Quantising Post-critique: Entangled Ontologies and Critical International Relations
| Author | Michael P. A. Murphy |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0305829820971709 |
| Subject Matter | Book Forum |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829820971709
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2020, Vol. 49(1) 175 –185
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829820971709
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1. Laura Zanotti, Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations:
Exploring the Crossroads (London: Routledge, 2019).
2. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of
Matter and Meaning (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).
Quantising Post-critique:
Entangled Ontologies and
Critical International Relations
Michael P. A. Murphy
University of Ottawa, Canada
Keywords
quantum international relations, critical theory, international ethics
All research communities have questions that hang around conference panels, book
reviews, and other forms of commentary; the community of quantum international rela-
tions (IR) is dogged by the question of actuality and analogy. Namely, when one picks up
the conceptual tools of quantum theory, does this entail a claim about actual quantum
processes, structures, and relations, or a claim that quantum concepts can provide useful
analogies for thinking about a social world whose physical macroscopic Newtonianism
is not directly problematised? In many ways, this is a question from without – there is no
actualist/analogist schism at the proverbial heart of quantum IR that divides the com-
munity as the mythology of IR describes in the inter-paradigm debate – but that does not
mean that insiders can move past the question simply because it does not aid in under-
standing a particular intervention. If we make claims about a quantum reality, what
experimental data do we assemble? If we are introducing new analogies, what do we add
that was not there before?
Laura Zanotti’s Ontological Entanglements1 charts a third course, suspending specula-
tion on physical reality and referring to analogy only in reviewing past theories. Drawing
on Karen Barad’s2 philosophy of feminist materialism and quantum theory of agential
Corresponding author:
Michael P. A. Murphy, School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, 7005-120 University Private,
Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada.
Email: mmurp078@uOttawa.ca
971709MIL0010.1177/0305829820971709Millennium: Journal of International StudiesMurphy
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