I’ve been trying to get my head around why posthumanists assert that diffractive thinking is more useful than reflection. Karen Barad uses optical analogies throughout her agential realist treatise and I want to play around with her ideas using images and some creative thinking. Truly understanding this holds great importance for the methods I employ in research as well as my research in transitions. Reflection and reflexivity (personal transformation as a result of reflection) are core components of qualitative and transition research. If an alternative idea works better, I need to own it.

Reflection

Barad talks about reflection in terms of a mirror and reflexivity as a mirror of mirrors.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? That’s what I do when I look in a mirror. I check myself out. Am I too fat? Do I look good in this colour? This…