to make the ideas presented here accessible to the uninitiated. I hope that this example will inspire a multitude of other efforts needed to transform entire science curricula. NEWfONIAN FRAMEWORK: REFLECTIONS ON MIRRORING THEORIES It was quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely per­ sonal," from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primi­ tive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists indepen­ dently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The con­ templation of this world beckoned like a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in devoted occupation with it. The mental grasp of this extrapersonal world within the frame of the given possibilities swam before my mind's eye. -Albert Einstein speaking of choosing a career in physics (Schilpp, 1970, p. 5) When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. -Adrienne Rich, from her essay "Invisibility in Academe" (Rich, 1986, p. 198) There is more to sparking student interest in physics than warming the "chilly climate'.'. of science classrooms. Contemporary physics curricula 46 Physics and Engineering in the United States reflect what Traweek (1988) calls" an extreme culture of objectivity: a culture of no culture, which longs passionately for a world without loose ends, without temperament, gender, nationalism, or other sources of disorder-for a world outside human space and time" (p. 162). Newtonian physics is consonant with such a vision of the world. The Newtonian worldview is compatiblewith an objectivist epistemol­ ogy, in which the well-prepared mind is able to produce a privileged mental mirroring of the world as it exists independently of us human beings (see Rorty, 1979). That is, what is "discovered" is presumed to be unmarked by its"discoverer." The claim is that the scientist can read the universal equa­ tions of nature that are inscribed on G-d' s blackboard: Nature has spoken. Paradoxically, the objects being studied are given all the agency, even and most especially when they are seen as passive, inert objects moving aim­ lessly in the void. That is, these cultureless agents, existingoutside of human space-time, are thought to reveal their secrets to patient observers watch­ ing and listening through benignly obtrusive instruments. Notice that agency is not attributed to human beings; once all subjective contaminants have been removed by the scientific method, scientists simply collect the pure distillate of truth.2 The Newtonian worldview is still so much a part of contemporary physics culture that it infects the teaching of post-Newtonian physics as well. That is, the stakes are so high in maintaining the mirroring view of scientific knowledge that quantum physics is presented as mysticism. Take the example of a photon being emitted from a light source. Students are told that according to quantum mechanics, the photon does not have a polarization until it is measured. This goes against classical intuition, since it seems that the polarization that is measured must be the one the photon had when it was emitted. The curious student wants to know how it can possibly be otherwise: How can the photon have traveled through space without a polarization? The physics professor smiles one of those smiles and "explains": "That's just the way it is.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Feminist Futures of Reading Diffractively: How Barad's Methodology Replaces Conflict-Based Readings of Beauvoir and Irigaray
    Issue 30 (2016) » DOI: 10.20415/rhiz/030.e02 The Feminist Futures of Reading Diffractively: How Barad's Methodology Replaces Conflict-based Readings of Beauvoir and Irigaray Evelien Geerts and Iris van der Tuin Abstract Quantum leaps happen in texts, too. This reading of the role of the quantum leap in Karen Barad's agential realism is necessary, because arguing that the diffractive reading strategy proposed by Barad's ethico-onto-epistemology mirrors the physical phenomenon of diffraction would indeed be representationalist. Reviewing how Barad—in her own oeuvre—has transformed diffraction into an innovative reading methodology that could not only potentially challenge the epistemological underpinnings of the canonization process that is at work in feminist theory, but could also radically change the canonization practice of feminist oeuvres itself, our article embarks on a detailed examination of the ways in which the oeuvres of Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray have been mistakenly categorized and canonized in a hierarchical and Oedipalized manner. This conflict-based narrative has not only paralyzed the oeuvres of Irigaray and Beauvoir, but also has had a negative impact on the canonization of sexual difference philosophy as a whole in feminist theory. By (re)reading the oeuvres diffractively, this article brings the feminist philosophies of Beauvoir and Irigaray together by invalidating the idea that the feminist canonization process always has to run along the lines of discontinuity, Oedipalization and dialectization. Introduction: from conflict to affirmation [1][1] Most feminist theorists will have a hard time when confronted with philosopher Slavoj Žižek's recent engagements with physicist-philosopher Karen Barad's work.
    [Show full text]
  • La Crítica Feminista Bajo El Prisma Del Materialismo Agencial. Un Enfoque Posthumanista
    Miriam Fernández-Santiago Journal of Feminist, Gender and Women Studies 10:31-39, Marzo/March 2021 La crítica feminista bajo el prisma del materialismo agencial. Un enfoque posthumanista Agential Materialism and the Feminist Paradigm. A Posthumanist Approach Miriam Fernández-Santiago 1, @ 1English Department, University of Granada, Spain. Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Campus Universitario de Cartuja C.P. 18071 Granada, Spain. Recibido: 21/08/2018 Aceptado: 19/02/2021 @ Autor/a de correspondencia: [email protected] Resumen El fértil campo de la crítica feminista ha producido abundantes y brillantes frutos en su desarrollo a lo largo del siglo veinte, pero es desde la ventaja que da la distancia en el tiempo que podemos ahora tomar cierta perspectiva sobre los contextos generales de producción y recepción en que dicha crítica feminista ha tomado el cuerpo de nuevos mitos que subvierten el falogocentrismo de los que la precedieron. El presente artículo pretende establecer un diálogo entre estos nuevos cuerpos discursivos (principalmente en el trabajo de Cixous, Hayles, de Bauvoir, y Haraway) y el materialism agencial de Karen Barad, utilizando su constructo crítico de “fenómeno” como instrumento para comprender las dimensiones que el paradigma feminista adquiere en el contexto posthumanista para proponer la intra-acción difractiva como alternativa a los constructos naturalizados. Palabras clave: materialismo agencial, responsabilidad, paradigma feminista, Karen Barad, post-humanismo. Abstract Much has been argued within the fertile critical field of feminism in the second half of the twentieth century. With the advantage of distance from the twenty-first century, we can now gain a certain perspective on the general context of production and reception of feminist criticism as it becomes embodied in new myths that subvert the old phallogocentric ones.
    [Show full text]
  • Re(Con)Figuring the Ethico-Onto-Epistemological
    Beatriz Revelles Benavente University of Utrecht, the Netherlands Re(con)figuring the ethico-onto-epistemologi- cal question of matter Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning Duke University Press: Durham, 2007, 524 + xiii pp. ISBN 978–0–8223–3917–5 Key Words: apparatus, diffractive, new materialism, methodology, quantum physics, language Meeting the Universe Halfway is in order to challenge representation- an answer to the reflective method- alism, which has, for all fields men- ology found in representationalist tioned, unwanted consequences. In scholarship which has previously so doing, Barad joins the theory of characterised not just feminist stud- new materialism, which, though still ies but social and scientific studies in the process of being constructed in general, and which presumed (see Sheridan, 2002; Colebrook, the separate ontological existence, 2008; DeLanda, 2006), is part of a however mute or devoid of agency, wider movement in critical theory of the object which is being repre- away from theories associated with sented. The author’s aim is to con- the linguistic turn. New Materialism figure a ‘diffractive methodology is an epistemological/methodologi- […] to provide a transdisciplinary cal trend which has entered the aca- approach’ (25) which cuts across demic arena not as a contestation, ‘quantum physics, science studies, but as one of the theoretical frames the philosophy of physics, feminist of third wave feminism (Van der theory, critical race theory, postco- Tuin, 2009), which postulates affir- lonial theory, (post-) Marxist theory, mative readings instead of critical and poststructuralist theory’ (25). ones of past theories. This new methodology is necessary Karen Barad is a professor of Graduate Journal of Social Sicence June 2010, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • A Lack of Meaning? Reactive Nihilism and Processual Materiality
    ANNE SAUKA A lack of meaning? Reactive nihilism and processual materiality DOI: https://doi.org/10.30664/ar.91788 Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) his article explores the ‘lack of meaning’ in phenomenology authors2 alike. contemporary society as a consequence of Besides the new materialist theories, Western dualist thought paradigms and T the theoretical background of body-ontol- ontologies, via Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘reac­ tive nihilism’ following the colloquial murder of ogy connectivity with societal phenom- God. The article then explores processual and ena is particularly exemplified by the cri- new materialist approaches in the understanding tiques of capitalism of Gilles Deleuze and of the lived and carnal self, arguing for immanent Erich Fromm – two very different authors, and senseful materiality as an ethical platform for religious, environmental, and societal soli­ who, however, allow an analysis of the dis- darity for tomorrow. For the theoretical justifica­ tinctions of being, becoming and having tion of the processual approach in understand­ as theoretical models for expressing the ing the enfleshed self, the article employs John genealogical, non-essentialist link between Dupré’s processual approach in the philosophy of biology, as well as Astrida Neimani’s critical ontologies and societies. Having elsewhere posthumanism, and contextualizes these consid­ further elaborated the necessity for using erations with Erich Fromm’s ethical distinction of genealogy in a natureculture context (Sauka being and having. 2020), I here seek to specifically address the ethical use of processual new materialism Introduction for breaching the rift between human and Western society is often criticized for its life sciences and seeking meaning in life consumerism, superficiality, fragmenta- whilst staying with the trouble (Haraway tion of the self, and difficulty in commu- 2016) of today’s scientific developments.
    [Show full text]
  • Do Patents Have Gender? Dan L
    Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law Volume 19 | Issue 3 Article 6 2011 Do Patents Have Gender? Dan L. Burk Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/jgspl Part of the Intellectual Property Commons, and the Women Commons Recommended Citation Burk, Dan L. "Do Patents Have Gender?" American University Journal of Gender Social Policy and Law 19, no. 3 (2011): 881-919. This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by the Washington College of Law Journals & Law Reviews at Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BURK 2/16/11 9/1/2011 6:26 PM Burk: Do Patents Have Gender? DO PATENTS HAVE GENDER? DAN L. BURK† I. Introduction ............................................................................................ 882 II. In Search of the Gendered Patent ......................................................... 884 A. Gendered Effects ........................................................................ 886 III. Objectivity and Objectification ............................................................ 889 A. The PHOSITA Standard ............................................................ 890 B. The Reasonably Prudent Person ................................................. 893 C. Objectivity in Law .....................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Nature's Queer Performativity
    25 Nature’s Queer Performativity * BY KAREN BARAD “O ozing through Texas Soil, How can the possibility of the queer - a Team of Amoebas Billions Strong” (Yoon ness of one of the most pervasive of 2009), is a news story title teeming with all critters – atoms – be entertained? powerful imaginaries that collectively exude These “ultraqueer” critters with a fearful, if not at least faintly moralistic, scent that permeates the article. The body their quantum quotidian qualities of the article is crawling with hints of the queer queerness itself in their radi - kinds of phenomena that are at issue in this cally deconstructive ways of being. paper: concerns over foundations, stability The aim is to show that all sorts of and instability, reconfigurations and shape shiftings, nonhuman agency, queer critter seeming impossibilities are indeed behaviors, fear and moralism, and nature/ possible, including the queerness of culture, micro/macro, temporal, and spa - causality, matter, space, and time. tial boundary crossings. “Scientists found the vast and sticky em - pire stretching 40 feet across, consisting of billions of genetically identical single-celled individuals, oozing along in the muck of a cow pasture outside Houston”. 2 The mix - ture of morality, politics, and bodily fluids – the aggregation of night terrors of a collec - tive underground movement and revulsions of the flesh – form a tantalizing cocktail. * the authorized version 1 The descriptive language is poignant and 26 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012 evocative – “vast and sticky empire … ooz - and “suicide” – an interesting term given ing along in the muck” – and the imagery, all that it implies about intentionality and held in colloidal suspension right there on the metaphysics of individualism – is in fact the surface, is ripe with the musty odors of a common way that scientists and science fear.
    [Show full text]
  • Socio-Gerontechnology
    Socio-gerontechnology Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology Edited by Alexander Peine, Barbara L. Marshall, Wendy Martin and Louis Neven First published 2021 ISBN: 978-0-367-23082-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-27826-6 (ebk) Chapter 5 Elderliness The agential inseparability of ageing and assistive technologies Michela Cozza (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) DOI: 10.4324/9780429278266-5 The OA chapter is funded by Mälardalen University, Sweden Chapter 5 ElderlinessMichela CozzaElderliness The agential inseparability of ageing and assistive technologies Michela Cozza Introduction There is no consensus in the scientific literature about how ageing can be defined. Much depends on the framework in which it is discussed. Two opposite models emerge by positioning ageing along a continuum of studies ranging from social sciences (such as sociology, some branches of psychology, political science and the multidisciplinary field of gerontology to mention a few) to applied sciences (including engineering, design research and medicine that include geriatrics). At the one end there is the social model according to which ageing is the cultural prod- uct of human agency, mostly of discursive practices (e.g. Gullette 2018; Weicht 2015). Despite the merit of highlighting the relationships between macro (e.g. care policies) and micro (the individual choices), the social model is imbued with a form of determinism according to which the “‘the engine of change’ [change in the course of life] is taken to be the social system . culture . or personality” (Marshall 1995, p. 29). At the other end there is the bio-medical model that frames ageing as an individual state characterised by a loss of physical and cognitive abilities (e.g.
    [Show full text]
  • Subjectivity, Body, and Ethics in Barad's Materialism
    55 Different Kinds of Matter(s) – Subjectivity, Body, and Ethics in Barad’s Materialism BY RENÉ ROSFORT Once upon a time Karen Barad’s agential realism in the fine month of May, many years ago, offers an original view on nature. a princess – and not just any ordinary prin- This view is based on an “ethico-on - cess but a remarkably intelligent philoso - to-epistem-ology” in which ethics, pher-princess – sent a letter to a man re- nowned for his profound metaphysical in - ontology, and epistemology are not sight asking a question that still puzzles separate levels of investigation. The philosophers today, more than three cen - consequence of this conflated metho- turies later: how is our conscious, rational dological approach is a theory that – mind related to the non-conscious matter of our body? When the prominent man at despite its many merits – disregards first provides a rather paltry answer about crucial aspects of human nature the naturally experienced union of mind (subjectivity and body) and neglects and body, the princess promptly comments: the concrete problems of ethics. “I admit that it would be easier for me to concede matter and extension to the soul than to concede the capacity to move a body and to be moved by it to an immaterial thing” (Shapiro 2007: 68 [72]). The year is 1643, and the correspondents are Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618- 1680) and René Descartes (1596-1650). 56 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012 This discussion of the abstruse interaction misconstrued in Barad’s work. I conclude of the matterless mind and the mindless with a brief consideration of some ethical body marks the beginning of a seven-year issues in contemporary gender studies that long correspondence about central philo - may help us to see both the merits and lim - sophical issues covering metaphysics, math - its of Barad’s work.
    [Show full text]
  • Entangled Nuclear Colonialisms, Matters of Force, and the Material Force of Justice1
    58 (3/2020), pp. 85–113 The Polish Journal DOI: 10.19205/58.20.6 of Aesthetics Karen Barad* After the End of the World: Entangled Nuclear Colonialisms, Matters of Force, and the Material Force of Justice1 Abstract This essay is an invitation to take up the nature and problematics of hospitality in its ma- teriality. It begins and ends with the Marshall Islands, at the crossroads of two great de- structive forces: nuclear colonialism and the climate crisis. In the aftermath of sixty-seven US nuclear bomb “tests” visited upon the Marshall Islands, the concrete “dome” built on Runit Island by the US government was an act of erasure and a-void-ance—an attempt to contain and cover over plutonium remains and other material traces of the violence of colonial hospitality that live inside the Tomb (as the Marshallese call it). Taking the physi- cality of the hostility within hospitality seriously, and going into the core of the theory that produced the nuclear bomb, I argue that a radical hospitality—an infinity of possibilities for interrupting state sanctioned violence—is written into the structure of matter itself in its inseparability with the void. How shall we remember you? You were a whole island, once. You were breadfruit trees heavy with green globes of fruit whispering promises of massive canoes. Crabs dusted with white sand scuttled through pandanus roots. Beneath looming coconut trees beds of ripe watermelon slept still, swollen with juice. And you were protected by powerful irooj, chiefs birthed from women who could swim pregnant for miles beneath a full moon.
    [Show full text]
  • Ecofeminist Echoes in New Materialism?
    PhænEx 11, no. 1 (spring/summer 2016): 73-96 © 2016 Marie-Anne Casselot Ecofeminist Echoes in New Materialism? MARIE-ANNE CASSELOT Why should we think ecofeminism and new materialism together? I argue in this paper that bringing them together is a fruitful project because ecofeminism can offer illuminating insights to new materialism especially when it comes to analyzing oppression and the effects of oppressive structures on humans, ‘natural others’ and more-than-human elements. New materialism would benefit from a close rereading of ecofeminist theory and history, and by the same movement it could extend ecofeminist insights beyond a closed worldview of the natural world by infusing its dynamic new theorizations of the fluidity and the indeterminacy of matter. The political and ethical strength of ecofeminism could be enhanced by new materialist ontological claims because it makes clear the connection between corporeality and environment, while avoiding positing a gendered special connection to nature. How can we achieve such an ambitious goal? First, it is relevant to ask whether there are some ecofeminist echoes in feminist new materialist thought This “return to matter” is a relatively new trend and one can ask what its place is in feminist genealogies of academe. There is little mention of ecofeminism in new materialist literature: for example, Elizabeth Grosz clearly disassociates herself from ecofeminism and Rosi Braidotti, even if she co-authored the book Women, the Environment and Sustainable Development in 1994, does not seem
    [Show full text]
  • Environmental Care Ethics: Notes Toward a New Materialist Critique
    Environmental Care Ethics: Notes Toward a New Materialist Critique Adeline Johns-Putra symploke, Volume 21, Numbers 1-2, 2013, pp. 125-135 (Article) Published by University of Nebraska Press For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sym/summary/v021/21.1-2.johns-putra01.html Access provided by University of Surrey (3 Jan 2014 06:06 GMT) ENVIRONMENTAL CARE ETHICS: NOTES TOWARD A NEW MATERIALIST CRITIQUE ADELINE JOHNS-PUTRA Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the pres- ent without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. —The World Commission on Environment and Development (1987, 43) To scan the now ubiquitous definition put forward by the Brundtland Commission is to realize that our construction of “sustainability” is driven by a notion of care—care for the nonhuman environment enfolded with a concern for our human descendants. The rhetoric around our ideal response to climate change structures it as an ethical response. This essay proposes that, while so much of the ontology of the global ecological crisis called climate change has been closely interrogated, the ethics of care demanded in the name of that crisis has not been scrutinized in the same way. By “care,” I mean a feeling of concern for the wellbeing and needs of others; by “care ethics,” I mean an ethical position that takes this affective concern as its basis for action.1 Given that environmental ethics—the question of human conduct and its effect on the human and nonhuman environment—is a profoundly ontological project, accounting as it must for the perceived ontological difference between the human and nonhuman, this lack of ontological scrutiny is conspicuous, to say the least.
    [Show full text]
  • The New Materialisms and Indigenous Theories of Non-Human Agency
    QIXXXX10.1177/1077800419830135Qualitative InquiryRosiek et al. 830135research-article2019 Article Qualitative Inquiry 2020, Vol. 26(3-4) 331 –346 The New Materialisms and Indigenous © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions Theories of Non-Human Agency: Making DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419830135 10.1177/1077800419830135 the Case for Respectful Anti-Colonial journals.sagepub.com/home/qix Engagement Jerry Lee Rosiek1, Jimmy Snyder1, and Scott L. Pratt1 Abstract Both new materialist philosophy of science and Indigenous studies scholarship have developed theories about the agency of non-human things. There has, however, been relatively little articulation between these two literatures in the qualitative social sciences. This essay looks at the possible reasons for this lack of engagement–including the relatively recent emergence of new materialism, pervasive racism within the academy, and foundational differences in the priorities and philosophical assumptions informing these two literatures. Addressing new materialist scholars, the essay inventories the ethical, political, and intellectual reasons social scientists using Karen Barad’s concept of agential realism should also be reading and citing Indigenous studies literature on agent ontologies. It makes the case that the Indigenous studies literature on agent ontologies have strengths in precisely some of the places new materialist social science is facing challenges. Examples are provided and the broader political implications of such work
    [Show full text]