Signals Falling: Reading Woolf and Guattari Diffractively for a New Materialist Epistemology

Abstract

This short essay reads diffractively key texts by British novelist and writer Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) and French psychotherapist and philosopher Félix Guattari (1930–1992). The diffractive reading methodology was first proposed by Donna Haraway and Karen Barad. Experimenting with the methodology in single- and coauthored pieces, I have further developed diffractive reading for the immanent epistemology of new materialism. This essay demonstrates through a diffractive reading practice how incorporation and externality, as well as ecology and entanglement, play important roles in a new materialist epistemology.