Close Encounters of a Critical Kind: A Diffractive Musing In/Between New Material Feminism and Object-Oriented Ontology. (April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Taylor, Carol A.
• Other Names: St.Pierre Elizabeth A. guest-editor.; Mazzei Lisa A. guest-editor.; Jackson Alecia Y. guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Cultural studies, critical methodologies. Volume 16:Number 2(2016:Apr.)
• Page Start: 201
• Page End: 212
• Publication Date: 2016-04
• Subjects: new material feminism -- speculative realism -- diffraction -- musing -- critique; Culture -- Research -- Periodicals; Popular culture -- Research -- Periodicals; 306.05
• DOI: 10.1177/1532708616636145
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1532-7086

Abstract

For a number of years, new material feminists have been developing new theoretical tools, new modes of conceptual analysis, and new ethical frameworks. Object-oriented ontology, part of the speculative realism "movement, " has been engaged in something similar. Yet these endeavors have often taken place in "parallel universes, " despite sharing—or at least colliding around—a range of somewhat similar ontological and epistemological commitments. Composed as a diffractive musing encounter, the article brings Barad's Meeting the Universe Halfway, already a "foundational" text for new material feminism, into an encounter with a speculative realist text of the same "foundational" status, Harman's The Quadruple Object . The article develops a notion of diffractive musing as embodied, sensory struggle which instantiates intellectual generosity as a mode of critique.