Iris van der Tuin - Reading diffractive reading: were and when does diffraction happen?
Channel: Disruptivemedia
Date: 2015-05-21

My contribution discusses diffractive reading and asks questions about the spatiotemporality of diffractive reading: where and when does diffraction happen in reading processes? Furthering Donna Haraway’s 1992/1997 formulations, Karen Barad practices the reading through one another of texts and/or oeuvres in her 2003 article ‘Posthumanist Performativity’. Furthermore, Barad is very clear about the distinction between classical and quantum ways of conceptualizing diffraction in Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007). In my contribution I will unravel these two ways of reading diffractive reading by discussing my own diffractive readings, published from 2011 onwards. I will attempt to come up with a very precise answer to spatiotemporality of diffractive reading, the proof of the pudding of which is work I have done on Susanne K. Langer’s 1953 Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key. I will discuss how this work is in and of itself diffractive.

Part of the seminar 'Radical Methodologies for the Posthumanities'

More on the Disrupting the Humanities Seminar Series at:
http://disruptivemedia.org.uk/wiki/
Coventry University