Diffracting Posthuman/Feminist New Materialist and Care Ethics: Propositions for Slow Scholarship

Abstract: This paper considers how using a diffractive methodology to read care ethics through posthuman ethics to put them into conversation with each other may potentially evoke new insights for Slow scholarship in academia. In using a diffractive methodology, the details of one theory or philosophical position (in this case the political ethics of care) are read attentively and with care through another (feminist posthumanism or feminist new materialism), and interference or diffractive patterns emerge in this process. The paper uses these diffractive patterns to generate propositions for doing Slow scholarship in higher education. In this article, philosophers of posthuman and care ethics whose work is predicated on a relational ethics are diffracted through each other to come to new insights into ethical concepts or moral elements – drawn from Joan Tronto’s political ethics of care and Karen Barad’s, Donna Haraway’s, and Vinciane Despret’s feminist new materialist ethics, which are also referred to as posthuman ethics. The paper focuses on ethical concepts that are important in their work and which I consider to be fruitful for engaging in Slow scholarship. In particular, the paper focuses on attentiveness , responsibility/accountability, rendering each other capable/competence , response-ability/responsiveness and trust/ongoingness, which are derived from a superposition or diffraction of these theorists’ work. The paper proposes a number of propositions for potential ways of thinking-with what matters and what is at stake from a politico-ethico-onto-epistemological orientation for Slow scholarship.