Diffractive Reading

Diffractive Reading

Author: Kai Merten

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-05-27

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1786613972

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Putting the New Materialist figure of diffraction to use in a set of readings – in which cultural texts are materially read against their contents and their themes, against their readers or against other texts – this volume proposes a criticalintervention into the practice of reading itself. In this book, reading and reading methodology are probed for their materiality and re-considered as being inevitably suspended between, or diffracted with, both matter and discourse. The history of literary and cultural reading, including poststructuralism and critical theory, is revisited in a new light and opened-up for a future in which the world and reading are no longer regarded as conveniently separate spheres, but recognized as deeply entangled and intertwined. Diffractive Reading ultimately represents a new reading of reading itself: firstly by critiquing the distanced perspective of critical paradigms such as translation and intertextuality, in which texts encountered, processed or otherwise subdued; secondly, showing how all literary and cultural readings represent different ‘agential cuts’ in the world-text-reader constellation, which is always both discursive and material; and thirdly, the volume materializes, dynamizes and politicizes the activity of reading by drawing attention to reading’s intervention in, and (co)creation of, the world in which we live.


Book Synopsis Diffractive Reading by : Kai Merten

Download or read book Diffractive Reading written by Kai Merten and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-05-27 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Putting the New Materialist figure of diffraction to use in a set of readings – in which cultural texts are materially read against their contents and their themes, against their readers or against other texts – this volume proposes a criticalintervention into the practice of reading itself. In this book, reading and reading methodology are probed for their materiality and re-considered as being inevitably suspended between, or diffracted with, both matter and discourse. The history of literary and cultural reading, including poststructuralism and critical theory, is revisited in a new light and opened-up for a future in which the world and reading are no longer regarded as conveniently separate spheres, but recognized as deeply entangled and intertwined. Diffractive Reading ultimately represents a new reading of reading itself: firstly by critiquing the distanced perspective of critical paradigms such as translation and intertextuality, in which texts encountered, processed or otherwise subdued; secondly, showing how all literary and cultural readings represent different ‘agential cuts’ in the world-text-reader constellation, which is always both discursive and material; and thirdly, the volume materializes, dynamizes and politicizes the activity of reading by drawing attention to reading’s intervention in, and (co)creation of, the world in which we live.

Diffracted Worlds - Diffractive Readings

Diffracted Worlds - Diffractive Readings

Author: Birgit M. Kaiser

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1351386697

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Diffraction patterns in quantum physics evidence the fact that the behavior of matter is the result of its entanglements with measurement, or as Karen Barad suggests, the entanglement of matter and meaning. In this sense, therefore, phenomena (including texts, cultural agents, or life forms) are the results of their relational, onto-epistemological entanglements and not individual entities that separately pre-exist their joint becoming. As such, ‘diffraction’ proposes a new understanding of difference: no longer a dualist understanding, but one going beyond binaries. Diffraction is about patterns, constellations, relationalities. From this angle, the book explores ‘diffraction’, which has begun to impact critical theories and humanities debates, especially via (new) materialist feminisms, STS and quantum thought, but is often used without further reflection upon its implications or potentials. Doing just that, the book also pursues new routes for the onto-epistemological and ethical challenges that arise from our experience of the world as relational and radically immanent; because if we start from the ideas of immanence and entanglement, our conceptions of self and other, culture and nature, cultural and sexual difference, our epistemological procedures and disciplinary boundaries have to be rethought and adjusted. The book offers an in-depth consideration of ‘diffraction’ as a quantum understanding of difference and as a new critical reading method. It reflects on its import in humanities debates and thereby also on some of the most inspiring work recently done at the crossroads of science studies, feminist studies and the critical humanities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Parallax.


Book Synopsis Diffracted Worlds - Diffractive Readings by : Birgit M. Kaiser

Download or read book Diffracted Worlds - Diffractive Readings written by Birgit M. Kaiser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diffraction patterns in quantum physics evidence the fact that the behavior of matter is the result of its entanglements with measurement, or as Karen Barad suggests, the entanglement of matter and meaning. In this sense, therefore, phenomena (including texts, cultural agents, or life forms) are the results of their relational, onto-epistemological entanglements and not individual entities that separately pre-exist their joint becoming. As such, ‘diffraction’ proposes a new understanding of difference: no longer a dualist understanding, but one going beyond binaries. Diffraction is about patterns, constellations, relationalities. From this angle, the book explores ‘diffraction’, which has begun to impact critical theories and humanities debates, especially via (new) materialist feminisms, STS and quantum thought, but is often used without further reflection upon its implications or potentials. Doing just that, the book also pursues new routes for the onto-epistemological and ethical challenges that arise from our experience of the world as relational and radically immanent; because if we start from the ideas of immanence and entanglement, our conceptions of self and other, culture and nature, cultural and sexual difference, our epistemological procedures and disciplinary boundaries have to be rethought and adjusted. The book offers an in-depth consideration of ‘diffraction’ as a quantum understanding of difference and as a new critical reading method. It reflects on its import in humanities debates and thereby also on some of the most inspiring work recently done at the crossroads of science studies, feminist studies and the critical humanities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Parallax.

Diffractive Optics

Diffractive Optics

Author: Donald C. O'Shea

Publisher: SPIE Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9780819451712

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This book provides the reader with the broad range of materials that were discussed in a series of short courses presented at Georgia Tech on the design, fabrication, and testing of diffractive optical elements (DOEs). Although there are not long derivations or detailed methods for specific engineering calculations, the reader should be familiar and comfortable with basic computational techniques. This text is not a 'cookbook' for producing DOEs, but it should provide readers with sufficient information to assess whether this technology would benefit their work, and to understand the requirements for using the concepts and techniques presented by the authors.


Book Synopsis Diffractive Optics by : Donald C. O'Shea

Download or read book Diffractive Optics written by Donald C. O'Shea and published by SPIE Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the reader with the broad range of materials that were discussed in a series of short courses presented at Georgia Tech on the design, fabrication, and testing of diffractive optical elements (DOEs). Although there are not long derivations or detailed methods for specific engineering calculations, the reader should be familiar and comfortable with basic computational techniques. This text is not a 'cookbook' for producing DOEs, but it should provide readers with sufficient information to assess whether this technology would benefit their work, and to understand the requirements for using the concepts and techniques presented by the authors.

Diffracted Worlds - Diffractive Readings

Diffracted Worlds - Diffractive Readings

Author: Birgit M. Kaiser

Publisher:

Published: 2017-12-05

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781138501027

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Diffraction -proposes a new understanding of difference beyond binaries. Reflecting on the term's implications and potentials, the book pursues new routes for our onto-epistemological and ethical responses to a fundamentally relational and entangled world. This book was originally published as a special issue of Parallax.


Book Synopsis Diffracted Worlds - Diffractive Readings by : Birgit M. Kaiser

Download or read book Diffracted Worlds - Diffractive Readings written by Birgit M. Kaiser and published by . This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diffraction -proposes a new understanding of difference beyond binaries. Reflecting on the term's implications and potentials, the book pursues new routes for our onto-epistemological and ethical responses to a fundamentally relational and entangled world. This book was originally published as a special issue of Parallax.

Living Books

Living Books

Author: Janneke Adema

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-08-31

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0262366452

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Reimagining the scholarly book as living and collaborative--not as commodified and essentialized, but in all its dynamic materiality. In this book, Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and collaborative project--not as linear, bound, and fixed, but as fluid, remixed, and liquid, a space for experimentation. She presents a series of cutting-edge experiments in arts and humanities book publishing, showcasing the radical new forms that book-based scholarly work might take in the digital age. Adema's proposed alternative futures for the scholarly book go beyond such print-based assumptions as fixity, stability, the single author, originality, and copyright, reaching instead for a dynamic and emergent materiality. Adema suggests ways to unbind the book, describing experiments in scholarly book publishing with new forms of anonymous collaborative authorship, radical open access publishing, and processual, living, and remixed publications, among other practices. She doesn't cast digital as the solution and print as the problem; the problem in scholarly publishing, she argues, is not print itself, but the way print has been commodified and essentialized. Adema explores alternative, more ethical models of authorship; constructs an alternative genealogy of openness; and examines opportunities for intervention in current cultures of knowledge production. Finally, asking why it is that we cut and bind our research together at all, she examines two book publishing projects that experiment with remix and reuse and try to rethink and reperform the book-apparatus by taking responsibility for the cuts they make.


Book Synopsis Living Books by : Janneke Adema

Download or read book Living Books written by Janneke Adema and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reimagining the scholarly book as living and collaborative--not as commodified and essentialized, but in all its dynamic materiality. In this book, Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and collaborative project--not as linear, bound, and fixed, but as fluid, remixed, and liquid, a space for experimentation. She presents a series of cutting-edge experiments in arts and humanities book publishing, showcasing the radical new forms that book-based scholarly work might take in the digital age. Adema's proposed alternative futures for the scholarly book go beyond such print-based assumptions as fixity, stability, the single author, originality, and copyright, reaching instead for a dynamic and emergent materiality. Adema suggests ways to unbind the book, describing experiments in scholarly book publishing with new forms of anonymous collaborative authorship, radical open access publishing, and processual, living, and remixed publications, among other practices. She doesn't cast digital as the solution and print as the problem; the problem in scholarly publishing, she argues, is not print itself, but the way print has been commodified and essentialized. Adema explores alternative, more ethical models of authorship; constructs an alternative genealogy of openness; and examines opportunities for intervention in current cultures of knowledge production. Finally, asking why it is that we cut and bind our research together at all, she examines two book publishing projects that experiment with remix and reuse and try to rethink and reperform the book-apparatus by taking responsibility for the cuts they make.

Living with Monsters? Social Implications of Algorithmic Phenomena, Hybrid Agency, and the Performativity of Technology

Living with Monsters? Social Implications of Algorithmic Phenomena, Hybrid Agency, and the Performativity of Technology

Author: Ulrike Schultze

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-11-29

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 3030040917

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the IFIP WG 8.2 Working Conference on Information Systems and Organizations, IS&O 2018, held in San Francisco, CA, USA, in December 2018. The 11 revised full papers presented together with one short paper and 2 keynote papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 47 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: setting the stage; social implications of algorithmic phenomena; hybrid agency and the performativity of technology; and living with monsters.


Book Synopsis Living with Monsters? Social Implications of Algorithmic Phenomena, Hybrid Agency, and the Performativity of Technology by : Ulrike Schultze

Download or read book Living with Monsters? Social Implications of Algorithmic Phenomena, Hybrid Agency, and the Performativity of Technology written by Ulrike Schultze and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the IFIP WG 8.2 Working Conference on Information Systems and Organizations, IS&O 2018, held in San Francisco, CA, USA, in December 2018. The 11 revised full papers presented together with one short paper and 2 keynote papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 47 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: setting the stage; social implications of algorithmic phenomena; hybrid agency and the performativity of technology; and living with monsters.

Diffractive Ethnography

Diffractive Ethnography

Author: Jessica Smartt Gullion

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-30

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1351044982

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Across intellectual disciplines, the ontological turn is restructuring how we think about our relationships with the natural world. Influenced by the seemingly disparate realms of indigenous philosophy and quantum physics, the turn invites us to think about intra-actions and assemblages of human and nonhuman entities. This raises epistemological questions about how we know about the world, and spotlights some of the problems with how we currently do conventional social science research. Diffractive Ethnography invites social scientists to consider alternate methodologies that account for the complexity of human behavior situated in larger environmental contexts. For both novice and experienced researchers, this thought-provoking book opens new ways of thinking about methodology and raises questions about the ethical and justice orientations of our work.


Book Synopsis Diffractive Ethnography by : Jessica Smartt Gullion

Download or read book Diffractive Ethnography written by Jessica Smartt Gullion and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across intellectual disciplines, the ontological turn is restructuring how we think about our relationships with the natural world. Influenced by the seemingly disparate realms of indigenous philosophy and quantum physics, the turn invites us to think about intra-actions and assemblages of human and nonhuman entities. This raises epistemological questions about how we know about the world, and spotlights some of the problems with how we currently do conventional social science research. Diffractive Ethnography invites social scientists to consider alternate methodologies that account for the complexity of human behavior situated in larger environmental contexts. For both novice and experienced researchers, this thought-provoking book opens new ways of thinking about methodology and raises questions about the ethical and justice orientations of our work.

Working with Theories of Refusal and Decolonization in Higher Education

Working with Theories of Refusal and Decolonization in Higher Education

Author: Petra Mikulan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-05

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1003821952

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This volume argues that refusal is a viable political ethics in education. It is an ethics that allows space for new possibilities to emerge, with the potential to enrich higher education study and pedagogies in the future. Chapters examine the ethical, epistemological, political and affective premises of refusing the colonial university, and reflect upon what refusal means for higher education decolonization across international settings. Refusal marks a political ethos and praxis that denies, resists, reframes and redirects colonial and neoliberal logics, while asserting diverse sovereignties and lifeworlds. Whereas resistance may reinscribe the weakness of the colonized in the power relations with the colonizer, refusal interrupts the smooth operation of power relations, denying the authority of the settler state and remaking the rules of engagement. It is a political stance and action that denies the very legitimacy of power over the subjugated. This collection views refusal not as an end in itself, nor as a mode of critique, but as a necessary first step for educators and students in higher education to invest in the idea of radically different modes of futurity. It explores how educators and students in higher education can invent pedagogies of refusal that function ethically, affectively and politically, and asks: What do pedagogies of refusal look like? How might western universities sustain and support refusal, rather than discipline it? What assumptions are sustained by ruling out certain educational futures as out of bounds, or impossible? This book will be important reading for researchers, scholars and educators in Decolonizing Education, Higher Education Transformation, and Philosophy of Education. It will also be valuable to policymakers and activists who are considering how refusal might be carried out within and outside institutions.


Book Synopsis Working with Theories of Refusal and Decolonization in Higher Education by : Petra Mikulan

Download or read book Working with Theories of Refusal and Decolonization in Higher Education written by Petra Mikulan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume argues that refusal is a viable political ethics in education. It is an ethics that allows space for new possibilities to emerge, with the potential to enrich higher education study and pedagogies in the future. Chapters examine the ethical, epistemological, political and affective premises of refusing the colonial university, and reflect upon what refusal means for higher education decolonization across international settings. Refusal marks a political ethos and praxis that denies, resists, reframes and redirects colonial and neoliberal logics, while asserting diverse sovereignties and lifeworlds. Whereas resistance may reinscribe the weakness of the colonized in the power relations with the colonizer, refusal interrupts the smooth operation of power relations, denying the authority of the settler state and remaking the rules of engagement. It is a political stance and action that denies the very legitimacy of power over the subjugated. This collection views refusal not as an end in itself, nor as a mode of critique, but as a necessary first step for educators and students in higher education to invest in the idea of radically different modes of futurity. It explores how educators and students in higher education can invent pedagogies of refusal that function ethically, affectively and politically, and asks: What do pedagogies of refusal look like? How might western universities sustain and support refusal, rather than discipline it? What assumptions are sustained by ruling out certain educational futures as out of bounds, or impossible? This book will be important reading for researchers, scholars and educators in Decolonizing Education, Higher Education Transformation, and Philosophy of Education. It will also be valuable to policymakers and activists who are considering how refusal might be carried out within and outside institutions.

The Dark Matter of Children’s 'Fantastika' Literature

The Dark Matter of Children’s 'Fantastika' Literature

Author: Chloe Germaine

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-09-21

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1350167037

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Following the material turn in the humanities, this book brings perspectives from science and ecology into dialogue with children's fiction written and published in the UK and the USA in the 21st century. It develops the concept of entanglement, which originated in 20th-century quantum physics but has been applied to cultural critique, through a reading of Fantastika literature. Surveying a wide-ranging scope of literary texts, this book covers the gothic, fantasy, the Weird, and other forms of speculative fiction to argue that Fantastika positions entanglement as an ethical imperative that transforms our imaginative relationship with materiality. In so doing, it synthesizes perspectives from a similarly diverse range of areas, including ecology, physics, anthropology, and literary studies, to examine the storied matter of children's Fantastika as ground from which we might begin to imagine an as-yet-unrealised future that addresses the problems of our present.


Book Synopsis The Dark Matter of Children’s 'Fantastika' Literature by : Chloe Germaine

Download or read book The Dark Matter of Children’s 'Fantastika' Literature written by Chloe Germaine and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-21 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the material turn in the humanities, this book brings perspectives from science and ecology into dialogue with children's fiction written and published in the UK and the USA in the 21st century. It develops the concept of entanglement, which originated in 20th-century quantum physics but has been applied to cultural critique, through a reading of Fantastika literature. Surveying a wide-ranging scope of literary texts, this book covers the gothic, fantasy, the Weird, and other forms of speculative fiction to argue that Fantastika positions entanglement as an ethical imperative that transforms our imaginative relationship with materiality. In so doing, it synthesizes perspectives from a similarly diverse range of areas, including ecology, physics, anthropology, and literary studies, to examine the storied matter of children's Fantastika as ground from which we might begin to imagine an as-yet-unrealised future that addresses the problems of our present.

New Materialist Literary Theory

New Materialist Literary Theory

Author: Kerstin Howaldt

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2024-04-17

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1666929131

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This edited collection builds on recent strands in philosophy that promote a critical conceptual return to the material world outside human culture. Through the lens of literary analysis and theory, it conceptualizes the potential of New Materialism as a timely mode of critique toward the current human condition and its effect on literature and the present. Organized around the key New Materialist concepts of entanglement and speculation, the chapters by renowned literary scholars and theorists approach literary texts and theory from onto-epistemological and speculative realist perspectives. Both concepts critically bespeak our precarious relation to matter during the Anthropocene. Entanglement analyzes this human inference with the material environment and its consequences, while speculation makes palpable our cognitive limits in grasping these consequences and our continued obligation to try to do so. Literature emerges as a site where entanglement and speculation, as well as their alignment, are intensively presented and negotiated. In highlighting these connections, the chapters in this collection bring entanglement and speculation (theory) together to form a critical literary theory fit for the Anthropocene.


Book Synopsis New Materialist Literary Theory by : Kerstin Howaldt

Download or read book New Materialist Literary Theory written by Kerstin Howaldt and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-04-17 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection builds on recent strands in philosophy that promote a critical conceptual return to the material world outside human culture. Through the lens of literary analysis and theory, it conceptualizes the potential of New Materialism as a timely mode of critique toward the current human condition and its effect on literature and the present. Organized around the key New Materialist concepts of entanglement and speculation, the chapters by renowned literary scholars and theorists approach literary texts and theory from onto-epistemological and speculative realist perspectives. Both concepts critically bespeak our precarious relation to matter during the Anthropocene. Entanglement analyzes this human inference with the material environment and its consequences, while speculation makes palpable our cognitive limits in grasping these consequences and our continued obligation to try to do so. Literature emerges as a site where entanglement and speculation, as well as their alignment, are intensively presented and negotiated. In highlighting these connections, the chapters in this collection bring entanglement and speculation (theory) together to form a critical literary theory fit for the Anthropocene.