REFLECTION VS DIFFRACTION

Understanding Diffraction as a Social Practice:
A feeble attempt

''Reflection is (thus) based on the assumption of an ‘I’ who is different and exterior to that which is conceptualizing, an ‘I’ who is separate from the world'' (Lenz Taguchi, 2010)

Reflection

Diffraction

in diffraction the intra-action and connections between human and non-human phenomena are foregrounded. Rather than pondering on the meaning of texts or events, a diffractive methodology focuses on what these phenomena do and what they are connected to (Grosz, 1994)

The 'I'

As individual, separate subject

As interconnected and relational to all organisms and matter

Physics

Reflexivity ‘is implicitly based on the phenomenon of a pattern of light that reflects an actual object or entity (Davies, 2014). Reflection can document difference.

Material world

Reality is constituted through language and that objects and language are separate from each other, thus holding the material world at a distance.

Diffraction moves a step further in that it assumes a direct material engagement and incorporates both things and words – the material-discursive.

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Time space

In a diffractive methodology, time is not perceived linearly, and past and present are not sequential. As Barad (2014, p. 169) puts it ‘Diffractions are
untimely. Time is … broken apart in different directions, non contemporaneous with itself’. Past and
present, ‘presence’ in different parts of the world ‘are enfolded in the entanglement of intra-activity’
(Larson & Phillips, 2013, p. 26).