Claiming
a title carries with it certain privileges and responsibilities: husband,
father, doctor, horseman, storyteller.
Each of these textures personal integrity, and a title is not taken on
lightly, especially if you believe, as I do, that integrity stands alongside
truth and it requires walking the talk. Sometimes
a title just feels off. Perhaps it’s compromised due to the
way others have worn it. Perhaps a
modifier or a compound noun offers the alteration needed to make a better
fit. For example, “natural”
horsemanship distinguishes the quality of riding that’s part of my identity as
different from that associated with breaking
horses.
Wearing
the label “storyteller” in academic circles is rather like putting the kick-me sign on my backside. So imagine my interest upon seeing the
term Quantum Storytelling. Like the incantation of a fairy
godmother, Quantum might transform a
creature out of the frog pond and into the Royal Court of Physics. At least it might make the Council of
Deans wonder: So is storytelling more than glorified show&tell? Is it possible that he does more than reading
aloud nursery rhymes?
There’s
privilege—but then along comes responsibility. Tacking quantum in
front of storytelling requires wading
into the murky territory of quantum physics. Yuck. Well, at
least physicist/feminist Karen Barad promises that the mathematics in her
explication does not exceed multiplication. In her 544-page Meeting
the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and
Meaning, she asserts instead (and accurately, in my judgment) that:
“The challenge is in following the arguments, and this takes care and
sometimes more than a bit of patience, especially when the results run counter
to one's intuition. The issues in the foundations of quantum mechanics are
subtle and complex, and therefore it is crucial that we rigorously engage with
the issues, paying careful attention to the necessary details” (p. 248).
The density of Barad’s
text owes much to the multiplicity of meanings in contested concepts where reality, cause-effect, material, measurement,
and much more play like chameleons along the physical/metaphysical borderland.
Quantum,
as its applications in physics have proven deadly serious, also merits the
highest level of cognitive and ethical attention in the world of story. To
claim quantum storytelling, we’ll
have to confront the hegemonic paradigm that Barad articulates as the worldview
around classical physics:
Representationalism, metaphysical individualism, and humanism work hand
in hand, holding this worldview in place. These forces have such a powerful
grip on contemporary patterns of thought that even some of the most concerted
efforts to escape the grasp of these anthropocentric forces have failed. Niels
Bohr's philosophy-physics poses an energetic challenge not only to Newtonian
physics and metaphysics but to representationalism and concordant
epistemologies, such as conventional forms of realism and social
constructivism, as well (pp. 134-135).
Barad
challenges us on getting lost in representation and emphasizes the risk of
metaphor. While I love the
symbolic, I like her point; just as any rider should also muck stalls, anyone
engaging in policy or theory should regularly get in the grime of poverty to
avoid being vaporized in talk-about.
Perhaps the most compelling reason I ride horses comes in the close
contact with physical experience.
That’s what drives the power of symbols. The body fires imagination and fuses applications beyond the
dressage arena as well as within it.
Each touch of more subtle ask-trust-release-response that’s generated in
good riding fuels capacity for better engagement in the power dimensions of any
relationship: husband-wife, teacher-student, human-environment, and on.
While
quantum storytelling is still storytelling and a celebration of the
imagination, a close cousin to metaphysics, my teeth grind when the body gets
overly neglected. Storytelling
easily goes too new-age-y; it needs to be coupled with real social justice, with
personal health, with all-my-relations.
The quantum physics, as told by Barad, serves this purpose. Matter stands tall, inseparable from
mattering.
As
we work to establish the significance, the distinctive meaning and purpose of quantum storytelling, we would do well
to consider these three conceptual forces (representationalism, metaphysical individualism, and humanism) because their tentacles grip existing
forms of storytelling and other symbolic structures as well as classical
physics. I wince when storytelling
plays in fairy tales and fails to translate into matter; equally painful is the
personal story that sustains injustice and isolation because it doesn’t move
past the arrogance of humanism. Barad
models the issues of this force with special application to physics. Those of us who work with story
for social justice can learn from her lead.
The
challenge of going against a prevailing worldview, especially when it’s
penetrated through the collective unconscious as well as entrenched in the
personal and cultural status system, looms large. Barad’s elaboration of quantum offers storytellers a
powerful partner; we only have to meet the universe halfway.
