Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning

I bet you didn't know that there was such a thing as feminist quantum physics, but here you have it.  I love this illustration and the general argument of Karen Barad's Meeting the Universe Halfway which, like Bruno Latour's work, examines the social construction - the genealogy - of science and the ways of life that such science gives birth to.

In the hierarchy of human dream-worlds this is pretty stratospheric stuff - but it circles around to the foundations, to our most basic relationship with matter itself.  So it really isn't feminist, or it is, but the point being that feminism is not just for women or about women, but as it grows and deepens it has become about all of us, even non-human, non-living matter itself, and how our conception of matter can work itself free from certain cultural assumptions which could be summed up as 'might makes right'.  So we come to understand that we don't discover the universe - we being us mighty humans and the universe being particles that we have the right to experiment upon,  blow up, cause to collide, etc. - but that the kinds of instruments and apparatus that we build to measure the universe determines the universe that we find. And further that the kinds of instruments that we build are shaped by the social world in which we develop, with all of the assumptions encoded in that world.  So for instance a social world that has been set up to reward physical might (and males generally are bigger and stronger than females) will find a universe where physical power - a physics of force and leverage, a biology of competition -  are defining features.  But other possibilities are possible, and feminism helps offer that to everyone.

Quantum physics, in this illustration, looks a bit like one of Lynn Margulis' microbes, don't you think?

Elm Tree Farm (cont.)

My earliest memory is of coming downstairs in the morning in my red flannel nightie with white feather-stitching on it, and sitting in Grandfather’s lap in front of the dining room fireplace, until Mother was ready to dress me.  I was three or four.  I remember, too, following Grandfather about as he raked leaves in the yard and took them in the wheelbarrow to the barn for bedding.   I could ride in the wheelbarrow on the return trips.

I’ve been told that I tried to imitate him by planting my feet as he did and walking with my head bowed in deep thought, with my hands clasped behind me, and was mightily indignant at a burst  of laughter it caused.

Grandfather died when he was eighty-four, one April day, in some way I slipped into the room where he lay, and probably unnoticed, I saw and heard his labored breathing.  Pneumonia is too much for one of his years.

The funeral service was long.  As was the custom, I presume there was a sermon.  I remember kneeling at my small chair and also remember singing.  I sang myself; everybody sang.  One thing they sang, “Shall We Gather at the River”.  Perhaps none of you of a younger generation have ever heard it.  The music is sweet and has a note of triumph too. The words are so different from many hymns in use today, I’ll write down the first verse:

     “Shall we gather at the river

      Where bright angel feet have trod,

      With its crystal tide forever

      Flowing by the feet of God?

Chorus

      Yes we’ll gather at the river

      The beautiful, the beautiful river

      Gather with the saints at the river

      That flows by the throne of God.”

I was not taken to the grave, but I saw them put the coffin with Grandfather in it in the hearse.  Perhaps old pictures will give you youngsters an idea of the difference between a hearse of 1876, and the present day.  I remember that one, I was only three and one half years old.

Grandfather’s property was divided between Aunt Louise Goddard and Father.  Father had the farm, what else I do not know.

Of course remembrance of incidents at this tender age is somewhat sketchy.  It was probably later in the spring of the year Grandfather died that I had an adventure with, of all things, a summer yellow bird.

Out side one of the windows of the sitting room grew a beautiful honeysuckle bush, or tree.  The window was open and Mother sat by it sewing.  I was playing around outside and found the shell of a bird’s egg on the ground under the honeysuckle tree.  A pair of yellow birds had their nest in the tree and the shell had been pushed out.  Of course I was interested and picked up the shell.  Those birds were as brave as if they were big as elephants and flew screaming and scolding at me lighting on my head, and scaring me almost to death.  Of course Mother came to the rescue but by the time she arrived those birds had so tangled their feet in my curls that she had to cut away hair to free them.

Along about that time too, I got the scar on my arm.  Mother had gone to Genesee and left me with good, kind Mag Shaw who was helping her in the kitchen at the time.  Tom and the hired man got into some kind of frolic.  The hired man was chasing Tom with a corn knife in his hand.  I wanted to see the fun, but of course got in the way, and the man fell over me giving me a wicked cut.  I don’t remember this part of it, but I do remember being stood up on the kitchen table after Mother got home, and how she and Mag Shaw cried when they undid the bandage to look at the cut. 

Unconscious

at night we revert to our animal selves
walk our dreams
untrammeled by reason
open skies
dark trees
a merry-go-round
old songs
can't even follow us
back there

red riding hood would lurk on wolf-haunted lanes
a path to the withered goddess
cinderella sacrifices farm animals
hunch-backed horse and chicken-legged hut
breadcrumbs glow in the forest

in the morning
I put on my name again
my nationality and my skin
take up arms
and functions
though why I've forgotten
why