Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists: Quantizing Critique 9783030601102, 9783030601119

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Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists Quantizing Critique

Michael P. A. Murphy

Palgrave Studies in International Relations

Series Editors Mai’a K. Davis Cross Northeastern University Boston, MA, USA Benjamin de Carvalho Norwegian Institute of International Affairs Oslo, Norway Shahar Hameiri University of Queensland St. Lucia, QLD, Australia Knud Erik Jørgensen University of Aarhus Aarhus, Denmark Ole Jacob Sending Norwegian Institute of International Affairs Oslo, Norway Ay¸se Zarakol University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK

Palgrave Studies in International Relations (the EISA book series), published in association with European International Studies Association, provides scholars with the best theoretically-informed scholarship on the global issues of our time. The series includes cuttingedge monographs and edited collections which bridge schools of thought and cross the boundaries of conventional fields of study. EISA members can access a 50% discount to PSIR, the EISA book series, here http://www.eisa-net.org/sitecore/content/be-bruga/mci-registrat ions/eisa/login/landing.aspx. Mai’a K. Davis Cross is the Edward W. Brooke Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University, USA, and Senior Researcher at the ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Norway. Benjamin de Carvalho is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Norway. Shahar Hameiri is Associate Professor of International Politics and Associate Director of the Graduate Centre in Governance and International Affairs, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, Australia. Knud Erik Jørgensen is Professor of International Relations at Aarhus University, Denmark, and at Ya¸sar University, Izmir, Turkey. Ole Jacob Sending is the Research Director at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Norway. Ay¸se Zarakol is Reader in International Relations at the University of Cambridge and a fellow at Emmanuel College, UK.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14619

Michael P. A. Murphy

Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists Quantizing Critique

Michael P. A. Murphy University of Ottawa Ottawa, ON, Canada

Palgrave Studies in International Relations ISBN 978-3-030-60110-2 ISBN 978-3-030-60111-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60111-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank Mark Salter, who has not only offered support and guidance throughout my Ph.D. studies, but who has also trusted me to explore a variety of scholarly interests. Without that freedom, the book would not have been possible. While quantum theory never fails to raise eyebrows when introduced to an unsuspecting audience, I was lucky enough to receive thoughtful engagement from a series of professors who were willing to take my early quantum (thought) experiments seriously. I am forever grateful for the thought-provoking comments from Jacqueline Best on one of my first steps down the quantum path, which challenged me to think precisely about how the contribution fits into the broader context of critical social theory. Thank you to Pascale Massot, who impressed upon me the importance of making sure the reader knew why quantum was necessary, and Miguel de Larrinaga, who pushed me to clarify how quantum IR fit into other developments. Thank you to Jovan Groen, a great boss and friend, for taking the time to check in on book progress at our research team meetings. I have benefitted greatly from the collegiality of the quantum IR community. Thanks are due to Alexander Wendt and James Der Derian for their leadership in setting a friendly, supportive, and inquisitive tone to this growing group. Thank you to Laura Zanotti and Christopher McIntosh for joining me at every single conference thus far on the journey, and to our fellow co-panellists Peter Katzenstein, Daniel Little, Sengul Yildiz Alanbay, Kailey Taplin, Timothy Shaw, Morten Ougaard, v

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Badredine Arfi, Patricia Palacios, Mark Salter, Genco Guralp, Alexandra Hofer, Jed Odermatt, Bentley Allan and Laura Sjoberg. Thank you to the broader quantum community from whose contact I have benefitted greatly including Scott Hamilton, Nadine Voelkner, and my panel organizing partner Leonardo Orlando. My first experiences in putting these quantum ideas out into the world received thoughtful and challenging questions, at ISA conferences in Toronto, Baltimore, Providence, and Memphis, the Northeastern Political Science Association in Montreal, the University of Lethbridge’s Critical Border Studies conference, and a talk at the Queen’s University Centre for International and Defence Policy. I must recognize in particular Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Bill Kakenmaster, Stéphanie Martel, Sheila McManus, Anne McNevin, Kim Richard Nossal, and Julie Young. As my first scholarly book, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Sarah Roughley, Geetha Chockalingam, and the teams at Palgrave Macmillan and Springer Nature. Thank you to the reviewers for your thoughtful engagement with the work, and to the series editors. No book is written entirely alone, and I am lucky enough to have the support of many scholarly friends. Thank you to Amelia Arsenault, Andrew Heffernan, Kailey Taplin, and Michael Wigginton for extensive and insightful comments on early drafts, and to Jocelyn Kane for a writing group that helped push the book over its final hurdles. I am grateful to my Aunt Deb Murphy for being the first “general audience” reader of the book, and for careful comments on how to make chapter two more readable. Finally, I would like to thank my family. I am very fortunate to have such wonderful people for parents, in-laws, and extended family. I appreciate your support of this experimental adventure (and the meals, emails, and texts of encouragement). But most of all, thank you to Sara. Without your patience, understanding, and support, this project would have been simply unimaginable (similar to the way I describe in Chapter 1). This work is dedicated to you.

Contents

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Introduction: Uncertainty, Paradoxes, and Critical Intuition

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Part I From the Laboratory to the Social World 2

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Quantum Mechanics for Social Scientists: Wave/Particle Duality, Observer Effect, Entanglement

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Analogy or Actuality? How Social Scientists Are Taking the Quantum Leap

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Part II

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Quantizing Critique through Translation and Application

Translating on Common Ground: Borders, Autoethnography, Assemblages

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Applying a Quantum Imaginary: The Example of “Quactor”-Network Theory

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CONTENTS

Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions

Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Uncertainty, Paradoxes, and Critical Intuition

Abstract In this introductory chapter, I make the case for an alliance between quantum social theory and critical approaches to International Relations. I outline key concepts for the remainder of the book, including the notion of critique, the importance of a physical imaginary in social science, and outline the structure of the book. I suggest how the book can be used as a guidebook, toolbox, and reference work and introduce the “Further Reading” sections appearing in all subsequent chapters. Keywords Quantum social theory · Critical International Relations · Critique

Introduction The research community of quantum social theory has grown rapidly in the last decade and a half with the publication of books by Karen Barad (2007), Emmanuel Haven and Andrei Khrennikov (2013, 2017), Alexander Wendt (2015), and Laura Zanotti (2019). While the two earliest interventions noted here come from the disciplines of philosophy of science and finance, respectively, the latter two projects emerge from the growing “quantum community” within the discipline of International © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. P. A. Murphy, Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60111-9_1

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Relations (IR). Recent regional and annual conventions of the International Studies Association have seen a plethora of panel discussions and roundtables, alongside the Project Q symposia series at the University of Sydney and other events at the Ohio State University’s Mershon Centre and OP Jindal Global University’s Centre for Complexity Economics, Applied Spirituality, and Public Policy (CEASP). While much of the early attention in International Relations has been paid particularly to Wendt’s Quantum Mind and Social Science, the quantum IR community in fact includes a diverse set of approaches to the quantum question.1 Wendt’s pitch is grounded in what I will later call “quantum realism,” and he argues that there is a quantum reality to the social world, scaling quantum coherence from the smallest (panpsychist) subatomic particles in our brain neurons to the largest social phenomena. From this point, Wendt’s quantum social theory proceeds as a positivist enterprise that reports the world as it is actually constructed through quantum processes and interactions. Wendt’s compelling book and the sustained attention it has received in the half-decade since its release means that when people hear about quantum IR, there is sometimes an assumption that one is speaking of a Wendtian quantum realism—but as Wendt himself acknowledges, there are multiple approaches to quantum thinking. The strong association of “quantum IR” with Wendt’s hard pitch for quantum realism has led many critical IR scholars to view the whole project with scepticism. Frequently, panels are questioned if the quantum project is but mere fetishism of science, a positivist project lacking in laboratory evidence, or an unnecessary import of complicated terminology to describe mechanisms and relations that can be adequately described in more established social-scientific or -theoretic language. While scepticism is encouraged and concerns about scientific fetishism and other issues are valid, it is my hope that the simultaneous recognition of the pluralism of quantum IR (on the part of new readers) and clearer articulation of the value of quantum social theory for existing research communities (on the part of quantum social theorists) would serve to assuage many concerns that critical IR scholars may have about quantum approaches. There is no one way to bring quantum thinking into International Relations, and just because one pathway appears problematic does 1 This point is made directly by James Der Derian and Alexander Wendt (2020) in their introduction to a special issue of Security Dialogue on “Quantum Approaches to International Theory and Security Practice.”

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not mean that any kind of quantum journey is similarly fraught. Just as critical scholars of International Relations do not assess the critical utility of IR theory writ large through an evaluation of political realism alone, the reluctance to accept a hard pitch of quantum realism should not dissuade engagement with similarly critical approaches to quantum social theory.2 This is not to say that a hearty dose of scepticism is unwarranted, but that dialogue with friendly interlocutors will prove most welcoming for critical IR scholars. I will focus in this book on how quantum social theory presents an intuitive vocabulary for scholars of critical IR. This introductory discussion will briefly explore how quantum mechanics and critical IR remain open to uncertainty and paradox and introduce the concept of the “Newtonian imaginary” before explaining the structure of the main text. Identifying the common ground between quantum mechanics (or quantum social theory) and critical IR serves to foreground why “quantizing critique” through translation and application of core concepts in quantum social theory will in fact present an intuitive vocabulary for many critical IR scholars. Both quantum mechanics and critical IR interrogate rather than gloss uncertain and paradoxical elements of reality. The preliminary exploration of the common ground shared by what we might call the quantum and critical dispositions offers encouragement for future engagement with the topic. The discussion turns to a consideration of a core idea that appears throughout the book—the physical imaginary. Given the importance of language and thinking in structuring our range of experience with the world as researchers,3 I argue that an important part of quantizing critique consists of interrogating how Newtonian assumptions are embedded in social science. As will be discussed below, moving from a Newtonian to a quantum physical imaginary is a key step on the journey to realizing the new questions that open up when we quantize our modes of critique.

2 For example, see how Mathias Albert and Felix Bathon engage with particular elements of quantum social theory in comparison with systems theory, investigating “overlaps and similarities that could be put to complementary analytical use” (2020, 1). 3 For example, Carol Cohn’s (1987a, b) work on the limits of nuclear strategy language in evaluating the human costs of nuclear war is discussed later in this introduction in Chapter 4.

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Critical IR and Quantum Theory: In Search of Common Ground The history of “critical IR” is as complex and contingent upon significant but arbitrary delineations as the subject matter it interrogates. One common narrative claims an origin in the work of R.W. Cox, especially in his oft-cited division between critical theory and problem-solving theory (1981), similarly expressed as “dissident thought” in a formative special issue of International Studies Quarterly (Ashley and Walker 1990). The critical project in IR grew through pluralizing, opening up space for new objects of study, theoretical frameworks, and methodological designs, all motivated to ask a new set of questions about the world—the mission was not to solve problems of efficiency for policy-makers, but to “stan[d] apart from the prevailing order of the world and as[k] how the order came about” (Cox 1981, 129). While Cox’s formulation calls both for the questioning of the prevailing order and the pursuit of transformational politics—in a move similar to but distinct from Horkheimer’s separation of critical and traditional theory (Brincat 2016)—the trajectory of critical IR often now focuses more on the former mission than the latter (see Hynek and Chandler 2013). The moniker of “critical IR,” then, is at its most valuable as a separation of approaches seeking to question prevailing wisdom from other approaches which are then cast as precisely that prevailing wisdom to be questioned. For the purposes of this book, I will bracket the gatekeeping debates internal to various communities of research, including the necessity of forwarding emancipatory political aims. I take a big-tent perspective on critical scholarship that includes all communities following Cox’s call to question the prevailing order rather than to solve its problems or tinker around the edges. Holding this definition follows Cox’s strategic move4 rather than his substantive concern with emancipation. The effectiveness of this strategic move is not lost on proponents of “critical” subfields, demonstrated clearly in the editorial launches of recent

4 This strategic move by Cox, “lump[ing] pluralist approaches in to the category of problem-solving theory,” places the burgeoning critical project on equal terms (as one of two possible perspectives) with well-established liberal and realist positions (Hoffman 1987, 241), representing critical theory as “the next stage in the development of International Relations theory” (Hoffman 1987, 244).

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journals, including Critical Studies on Terrorism (Breen Smyth et al. 2008), Critical Studies on Security (Mutimer et al. 2013), and Critical Military Studies (Basham et al. 2015). While the subjects covered and methodologies employed in these and other self-identified “critical” research communities vary widely, membership in the big-tent definition of critical IR entails a shared desire to question in new ways and favour precise details over predictability. The rise of quantum mechanics can be seen as a moment similar to the rise of critical IR. As many commentators from the philosophy of science have noted (e.g. Kuhn 2012), everyday activity in scientific research aims for marginal progress that solves minor problems of the day before, and grand revolutions can only come about when the dominant paradigm collapses under the weight of contradictions. The development of quantum mechanics out of classical mechanics did not happen immediately, but was possible only because of paradoxical elements of Newtonian science which sojourned in the liminal space of the “Old Quantum Theory.” Here, the central mission of people like Planck, Einstein, and Bohr was to find new ways of accounting for the number of conceptual problems evident in Newtonian physics’ explanations of microscopic phenomena that grew steadily as experimental technologies and mathematical models became more sophisticated. Einstein’s 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect is notable to this end precisely because he is explicit about finding a new way to look at the problem from the very title: “On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light” (Einstein 2005). It was clear that, to progress, physicists would have to change course and develop a new imaginary that permitted new kinds of questions to be asked about the microworld than were possible within the conceptual apparatus of Newtonian science. Much like the parallel sometimes posited between Newton and Einstein within physics circles, the parallel here posited between quantum physics and critical IR clearly does not approach homology.5 The birth of quantum physics included no emancipatory goal, and critical IR never

5 In her investigation on the economic roots of counterinsurgency operations, Patricia

Owens (2015, 7) draws on the concept of the homology, saying that “we can say that there is a homology when there is a correspondence of type of structure—although not necessarily of function—between things. To make a claim of homology is obviously a much stronger argument than analogy, to claim a resemblance, a likely in form or function.” See also Murphy (2020).

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sought out the experimental mainstreaming of quantum field theory’s standard model. There are a number of significant differences; however, the base claim that moving to a place of greater understanding demands a fundamental shift in the types of questions asked and the heuristics within which we view the object of study exists at root of both scholarly projects. Unsatisfied with contradictions and shortcomings of what came before, early quantum physicists and critical IR scholars both proceed in search of new conceptual territory. A secondary source of common ground is found in the role played by uncertainty. Whereas Newtonian physics offers a predictive model based on the laws of motion, quantum mechanics encounters greater uncertainty (for reasons to be discussed later) as more precise measurements are sought out—however, as Richard Feynman once remarked, even though “nature permits us to calculate only probabilities…science has not collapsed” (2006, 19). Similarly, while many in the tradition of International Relations concerned with explaining regularities6 may gloss over (or bracket) contradictory details in search of predictions that abide rational choice and game-theoretic assumptions, critical theory has largely eschewed this aim. Instead, a focus on understanding the development of phenomena leads critical scholars to examine interactions in uncertain spaces not to predict future outcomes but to understand key processes (e.g. Best 2008, 2012). Again, in parallel and not as homology, both approaches are attuned to the fundamental reality of uncertainty. What will become clear through the following chapter is the extent to which this similarity between quantum mechanics and critical International Relations allows core concepts of the former to travel well into the spaces of inquiry of the latter, offering new points of view for the continuing task of understanding the fundamentally uncertain sphere of world politics.

Physical Assumptions, Imaginaries, and Their Limitations The critique of scientific hypothesis-testing as an approach to studying International Relations is not a new critique, circulating for decades as of writing. At the turn of the millennium, Steven Bernstein and colleagues (2000) took aim at predictive accounts of IR inspired by Newtonian

6 See Hollis and Smith (1990) for the explaining/understanding differentiation.

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physics for their tendencies, first, to (over)simplify complex realities, and second, to nevertheless fail to establish a coherent predictive account based on that simplified theory. If the impact of Newtonian physics on the discipline of IR extended only to the importance of testing for regularities and predictions in methodological design, that would be a significant impact. But this goes further. Epistemologically, as Wendt (2015) has argued, social sciences have long been bound by the causal closure of physics. He remarks that regardless of how far their specific methodologies may travel away from positivism, he “know[s] no interpretivist, post-modernist, or other critic of naturalistic social science who says that social phenomena can violate the laws of physics” (Wendt 2015, 10). In addition to what we might call a prestige constraint, where we see evidence of Newtonian social science in IR by the high value accorded to predictions, regularities, and theorization of abstracted laws, we find an epistemological constraint, where by assuming that our area of inquiry abides the causal closure of physics our findings can only abide them. While not all IR scholars abide the first limit, the second is virtually omnipresent.7 There is another level to this discussion of how Newtonian assumptions structure and delimit the scope of International Relations, the Newtonian-substantialism identified by Laura Zanotti (2017, 2019). Newtonian substantialism is an ontological orientation that assumes that entities exist before their interactions and that analysis of relations should focus on the entities that are related.8 While classic cases of substantialist assumptions at work would be the same rational choice variants of political realism that prestige and causal closure clearly identify as Newtonian, Zanotti (2019, Chapter 2) argues that it is not merely agentfocused accounts but also structural approaches associated with figures ranging from Kenneth Waltz to Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. Indeed, the deployment of governmentality as a conceptual tool useful in describing liberalism or capitalism, for example, “constructs a critique of the liberal international order that presupposes that power and subjects 7 Wendt (2015) notes that many interpretivist approaches will exhibit characteristics of “naturalism-plus,” where the investigation abides by the causal closure of physics for its material and physical reality and then adds on an additional social dimension without interrogating its status. 8 See Jackson and Nexon (1999) for discussion of the difference between substantialism and relationalism preceding the introduction of quantum social theory.

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are entities possessing qualities that pre-exist relations” (Zanotti 2019, 25). When critical concepts are applied as ready-made tools of analysis, they share in a Newtonian-substantialist ontology that limits any ability to ask question that does not presume pre-existing entities (i.e. an oppressive structure) or relata (i.e. capitalist and worker) prior to relations. Zanotti’s critique of Newtonian-substantialist ontology leads to her core argument that we must move towards an alternative, non-Newtonian, entangled ontology (2019, 4 and passim) if we are to envision a new ethical framework. While the importance of identifying the Newtonian assumptions underlying different social science approaches has been argued well by Wendt and Zanotti, I would like to suggest that the full promise of quantizing critique is that it allows us to move beyond a Newtonian physical imaginary. I define an imaginary as the set of assumptions that sketches the contours of the possible within which a theory can operate. An imaginary is a boundary of the infinite,9 limiting the space within which all things are possible. For example, certain patriarchal political imaginaries may allow for an infinite number of policies to be enacted, but they will remain bounded by (if not blinded to) their patriarchal foundations. Similarly, a capitalist economic imaginary may consider an infinite number of adjustments, but never question the doctrine of private property. In this vein, I would like to suggest that the Newtonian constraints identified above constitute the Newtonian physical imaginary of International Relations—even if there are a seemingly infinite number of approaches to the topic, all are constrained by the onto-epistemological assumptions of Newtonian physics. The project of this book is to move forward by opening up a new physical imaginary where new kinds of questions can be asked. Opening up a quantum physical imaginary for International Relations extends the boundary of the infinite to open up new spaces where new political possibilities can be explored—but there is also a descriptive advantage speaking to the first part of Cox’s definition of critical theory. Familiarity breeds oversight, and, in the words of Milja Kurki, “we must think our conceptual foundations anew if we are to think politics properly, let alone anew” (2020, 572). The landmark investigation 9 To take a simple example of how infinities can be bound to different sizes, there are an infinite number of fractions between 1 and 2, and an infinite number of fractions between 1 and 3. But the boundary between 1 and 3 is larger than that between 1 and 2.

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by Carol Cohn into the language of defence intellectuals clearly illustrates this point, through what we might call an interrogation of their linguistic imaginary. Cohn describes her experience of participating in a summer course on nuclear strategy, with one important component of the course being the mastery of “technostrategic” language (1987a, 690). I quote at length here from a significant passage where Cohn reflects upon the impact that learning this language had on the ways in which she was able to express herself: I found, however, that the better I got at engaging in this discourse, the more impossible it became for me to express my own ideas, my own values. I could adopt the language and gain a wealth of new concepts and reasoning strategies—but at the same time the language gave me access to things I had been unable to speak about before, it radically excluded others. I could not use the language to express my concerns because it was physically impossible. This language does not allow certain questions to be asked or certain values to be expressed. (Cohn 1987a, 708)

The technostrategic linguistic imaginary may well have captured an infinite array of missile arrangements, logics of deterrence, casualty calculations, and so on, but the human element was unimaginable—and I mean unimaginable here in a technical sense. That technostrategic language set a boundary where an infinite number of things were imaginable, but others simply were not. My wager is that Newtonian physics provides the same kind of boundary when constituting the physical imaginary of social science. In a world of substantialism, relata before relations, and the search for reductive predictability, important elements of the rich complexity of life are simply unimaginable. By adopting a quantum physical imaginary for critical International Relations—in other words, by quantizing critique—we can literally imagine the unimaginable.

The Structure of the Book The book is divided into two sections—the first introduces quantum mechanics and quantum social theory, while the second half demonstrates two strategies of quantizing critique. Chapter 2 introduces quantum mechanics through three of its core concepts: the wave/particle duality, the observer effect, and entanglement. These three concepts are introduced within the general history of quantum mechanics’ early development out of Newtonian physics, and—in the spirit of an introductory

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volume—I seek to minimize specific jargon where possible, and leave the mathematical formalism aside. The third chapter canvasses prior efforts in approaching social theory (or social science) from a quantum perspective. This chapter discusses why the intuitive framing of quantum social theory by degree of actuality-versus-analogy misses the key insight of quantizing as a way of thinking about the social world and discusses existing interventions. There are many roads to quantum social theory, and reviewing the different epistemological claims made in prior attempts aids in breaking down the assumption that there is only one way to “do” quantum social theory. The pursuit of a critical quantum IR is the pursuit of a new and open space for questioning. The second half of the book pursues the project of quantizing critique through two paths: translation and application. The fourth chapter focuses on the strategy of quantizing critique through translation. This strategy proceeds by highlighting existing elements of critical IR that are commensurable with the assumptions of a quantum imaginary, before exploring how the translation of these conversations into the quantum vernacular can facilitate connections across different critical traditions and a more direct articulation of the critical method. Following the core concepts explored in the second chapter, this discussion centres around the homology of: (1) critical border studies’ paradoxical ontology of “the border” to the wave/particle duality, (2) autoethnographic and reflexive scholarship on the one hand and the quantum phenomenon of the observer effect on the other, and (3) entangled ontology and assemblage-thinking in IR. The fifth chapter explores quantizing through application. Rather than cross-fertilizing insights from different critical traditions, the technique of quantizing through application approaches an ongoing difficulty or problematic paradox in critical scholarship that cannot be solved within a Newtonian ontology. Stated differently, the application model of quantizing critique explores the ability of quantum conceptual tools to help us think past areas where our thinking has stagnated or encountered seemingly insurmountable difficulties. The example explored in that chapter is of a quantized version of actor-network theory. While the strength of actor-network theory has been its in-depth and microsociological explanations of social (and scientific) phenomena, it has been criticized for its inability to account for macrostructural forces experienced as real and deleterious in society (such as patriarchy, racism, sexism, economic injustice, and other inequalities). Because these forces

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are invisible to the ontology of actor-network theory, the very possibility of their existence becomes paradoxical at best and unfathomable at worst. An approach that “quantizes” actor-network theory conceptualizes existing microsociological methodologies as investigations into the particle-like nature of social phenomena, remaining open to the existence of structural (wave-like) effects without discrediting or foreclosing upon the insights of the microsociological methodology. The concluding section reflects upon the argument posited here that mobilization of quantum social theory (particularly in the quantuminspired vein) through concepts-as-tools should be intuitive for and complementary to the existing work of critical IR scholars. This discussion will include a series of potential future encounters between critical quantum IR and un(der)explored critical avenues. As quantum social theory continues to grow beyond International Relations, other new tools will become available to those open to quantizing critique. Critiquing the world as a complex quantum reality opens up a number of important lines of inquiry, opportunities for cross-pollination between critical approaches, and scholarly space for methodological innovation. While I wish for this to be a book that stands on its own to introduce translation and application as critical tools of analysis, I hope that it will further be useful as a reference work and guidebook for quantum IR. As a reference work for readers seeking to understand the quantum conversations going on in International Relations theory, the first half of the book serves as a primer for key concepts and moments in the development of quantum mechanics, as well as an introduction to some significant developments in quantum social theory and quantum IR. For the reader looking to join the quantum conversation, the background sections will be useful in an additional way—for the “further reading” section appearing after the bibliography in each chapter. These point new entrants in the quantum conversation towards important works related to quantum physics, quantum social theory, and quantum International Relations. For those engaging in quantum research in International Relations, or for critical IR scholars open to the possibility of taking their own journey into quantum thinking, the book can serve as a toolbox including two new tools, a review of existing ones, and a concluding discussion pointing to emergent threads. As Alexander Wendt remarks in Quantum Mind and Social Science, “there is still a long way to go before the potential of a quantum social science is realized” (Wendt 2015, 284). Given the earlier development of quantum realism and positivist-oriented social

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sciences proximate to International Relations, this point around work left to do is doubly as true for critical community within quantum IR. Much conceptual ground remains to be explored, and it is my hope that this book will assist others in their quantum leap!

References Albert, Mathias, and Felix Bathon. 2020. Quantum and Systems Theory in World Society: Not Brothers and Sisters but Relatives Still? Security Dialogue 51 (5): 434–449. Ashley, Richard K., and R. B. J. (Rob) Walker. 1990. Introduction—Speaking the Language of Exile: Dissident Thought in International Studies. International Studies Quarterly 34 (3): 259–268. Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Basham, Victoria M., Aaron Belkin, and Jess Gifkins. 2015. Editorial: What Is Critical Military Studies? Critical Military Studies 1 (1): 1–2. Bernstein, Steven, Richard Ned Lebow, Janice Gross Stein, and Steven Weber. 2000. God Gave Physics the Easy Problems: Adapting Social Science to an Unpredictable World. European Journal of International Relations 6 (1): 43– 76. Best, Jacqueline. 2008. Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Risk: Rethinking Indeterminacy. International Political Sociology 2 (4): 355–374. Best, Jacqueline. 2012. Ambiguity and Uncertainty in International Organizations: A History of Debating IMF Conditionality. International Studies Quarterly 56 (4): 674–688. Breen Smyth, Marie, Jeroen Gunning, Richard Jackson, George Kassimeris, and Piers Robinson. 2008. Critical Terrorism Studies—An Introduction. Critical Studies on Terrorism 1 (1): 1–4. Brincat, S. 2016. Traditional, Problem-Solving, and Critical Theory: An Analysis of Horkheimer and Cox’s Setting of the ‘Critical’ Divide. Globalizations 13 (5): 563–577. Cohn, Carol. 1987a. Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals. Signs 12 (4): 687–718. Cohn, Carol. 1987b. Slick’Ems, Glick’Ems, Christmas Trees, and Cookie Cutters: Nuclear Language and How We Learned to Pat the Bomb. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 43 (5): 17–24. Cox, Robert W. 1981. Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10 (2): 126–155.

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Der Derian, James, and Alexander Wendt. 2020. Quantizing International Relations: The Case for Quantum Approaches to International Theory and Security Practice. Security Dialogue 51 (5): 399–413. Einstein, Albert. 2005. On a Heuristic Point of View on the Creation and Transformation of Light. In Einstein’s Miraculous Year: Five Papers and Changed the Face of Physics, ed. John Stachel, 177–198. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Feynman, Richard P. 2006. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Haven, Emmanuel, and Andrei Khrennikov. 2013. Quantum Social Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. Haven, Emmanuel, and Andrei Khrennikov (eds.). 2017. The Palgrave Handbook of Quantum Models in Social Science: Applications and Grand Challenges. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hoffman, Mark. 1987. Critical Theory and the Inter-Paradigm Debate. Millennium 16 (2): 231–250. Hollis, Martin, and Steve Smith. 1990. Explaining and Understanding International Relations. New York: Oxford University Press. Hynek, Nik, and David Chandler. 2013. No Emancipatory Alternative, No Critical Security Studies. Critical Studies on Security 1 (1): 46–63. Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus, and Daniel H. Nexon. 1999. Relations Before States: Substance, Process, and the Study of World Politics. European Journal of International Relations 5 (3): 291–332. Kuhn, Thomas S. 2012. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th, Anniversary ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kurki, Milja. 2020. Multiplicity Expanded: IR Theories, Multiciplicity, and the Potential of Trans-Disciplinary Dialogue. Globalizations 17 (3): 560–575. Murphy, Michael P.A. 2020. The Securitization Audience in Theologico-Political Perspective: Giorgio Agamben, Doxological Acclamations, and Paraconsistent Logic. International Relations 34 (1): 67–83. Mutimer, David, Kyle Grayson, and J. Marshall Beier. 2013. Critical Studies on Security: An Introduction. Critical Studies on Security 1 (1): 1–12. Owens, Patricia. 2015. Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wendt, Alexander. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zanotti, Laura. 2017. Reorienting IR: Ontological Entanglement, Agency, and Ethics. International Studies Review 19: 362–380. Zanotti, Laura. 2019. Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads. New York: Routledge.

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Further Reading As this is intended to be an introductory volume, a list of further reading will appear at the end of each chapter. These will point to useful introductions to quantum mechanics and other interventions into quantum social science, along with a brief explanation of what the reader can expect to find there.

PART I

From the Laboratory to the Social World

CHAPTER 2

Quantum Mechanics for Social Scientists: Wave/Particle Duality, Observer Effect, Entanglement

Abstract This chapter offers a minimal-jargon introduction to quantum physics, its development from Newtonian physics and the Old Quantum Theory, and key experiments. Important figures are introduced, including Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrodinger. The three key concepts introduced in this chapter are the wave/particle duality, the observer effect, and quantum entanglement. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics is introduced, and the conclusion offers a brief discussion of the contested metaphysics of quantum mechanics. Keywords Quantum physics · Wave/particle duality · Observer effect · Entanglement

Introduction The early years of the twentieth century saw two major developments in physics, as the discipline split from a single Newtonian model to a field divided between macroscopic physics based on Einstein’s theory of relativity and microscopic physics based on quantum mechanics. These © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. P. A. Murphy, Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60111-9_2

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two approaches have traditionally worked on different scales—relativistic physics on the very large scale and quantum physics on the very small scale—and one of the major challenges for physicists has been exploring the crossroads between the two approaches (e.g. Smolin 2001). I offer this larger contextual note to emphasize that my focus in this book, about particular concepts within quantum mechanics, represents but one small corner of physics. If we are to update the Newtonian assumptions that have been identified in International Relations theory (e.g. Bernstein et al. 2000; Wendt 2015; Zanotti 2017, 2019), then there are multiple paths that may be explored. My argument is that quantum mechanics offers critical scholars a particularly useful set of conceptual tools for the study of International Relations. Because the purpose of the book is to offer interested non-specialists a demonstration of how quantum mechanics might be a useful resource rather than to provide a detailed introduction to the field, I will by way of preface direct those readers seeking a robust initiation into quantum physics towards one of the excellent volumes intended for an audience of non-physicists. (Recommendations can be found in the “further reading” section at the end of this chapter). As well, from within the quantum International Relations community, Alexander Wendt’s Quantum Mind and Social Science offers a thorough review of key experiments and challenges in quantum mechanics in its opening sections. I follow instead the mission found in John Polkinghorne’s1 study of quantum physics and theology, that “perhaps this proffered hors d’oeuvre might encourage some to sit down to a more substantial meal” (2007, xiii). References will direct readers to much more detailed information, including primary materials from early quantum physics where possible. What follows in this chapter is a brief historical introduction of quantum mechanics and an outline of the three key concepts that will animate the remainder of the book—the wave/particle duality, the observer effect, and entanglement. The concepts are worth reading twice, as their meanings are mutually dependent. For example, the observer effect is necessary to understand particle measurements, but the wave/particle duality must be established for the observer effect 1 Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship is a fascinating book, and there is little doubt that Polkinghorne was the ideal author—for the first decades of his career, he was a professor of mathematical and theoretical physics at Cambridge University before leaving to become an Anglican priest.

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itself to be understood. There is a risk of reductionism whenever one introduces quantum mechanics from the point of view of one concept, precisely because the mature form that we now have access to entails an entirely alternative physical imaginary. The ontologically foundational shift from wave to wave/particle may capture one important element of understanding the photon, but a full appreciation of the quantum imaginary requires acceptance of multiple claims. As the two historical sections demonstrate, quantum physics arose not from the proposition of a fullyformed model but from a problem—the problem of light. Both because of this historical-developmental significance and because light will serve as the homological model for the social, much of this chapter will centre on the wave/particle duality. The three sections on the key concepts that will appear throughout the remainder of the book are organized to make sense to the reader, but they are interdependent parts of the whole quantum imaginary. As I will discuss at the end of the chapter, the meaning of that imaginary still remains unsettled among physicists, and rival interpretations drawing on radically divergent ontological and epistemological assumptions leave a great cloud of uncertainty hovering around the implications of quantum mechanics, over a century after its theorization.

Newtonian and Quantum Physics: The Problem of Light To understand the rise of quantum mechanics, we must begin with the problem of light, where pre-quantum physicists debated whether light was a wave or composed of particles. Isaac Newton was a major proponent of the particle theory of light, which he called “corpuscles,” and offered the image of light as a shower of particles. Measurement has always been on Newton’s side, as “every instrument that has been designed to be sensitive enough to detect weak light has always ended up discovering the same thing: light is made of particles” (Feynman 2006, 15). On the other side of the debate, physicists like Thomas Young pointed to experimental results that demonstrated the overall behaviour of light to manifest wavelike tendencies. This comes down to what von Baeyer describes as “the unique signature of waves”: “the fact that under special circumstances waves can cancel each other out, leaving nothing behind—a trick called

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destructive interference” (2016, 26). By the mid-nineteenth century, the preponderance of physicists tended to side with the wave-theorists.2 Part of the allure of the wave theory of light came from experiments that demonstrated light behaving in ways that would be unimaginable in a framework that assumed a particle theory of light. Young’s oft-described “two-slit” experiment projects a beam of light towards a diaphragm with two slits in it, onto another surface. As many YouTube examples demonstrate, the pattern on the final surface is not—as we might expect—two bright spots directly across from the slits, gradually darkening as distance from the slit increases, but rather a series of bands of light. This is called an interference pattern, the signature of waves referred to in the previous paragraph. Because waves emanate with alternating crests and troughs, interference occurs when simultaneous crests double the waves’ height, and overlapping crests and troughs cancel out any amplitude. A second important experiment came nearly a century after Young and saw physicists wrestle with the problem of blackbody radiation. While an “ordinary body exposed to radiation absorbs some of it and reflects the rest,” this second type of body “is one that perfectly absorbs, and then re-emits, all radiation falling upon it” (Polkinghorne 1985, 5). This discovery of Lord Rayleigh and James Jeans posed a significant problem for classical mechanics, as the existing equations to describe radiation simply could not make sense of the absorption and re-emission of radiation in this manner. Looking back on this period, we might say that the problem emerged from the roughness of the conceptual tools that were available—neither a wave-model nor a particle-model could capture the phenomenon of blackbody radiation alone. Enter now Max Planck, “the reluctant revolutionary,”3 who proposed that energy was absorbed and re-emitted not as waves or particles consistent across all time, but as “discrete packets”—a new concept which he called quanta (Polkinghorne 1985, 6). This idea was not completely wave-like, nor completely particlelike, but a fundamentally new way of describing a small quantity. Soon after, Einstein further developed this concept by postulating that energy 2 While conventional retellings of the story describe physicists persuaded by the facts in isolation, Jay Buchwald (1989) and Karen Barad (2007, 97–100) paint a more complex picture, including the changing nature of scientific theories as such. 3 This title was given by Helge Kragh (2000) in a profile marking the centenary of Planck’s solution to the problem of blackbody radiation.

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emerging from a point does not propagate indefinitely, but is a complete and discrete unit in its interactions with other bodies (2005, 178). What this means is that this small amount of energy—a quantum—will appear as a particle when we measure it, because it is discrete in its interactions. But when we are not measuring it, the quantum of energy will move like a wave, propagating until its next interaction. While Young’s experiment led scientists to state that light was a wave, the lesson of blackbody radiation was that at the smallest level, light had the properties of both wave and particle. The smallest unit was a contradiction in terms, and completely alien to the established physical imaginary, which had models of particle-only and wave-only. But the discovery of quantum properties of light did not mark the final step in the development of quantum physics. For just as the problem of light being either a wave or a particle was “solved,” physicists encountered a new puzzle of how something could paradoxically hold contradictory states.

The Old Quantum Theory and Quantum Mechanics In their oft-cited 1935 textbook Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry, Linus Pauling and E. Bright Wilson sketch out two eras in the development of quantum physics. The first phase, beginning with Max Planck’s identification of the Planck constant in 1900 and Albert Einstein’s introduction of the quantum in 1905,4 progressed slowly over the next two decades, theorizing the wave/particle duality, correspondence, and modelling the atom, among other applications to physical phenomena (Pauling and Wilson 1985, 25–49). The formalization of “quantum matrix calculus” in 1925 by Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger’s “wavefunction equation” of the following year marks the generally-accepted rise of quantum mechanics.5 What separates the post-Heisenberg/Schrodinger-era from the “old quantum theory” is that those earlier ideas tried to make sense of the weird features of the quantum world without completely revising the theory. Put differently, 4 These papers are accessible to an English audience as Planck (1967) and Einstein (2005). 5 These papers are accessible to an English audience as Heisenberg (1967) and Schrodinger (1926).

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they tried modifying their theories instead of revolutionizing them. The advent of new mathematical foundations by Heisenberg and Schrodinger led to a radical rethinking of the world—or, perhaps more precisely, the microscopic world of atoms and photons. Quantum mechanics were a radical break with the past that the “old quantum theory” tried to save. Those early insights that led to the first quantum theories of physics approached physical phenomena in a manner that resonated with experience but without the formal mathematics required for sufficiently reliable predictions. The old quantum theory has an odd status in the history of quantum physics—despite the common knowledge that “the old quantum theory…is not a proper basis…there are many phenomena which receive at least a qualitative explanation in the old quantum theory” (Ter Haar 1967, vii). The general concepts remain useful in explaining some phenomena in a general way, even if the models of quantum mechanics are much more reliable experimentally. Essentially,6 the complexity of the search for proper modelling of the weird quantum world led mechanistic models to be cast aside in favour of mathematical ones (von Baeyer 2016, 41–51). From this point onwards, I will use “quantum physics” in a generic term to refer to the home field of concepts derived from either the old quantum theory or from quantum mechanics, whereas those two terms will refer specifically to either pre- or post-wavefunction versions of quantum physics. For quantum social theorists who seek to stake claims about reality, grounding the conceptual models clearly within the most recent work in quantum mechanics (rather than the old quantum theory) is more important than for those who mine quantum physics for productive metaphors. In the current investigation’s search for viable conceptual tools, specificity in the genealogy of particular concepts is less important than their meanings. The presentation that follows largely fits within the epistemological Copenhagen Interpretation (Herbert 1987), though this is one among many respectable positions taken in the debates on quantum reality.

6 In particular, as Pauling and Wilson note, the original theories ran aground when it came to calculating with half-integral values, disagreements between experiment and model, and a failure to calculate properly transition probabilities, spectral line intensities, and the lack of a sufficient treatment of light dispersal (1985, 48).

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The Wave/Particle Duality As was referred to above, the wave/particle duality lies at the heart of quantum thinking and is the fundamental differentiator between quantum and Newtonian physics. One of the most important mysteries remaining within quantum physics is the relationship between the wave-state and the particle-state, including the shifting from one state to the other. As simply summarized by Marcus Chown, “although naively we may think of quantum behaviour as a property of small things…this is not necessarily so. Quantum behaviour is actually a property of isolated things” (2007, 34). When the photon—the word meaning one unit of light—is isolated from interacting with all other systems, it behaves as a wave and can be modelled probabilistically by the wavefunction equation; when the photon interacts with a measurement device (whether an optical nerve or a photographic plate), it is in a particle-state and precise measurements are possible. As might be expected, the particle-form is more similar to Newtonian physics. Particles can be measured, although with one important caveat—in the case of particular related measurements (called complementary variables), the greater the certainty of one measurement, the less certainty for the other. When we design an apparatus to measure the position of a photon, the interaction between the photon and our measurement apparatus means that we cannot measure the momentum of that photon with certainty. Or, rather, our margin of error in the measurement of momentum is infinite because we have fundamentally disrupted that momentum in our measurement of position. But we are able to identify characteristics of the photon through observation and measurement. Knowledge about the wave is much less direct than the discrete measurements possible in the case of the particle. Indeed, the wave-state of the photon is represented by a mathematical description called a wavefunction. Carlo Rovelli explains the difficulty of understanding what the wavefunction “is” because it does not fit what we might call the linguistic imaginary of everyday experience: In quantum mechanics no object has a definite position, except when colliding headlong with something else. In order to describe it mid-flight, between one interaction and another, we use an abstract mathematical formula which has no existence in real space, only in abstract mathematical

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space. But there’s worse to come: these interact[ions]…do not occur in a predictable way but largely at random. It is not possible to predict where an electron will reappear, but only to calculate the probability that it will pop up here or there. (Rovelli 2014, 15–16)

Whereas Newtonian physics described particles that deterministically followed from laws of motion et cetera, the new quantum world can only offer probabilistic predictions. When we are not directly observing a photon, we can only fully account for its wave-state by calculating all possibilities. The theorization of what the wavefunction is was most infamously discussed in Erwin Schrodinger’s so-called cat paper. In outlining the situation of quantum mechanics at that time, Schrodinger describes how the classical model allowed for neat predictions of values with claims of certainty in a way not possible in the quantum mechanical models. While the classical form of reality remains present in the particle interactions of quantum mechanics, the wave-state is, fittingly, modelled with a wavefunction that offers a “kind of blurring of all variables in one perfectly clear concept” (Schrodinger 1980, 327). The particle behaviour is observable in a manner similar to classical physics, but the only way of determining that we have captured the full picture of the unobserved wave is to include in our calculations—as Schrodinger says—all variables. While the wave nature of a photon is7 a description of the unobserved photon, the wavefunction is the mathematical abstraction of that wave. These calculations turned out to be highly accurate, “imag[ing] the blurring of all variable at every moment just as clearly and faithfully as the classical model does its sharp numerical values” (Schrodinger 1980, 327). The wave/particle duality thus has implications both for the reality of the microscopic world and for the way that we study it. Waves are unobserved phenomena that interfere and particles are precise and observable entities; while the latter can be measured, the former can only be modelled. What does it mean to say that all variables are blurred? While Newtonian models of a photon in motion would track a series of positions that the photon is said to occupy across time, the quantum explanation describes not a series of single positions but a superposition of all potential positions at the indicated times. Rather than knowing that the photon will definitely be in one position at the future time t, there is instead 7 Nota bene that this applies in most explanations of quantum mechanics, but not all.

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a simultaneous consideration of all potential future states, in relation to the probability of each of those simultaneous potential positions. Polkinghorne summarized the superposition principle as such: “states can be combined…with a probability interpretation of the result” (1985, 19). Lacking the certainty of a series of sequential positions, all the possible states modelled by the wavefunction are considered until such time as measurement (through the phenomenon of observation described below) registers the position of a particle. One way of considering the difference between the wave behaviour (reality) and the wavefunction (representation) is to consider Schrodinger’s best-known anecdote. The example of Schrodinger’s cat describes an experimental apparatus where a cat is placed in a steel cage with a device called a “Geiger counter” and a small amount of radioactive substance, connected to a small hammer suspended near a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. There is a possibility that after an hour, the substance will decay, releasing the hammer, shattering the flask, and killing the cat: The ψ-function [wavefunction] of the entire system would express this by having the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a “blurred model” for representing reality. (Schrodinger 1980, 328)

In this clearly representationalist account, the dead cat and live cat are smeared together in the wavefunction model, but by that Schrodinger does not mean that there is an actual smearing of cats within the box. Rather, the uncertainty surrounding the microscopic radioactive substance casts profound uncertainty upon the “real” state of the cat, which can only be modelled through a wavefunction until such point as we open the box. The cat may be “smeared” epistemologically as a manner of expressing this fundamental unknowability; common sense dictates that any attempt at actually smearing a cat will certainly produce a dead one. Our core takeaway from the wave/particle duality is that microscopic particles—photons, electrons, etc.—have a dual nature. When light hits a photographic plate, it is always as a shower of particles. However,

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when light is left to its own devices, diffraction patterns—the signature of waves—emerge. These patterns become visible through experiments like the two-slit experiment, where the end-state particle measurements allow for conclusions to be drawn about the wave behaviour necessary for their creation. The uncertainty of the wave means that it cannot be calculated with the specificity of particles in motion, but modelled through a wavefunction that takes into consideration all potentialities. This key journey from wave superposition to particle position brings us to the idea of the observer effect.

Observer Effect and the Copenhagen Interpretation One of the enduring questions haunting the metaphysics of quantum mechanics asks why the measurement of a quantum entity always registers a particle. A variety of interpretations exist, ranging from “collapse from wave into particle is spontaneous” to “every potential state in superposition severs into a new universe.” While these interpretations are fascinating from both a philosophical and a mathematical standpoint, the version of the measurement problem that I will be discussing is the socalled “Copenhagen Interpretation.”8 There are different varieties within this interpretation (with different points of emphasis on epistemological or ontological implications) depending on the specific interlocutor, but the general version of the Copenhagen interpretation followed herein states that it is the interaction with the measurement device that causes the collapse from superposition wave to single-position particle. The observer’s effect on the system is creative of either reality itself or the conditions of the imaginability of reality. In either case, measurement leads to the collapse of the wave. The observer effect, in this model, is an important part of the quantum story, because it provides a clear answer to the problem of measurement. Simply stated, the “effect” refers to the way that the activity of the observer always entails the collapse of the wavefunction. The outcomes of 8 As discussed later on in the chapter, there are multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics, and metaphysical debates are ongoing. I proceed with the Copenhagen Interpretation because it is the most commonly-held among physicists, and because of the philosophically sophisticated writings of Niels Bohr which are insightful on their own terms and redoubled in light of Karen Barad’s commentary.

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measurement always describe particles because the interaction of measurement can only happen with particle participants. Remaining agnostic about the most specific why’s of wavefunction collapse, the Copenhagen interpretation of the observer effect believes that measurement matters because of its creative agency, while remaining agnostic about the powers that cause it. In his work introducing the metaphysics of quantum mechanics, Nick Herbert explains the substance of the observer effect with reference to an old Sidney Harris cartoon where an equation’s second step is written as “and then a miracle occurs” (1987, 147). We remain on solid scientific footing to remain agnostic to the content of the miracle of measurement in our search for tools, as this has been the standard practice of quantum physicists from the 1930s onwards.9 But these tools that physicists developed—even if they were at first known primarily for the beauty of their mathematical proofs—had also to be recognized for their observer effects. Precisely because new measurement apparatuses and similar devices produced the expected results, the contribution of the devices to the construction of those realities becomes all the more important. Bracketing the metaphysical implications of the observer effect did not move quantum physics away from it, but instead led to the proliferation of new measurement apparatuses which were themselves engaged in an unseen and unquestioned metaphysical effect. In contrast to many of his successors, Nils Bohr reflected closely on the philosophical implications of the physical principles of quantum mechanics, leaving the Copenhagen Interpretation with a wealth of philosophical problems to ponder. In an address to the Danish Academy of Science in 1955, Bohr highlights the importance of the measurement apparatus in creating the substance and not just the conditions for the measured characteristic: Every experimental arrangement permitting the registration of an atomic particle in a limited space-time domain demands fixed measuring rods and synchronized clocks which, from their very definition, exclude the control of momentum and energy transmitted to them. Conversely, any unambiguous application of the dynamical conservation laws in quantum

9 As Adam Becker has recently explored, despite serious debates on the implications of quantum mechanics at the very moment of its founding, “the rest of physics simply moved on” (2018, 4) to a great extent.

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mechanics requires that the description of the phenomena involve a renunciation in principle of detailed space-time coordination. This mutual exclusiveness of the experimental conditions implies that the whole experimental arrangement must be taken into account in a well-defined description of the phenomenon. The indivisibility of quantum phenomenon finds its consequent expression in the circumstance that every definable subdivision would require a change of the experimental arrangement with the appearance of new individual phenomena. (Bohr 2010, 89–90, emphasis added)

Results are inextricably linked to the experimental apparatus designed for their registration, and they must fundamentally—Bohr repeats “in principle”—be considered as part of the complete description of the phenomenon. The centrality of the idea of a complete description may be lost to the contemporary reader, but in the early debates between Bohr and Einstein on the validity of quantum mechanics, it was precisely this ability to give a “complete description” of atomic phenomena that Einstein questioned.10 Even after Einstein’s death, Bohr returned to the terms of this foundational debate frequently in his continued reflections on the metaphysics and meaning of quantum mechanics, and his repeated statements throughout his career that a full description of quantum phenomena include the measurement apparatus should be read with the gravity that this gigantomachy demands. The measurement problem is central not only to the description of quantum phenomena, but—through the “completeness” debate—the disciplinary progress of quantum physics itself. A second, related phenomenon that occurs in measurement is described by Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle has to do with the fact that there are pairs of qualities that may be measured, but where the precision of one entails obfuscation of the other. Heisenberg asks us to consider the example of an electron in flight, and the measurement of either the position or momentum of that electron (through the microscopic interaction of a photon). He continues:

10 See Einstein et al. (1935), and the reply Bohr (1935).

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At the instant when position is determined…the electron undergoes a discontinuous change in momentum. This change is greater the smaller the wavelength of the light employed—that is, the more exact the determination of the position…Thus, the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely. (Heisenberg 1983, 64)

The change in the momentum of the electron is greater the more precisely we measure its position, rendering it impossible to have knowledge of both qualities. We might have rough calculations of these pairs of attributes, but attempts at correcting for greater precision in one aspect rapidly renders increasing uncertainty—perfect knowledge of one aspect would be infinitely uncertain! (Feynman 2006, 6). The observer effect that “collapses” the potential states of a wavefunction thus also collapses the potential measurements that might be taken. Bohr’s response to the measurement problem figures centrally in Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway, as the physicist-turned-philosopher explores the implications of the measurement apparatus. Because the measurement marks the point where superposition collapses into precise position, the apparatus of measurement itself must be considered as part of the phenomenon being measured—not in the sense typical of the academic paper, where an experimental design is merely discussed, but in a more epistemologically profound way where that apparatus is creative of the conditions of possibility for meaning. In Barad’s reading of the Copenhagen interpretation, “as a matter of principle, there is no unambiguous way to differentiate between ‘object’ and ‘agencies of observation’” meaning that “no inherent/Cartesian subject-object distinction exists” (2007, 114). The quantum measurement, in this light, is not an objective view from nowhere, but a constituent of the phenomenon that permits meaning to be made. The knowable quantum world is not a world “out there” that we interact with using measurement devices. Rather, the knowable quantum world is the one that we create with the construction and operation of apparatuses of observation (whether experimental or quotidian).

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Entanglement; or, “Spooky Action at a Distance” Of all the weird features found in quantum mechanics, entanglement is perhaps the most extreme. This weirdness derives perhaps from the way in which entanglement breaks a sacred barrier familiar both to Newtonian physics and everyday experience—the speed of light. For the Newtonians, the rule that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light implied an important limit for causation, called locality. What this principle means for causality is that for something to “cause” an “effect” on something else, there is a limit to how far away it can be. Specifically, the time taken to cross the space between the action and the effect (or the chain of events) cannot imply motion faster than the speed of light. That is to say, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so things that are not local to one another—we might colloquially say “close”—cannot cause anything to happen to one another. Causes that we perceive as instantaneous in reality only appear to be that way, as the time scales relevant for local causation can be compressed beyond recognition by the naked eye. Like it does with the notions of superpositionality and the observer effect, quantum mechanics throws a wrench into the simplicity of locality by allowing non-local causation through a phenomenon called entanglement. This phenomenon describes the connection between two substances such that they remain connected regardless of distance between them, and can continue to “act” on one another in an immediate way despite the distance separating them (thus breaking the limit of the speed of light). Originally hypothesized as an answer to irregularities appearing in the mathematical models of quantum mechanics, entanglement was originally theorized through thought-experiments, where physicists followed the implications of the theory through logical deductions. Dismissed by Einstein as “spooky action at a distance,” entanglement became an idea non grata in the mainstream of physics that cared more about exploring quantum ideas experimentally than philosophically and was left to the mystic types who saw quantum mechanics as describing a new religious consciousness. This changed somewhat in the early 1980s, as the principle of entanglement was proven by a research team led by Alain Aspect, who set out to experimentally verify the earlier thought-experiments of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (Aspect et al. 1982a, b). Through today, work continues to push the experimental boundaries of entanglement, which

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will be an essential feature of quantum computer networks. Recent advances include an electron spin entanglement observed at a distance of 1.3 kilometres (Hensen et al. 2015), and a satellite-based experiment which demonstrated entanglement effects over 1200 kilometres apart (Yin et al. 2017). Despite the mysterious—and seemingly magical—properties of entanglement, such experiments demonstrate its veracity at larger and larger scales. But this scale expansion is not only occurring in terms of the distance over which entanglements are found, but also in the bodies exhibiting entanglement. Provocative work in biology demonstrates how quantum entanglement occurs in the wet and warm bodies of living animals— orders of magnitude beyond the scale of a photon pair. In a popular science primer for quantum biology, Johnjoe McFadden and Jim AlKhalili (2014) set entanglement front and centre, describing how the migration patterns of European robins demonstrate entanglement effects between the so-called avian compass and the magnetic field of the landscape below. Breaking with the safe and familiar laws of force that seem to describe the macroscopic world which we inhabit, entanglement reveals a web of powerful and mysteries connections able to act in unseen and instantaneous ways at great distances—potentially across the universe itself!

The Ongoing Debates in Quantum (Meta)Physics While earlier I noted that my discussions throughout the book are broadly in line with the Copenhagen interpretation, and the social-theoretic translation of these ideas, it is important to note that these ideas are far from universally accepted. Kathryn Schaffer and Gabriela Barreto Lemos (2019) argue that a common failure in non-technical quantum writings— whether pop-science or social theory—is glossing over the multiple forms of contestation within the scientific community on what we might call the “true meaning” of quantum physics. But academic honesty demands this recognition: “if you are interested in asking about the meaning of quantum physics ‘outside the lab,’” they argue, “it is important to acknowledge that there is no consensus on the meaning of quantum physics ‘inside the lab’” (Schaffer and Lemos 2019, 7). Indeed, this poses a particular challenge to authors seeking to translate or take seriously the importance of quantum thinking beyond physics, as “it is hard enough

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explaining the weirdness of quantum physics within a single interpretation, much less trying to explain that everything could be completely different if we picked another” (Schaffer and Lemos 2019, 7). But rather than a drag on our development of a Copenhageninspired critical-quantum framework to be used in International Relations, Schaffer and Lemos’ warning should be taken as wind in the sails of the quantum IR community. Der Derian and Wendt, of course, call for “quantum approaches (in the plural) rather than…a quantum theory (in the singular)” (2020, 11), and as I will argue in the next chapter, this pluralism is an all-too-often-overlooked characteristic of the quantum IR community. The variety in interpretations of quantum mechanics means that quantizing International Relations can take that many more approaches. While the applicability of some approaches may be more readily applicable to world politics than others, the pluralism is a strength rather than a challenge. Hans Christian von Baeyer’s QBism: The Future of Quantum Physics offers an accessible introduction to five interpretations of quantum physics. Four, including the Copenhagen interpretation, appear in an appendix.11 The second interpretation is the Many-Worlds interpretation, which solves the problem of collapse by replacing it with a continual division of reality into multiple alternative paths, with the observer remaining in only one of the paths. The pilot-wave interpretation posits that there is a missing variable, a quantum force that operates like gravity to control the motion and position of particles in a deterministic manner. The idea of the pilot wave is that there is “a physically real wave satisfying Schrodinger’s equation…along with a particle following a well defined trajectory” (Bohm and Hiley 1982, 1002). The wave/particle duality is a delayed rather than paradoxical relation. The final alternative interpretation introduced by von Baeyer is the suite of spontaneous collapse theories, which claim that wavefunction collapses “are natural events that need no human-induced triggers” and “happen spontaneously but so rarely that they don’t affect the interaction of individual small quantum systems” (von Baeyer 2016, 239). Quantum Bayesianism, or QBism, is the favoured interpretation and subject of von Baeyer’s book, which claims that “quantum probabilities are numerical measures of personal degrees of belief” (2016, 131). The calculations on a quantum system, 11 The following summaries appear in von Baeyer (2016, 235–239) except where otherwise noted.

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then, do not for the QBists reflect the reality of that system, but only the observer’s confidence in knowledge about it. There are many more interpretations of quantum mechanics than would fit a chapter of an introductory volume. My development within the Copenhagen paradigm is not to discount the legitimacy of any other interpretations within the laboratory or in translation to a form of quantum social theory. Rather, it is my belief that the kind of pluralistic conversation that the quantum IR community seeks to open up may best be accomplished through the exploration of this multiplicity of interpretations.

References Aspect, Alain, Jean Dalibard, and Gerard Roger. 1982a. Experimental Test of Bell’s Inequalities Using Time-Varying Analyzers. Physical Review Letters 49 (25): 1804–1807. Aspect, Alain, Philippe Grangier, and Gerard Roger. 1982b. Experimental Realization of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment: A New Violation of Bell’s Inequalities. Physical Review Letters 49 (2): 91–94. Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Becker, Adam. 2018. What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics. New York: Basic Books. Bernstein, Steven, Richard Ned Lebow, Janice Gross Stein, and Steven Weber. 2000. God Gave Physics the Easy Problems: Adapting Social Science to an Unpredictable World. European Journal of International Relations 6 (1): 43– 76. Bohm, David J., and Basil J. Hiley. 1982. The de Broglie Pilot Wave Theory and the Further Development of New Insights Arising Our of It. Foundations of Physics 12 (10): 1001–1016. Bohr, Niels. 1935. Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? Physical Review 48: 696–702. Bohr, Niels. 2010. Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. New York: Dover Publications. Buchwald, Jed Z. 1989. The Rise of the Wave Theory of Light: Optical Theory and Experiment in the Early Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chown, Marcus. 2007. Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You: Understanding the Mind-Blowing Building Blocks of the Universe. London: Faber & Faber. Der Derian, James, and Alexander Wendt. 2020. Quantizing International Relations: Quantum Approaches to International Theory and Security Practice. Security Dialogue 51 (5): 399–413.

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Einstein, Albert. 2005. On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light. In Einstein’s Miraculous Year: Five Papers that Changed the Face of Physics, ed. John Stachel, 177–198. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Einstein, Albert, Boris Podolsky, and Nicholas Rosen. 1935. Can QuantumMechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? Physical Review 47: 777–780. Feynman, Richard. 2006. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Heisenberg, Werner. 1967. Quantum-Theoretical Re-interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relations. In Sources of Quantum Mechanics, ed. B.L. van der Waerden, 261–276. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company. Heisenberg, Werner. 1983. The Physical Content of Quantum Kinematics and Mechanics. In Quantum Theory and Measurement, ed. John A. Wheeler and Wojciech Hubert Zurek, 62–86. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hensen, Bas, Hannes Bernien, Anais E. Dreau, Andreas Reiserer, Nortbert Kalb, Machiel Blok, Just Ruitenberg, et al. 2015. Loophole-Free Bell Inequality Violation Using Electron Spins Separated by 1.3 Kilometres. Nature 526 (7575): 682–686. Herbert, Nick. 1987. Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics…an Excursion into Metaphysics and the Meaning of Reality. New York: Anchor Books. Kragh, Helge. 2000. Max Planck: The Reluctant Revolutionary. Physics World 13 (12): 31–35. McFadden, Johnjoe, and Jim Al-Khalili. 2014. Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology. New York: Crown Publishers. Pauling, Linus, and E. Bright Wilson. 1985. Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry. New York: Dover. Planck, Max. 1967. On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum. In The Old Quantum Theory, ed. Dick Ter Haar, 82–90. New York: Pergamon Press. Polkinghorne, John C. 1985. The Quantum World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Polkinghorne, John C. 2007. Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rovelli, Carlo. 2014. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. New York: Penguin. Schaffer, Kathryn, and Gabriella Barreto Lemos. 2019. Obliterating Thingness: An Introduction to the ‘What’ and ‘So What’ of Quantum Physics. Foundations of Physics OnlineFirst: 1–20. Schrodinger, Erwin. 1926. An Undulatory Theory of the Mechanics of Atoms and Molecules. Physical Review 28 (6): 1049–1070.

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Schrodinger, Erwin. 1980. The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics. Translated by John D. Trimmer. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124 (5): 323–338. Smolin, Lee. 2001. Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. New York: Basic Books. Ter Haar, Dirk. 1967. Preface to The Old Quantum Theory. New York: Pergamon Press. von Baeyer, Hans Christian. 2016. QBism: The Future of Quantum Physics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wendt, Alexander. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Yin, Juan, Yuan Cao, Yu-Hai Li, Sheng-Kair Liao, Liang Zhiang, Ji-Gang Ren, Wen-Qi Cai, et al. 2017. Satellite-Based Entanglement Distribution Over 1200 Kilometres. Science 356 (6343): 1140–1144. Zanotti, Laura. 2017. Reorienting IR: Ontological Entanglement, Agency, and Ethics. International Studies Review 19: 362–380. Zanotti, Laura. 2019. Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads. London: Routledge.

Further Reading Feynman, Richard. 2006. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. • Feynman’s clear and light prose allows for an enjoyable read that explains the specific field of quantum electrodynamics—the physics of light and energy—in a manner readily accessible to the non-specialist academic. Originally delivered as lectures in 1983 at UCLA, Feynman is presenting a fully-developed quantum theory rather than, as he remarks, “a lot of half-cooked, partially analyzed theories” (2007, 3). Rovelli, Carlo. 2014. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. New York: Penguin. • Intended for a truly popular audience, Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons were originally written as Sunday features for an Italian newspaper. Because Rovelli reflects on a series of topics—of which quantum mechanics is the second— this volume is useful as an accessible text that can situate new knowledge about quantum mechanics in the broader context of physics. von Baeyer, Hans Christian. 2016. QBism: The Future of Quantum Physics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. • More than an introduction to QBism alone, von Baeyer’s book offers an overview of the development of quantum mechanics, important inspirations and experiments, and a review of Bayesian probability theory. Concise descriptions of alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics alongside a detailed but accessible exposition of Quantum Bayesianism and a discussion of the problems that animate contemporary developments in physics.

CHAPTER 3

Analogy or Actuality? How Social Scientists Are Taking the Quantum Leap

Abstract While the application of quantum theory to social science and social theory is a young field, at earliest dated to the 1990s, there is a remarkable diversity in the different approaches contained within the broad tent of quantum social theory. This diversity is sometimes hidden by the forced categorization into “actuality” or “analogy.” Through this review of the rise of quantum social theory in recent decades, I outline the full spectrum of approaches to imagining the social world in quantum terms. Keywords Quantum social theory · Quantizing International Relations · Critical IR

Introduction Every quantum social theorist needs to be prepared for two questions that follow presentations of quantum social theory, whether to a conference panel audience or in a private conversation.1 The first question runs along the lines of “sorry, did you say quantum physics? How does that have 1 I am fully aware that those can be strikingly similar numbers of people.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. P. A. Murphy, Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60111-9_3

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anything to do with International Relations?” I hope that the reader will, by the conclusion of the book, have a sense of how to respond to that question, at least from a perspective grounded in critical International Relations theory. The second question—which will be the subject of the chapter—asks: “So is this all a big analogy, or is there something actually quantum going on?” This question is more puzzling. The question of “analogy or actuality” makes intuitive sense as an organizing principle for the field of quantum social science or quantum theories of International Relations, but few approaches fall neatly into one box or the other. The one exception might be found among those who seek to forward a new and better positivism, basing their claim on actual quantum processes in cognition, decision making, or brain function. Among these, Alexander Wendt’s (2015) project of quantum social science is notable, grounded in quantum forms of neuroscience, mathematical psychology, and cognitive science, and contains a radical ontological claim that from the neuron level, our brains really are quantum-mechanical. The work makes (admittedly speculative) claims about the real condition of societal interactions, thereby falling clearly on the “actual” side of the post-panel question.2 Alternatively, even among the “quantum-like” crowd of mathematical financial modellers (e.g. Haven and Khrennikov 2013; Piotrowski and Sladkowski 2004), or the project of “quantum economics” (Orrell 2018, 2020)—strange bedfellows for critical theorists—there is not a clear use of metaphor or claim of actuality. Rather, standard issue quantum social science either involves an agnostic bracketing (“the equations work and we don’t need to know why”) or a move away from ontological claims towards epistemological frames (“seeing a quantum worldview rather than building from foundational quantum premises”). Articulation of a clear position on actuality-versus-analogy is not the rule but the exception in quantum social science, not because of a lack of clarity in the ideas, but because it begs an ontological answer to a (most frequently) epistemological challenge. The question of actuality or analogy, then, does not cut to the heart of the matter in all situations. Especially in the case of critical approaches to quantum social science (Murphy n.d.), the point about quantum social theory is the way that it challenges us to think differently, to question relationships, structures, and processes. Quantizing critique is more 2 He admits that this is insistence on actuality is a potential stumbling block to new adherents (2018, 203).

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epistemological than ontological—one need not accept claims of subatomic processes in neurons or entanglement between material elements of a phenomenon to ask new questions, challenge Newtonian assumptions, and open up a new imaginary for critical inquiry where novel conceptual tools drawn from the most profoundly weird branch of the natural sciences can be put to work.

The Spectrum of Quantum Leaps Mathematical modelling of price formation would typically seem a strange bedfellow for queer theories of nonessential nature, but the variety within the camp of quantum social theory admits both (Sarkissian 2020; Barad 2015). I want to make clear from the outset here that when I use the term “quantizing” to describe a perspective that brings International Relations theory and quantum physics into contact, I mean that the author seeks to develop a quantum approach, not that one specific process has been followed. There is no one road to quantum social science, and the purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the multiple ways that quantum thinking spreads, with some discussion of the spread of quantum thinking through scientific fields but focusing most directly on social theory and International Relations. One source of the diversity of approaches in quantum International Relations is found in the variety of key authors available to writers. Interesting voices in these conversations have often included physicists-turned-social theorists, most notably Karen Barad, whose Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) remains a landmark volume in the Bohr-inspired flavours of quantum social theory. Within International Relations, physicist-turned-political scientist Badredine Arfi (2005, 2018) has worked both on the early development of quantum approaches to game theory and also suggested more recently that the critique of Newtonian foundations need not entail a quantum imaginary. But contributions have also come from scholars with feet firmly planted on the ground of International Relations. Alexander Wendt’s quantum thinking began as a form of auto-critique against the gaps he had identified within the scientific-realist/constructivist work undertaken in the Social Theory of International Politics (see 2006, 2010). Others encounter the concepts through the attractiveness of recognizing fundamental uncertainty, the allure of its mathematical models, or following an inspiring encounter with the work of another. Some commentators quantize their work by

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building on the theoretical framework developed by an earlier quantum social theorist; others return to the sources of quantum physics. Either approach—or a via media placing both options in superposition—facilitates the encounter with quantum thinking, to engage in and contribute to the broader project of quantum social theory.

Quantum Science Beyond Physics Social sciences are not the only domains that have experienced a quantum turn. Indeed, while first developed to explain relatively limited set of phenomena at the subatomic level, quantum mechanics were successfully applied to a broader set of phenomena in physics. As Richard Feynman summarizes, “it turns out that the structure of the theory of QED [Quantum Electrodynamics] serves as an excellent basis for describing other phenomena in the rest of physics” (2006, 131). Chemistry came soon after, and one of the key textbooks on quantum mechanics was published as an introduction to the topic for chemists (Pauling and Wilson 1985). While the search for a quantum explanation of gravity (e.g. Rovelli 2016) might represent the largest-scale application of the theory, it is in biological rather than cosmological science that the influence of quantum mechanics beyond physics has taken a turn most interesting for social-scientific applications, particularly those staking claims of quantum realism.3 While the application of quantum to the social world does not always yield approaches neatly fitting into “actuality” or “analogy,” applications of quantum in sciences other than physics can broadly be categorized in these terms.4 To take first the “actuality” side, we can look at recent developments in the field of quantum biology.5 Beginning in plant life, biologists studying photosynthesis have pointed to quantum behaviour by green sulphur bacteria (Engel et al. 2007; Sension 2007),

3 This comment refers to the project of quantizing critique and the quantum IR community. The quantum race in computer science is very much relevant for conventional security studies scholars. 4 Although here, too, we find much activity in the messy middle. Quantum-like applications can often lead scientists to broader critiques, either to claims of cognition still firmly grounded in neuroscience (e.g. Stapp 2011) or even to quantum-inspired mysticism (e.g. Goswami 2017). 5 For an overview, see McFadden and Al-Khalili (2014).

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as well as the possibility that specific “correlated protein environments” may create the conditions for quantum coherence (Lee et al. 2007). In studying avian migration patterns, quantum biologists argue that entanglement occurs between birds—specifically, particular cryptochrome receptors in the bird’s eye—and the Earth’s geomagnetic field (e.g. Gauger et al. 2011; Bandyopadhyay et al. 2012; Pauls et al. 2013). While the time scales of the entanglement appear to be quite small vis-à-vis human perception—avian entanglement lasts only a few microseconds at a time (Hiscock et al. 2016)—even this finding is revolutionary because it demonstrates coherence above the microscopic level. In plain language, the avian navigation through entanglement demonstrates that quantum behaviour can happen at the level of a living being, despite the complexity of a biological system. Analogical approaches, typically called “quantum-like” fields, can be understood as projects where quantum concepts or mathematical models are applied to new subjects while remaining agnostic about the grand implications of these applications. An important development in quantum-like science has come through psychology and cognitive science.6 Here, researchers have found that applying quantum models—that is, the mathematical descriptions of particular quantum phenomena—to similarly-behaving processes in psychology predicts outcomes more reliably than non-quantum models. A team led by Jerome Busemeyer explored how such a quantum model might be framed, responding to the Markov model of decision making (Busemeyer et al. 2006). Liane Gabora and Diederik Aerts (2002) analysed the process of concept formation as analogous to the modelling of potentiality in quantum systems, later examining how a variety of different forms of concept formation exhibit a suite of quantum behaviours (Aerts et al. 2013). Aerts (2009) has also examined how conjunction and disjunction of concept pairs can be better understood through quantum modelling of a second layer of thought beneath logical processing. A special issue of the Journal of Mathematical Psychology on the topic of quantum cognition (Bruza et al. 2009) and a monograph by Busemeyer with Peter Bruza (2014) provided common reference points for a field that continues to expand into new areas (e.g. Surov et al. 2019; Vaio 2019; Wang and Busemeyer 2016). The application of quantum models to cases that are

6 Separate from the cognitive implications of quantum consciousness.

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alike in their mathematics is the definitive behaviour of “quantum-like” research in social and experimental sciences. Economic modelling on the basis of quantum-like modelling has also proved productive, with applications of quantum equations to economic interactions. As Emmanuel Haven and Andrei Khrennikov outline in their introduction to quantum social science, the development of a quantum economic science is not merely a matter of using quantum “operators instead of classical financial variables” because, despite the best efforts of econophysicists, there never was a fully developed classical formalism—precisely because of this, their “quantum-like” model proceeds through a “phenomenological” development, explanation “by analogy with quantum theory” (2013, 23, 39). These efforts have included the application of quantum theoretical developments in game theory to non-commutative financial phenomena (Piotrowski and Sladkowski 2004) both in general terms and in more specific scenarios—such as using evolutionary quantum game theory to develop non-aggressive alternatives to the kinds of market competitions that lead to crises (Hanauske et al. 2010). These quantum-like economic applications offer innovative solutions to social science problems by drawing analogically on the mathematical models of quantum physics. But the successes that these field have attained on their own terms blurs the line between analogy and homology.7 At what point in successful prediction does the basis for applying quantized formula cross from justifications because of rough resemblance to a claim of correspondence in structure? The agnosticism of many working on financial and psychological models means that they do not posit an answer to this question, but, like quantum physicists after Bohr, largely bracket the metaphysical discussion entirely.

Quantum Social Theory Before International Relations While the quantum revolution in physics is specifically cited by JeanFrançois Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition as an example of how science in the postmodern era is characterized by uncertainty and instability (1984, 55–57), significant interventions into the theorization of social relations from a quantum perspective would not begin until a few

7 See Murphy (2020), Owens (2015).

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years later. As examples of quantum social theory before International Relations, I will turn to two bodies of work—first, the pop-psychologyturned-management theory of Danah Zohar, and secondly the feminist materialism of Karen Barad. Danah Zohar’s work on quantum social theory begins from the problem of consciousness. This starting place will be familiar to those International Relations scholars who first found quantum social theory through Alexander Wendt’s book, as Wendt’s quantum adventure, in fact, was first sparked by a chance encounter with Zohar and Marshall’s The Quantum Society while wandering through the University of Chicago’s bookstore (Wendt 2015, 2). Zohar’s quantum commentary is much less systematic than Wendt’s, both because her series of books are written for a popular audience, and because of the inconsistent status of quantum physics within it. As Zohar notes in the preface to The Quantum Self , this is at least in part because of how the insights from applying quantum thinking to everyday life offers too many insights to seem like a purely metaphorical exercise: At times, quantum theory seems to serve as a useful metaphor that helps to draw these reflections into a new and sharper focus, while at others it seems to promise at least a partial explanation for how consciousness, and hence daily experience, might actually work. This book began primarily as an exercise in metaphor but, as it unfolded, metaphor gave way increasingly to evidence, or to what is at least well-grounded speculation about the actual physics of human psychology and its moral and spiritual implications. (Zohar 1990, 11)

Zohar’s first full treatment of quantum social theory,8 then, tends towards a claim of actuality, but does not commit in the same way that we will see with Wendt. Zohar’s approach to quantum social theory in The Quantum Self begins from the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics and then moves to the question of consciousness as a quantum phenomenon, drawing on the theory of the brain as a Bose-Einstein condensate. This description of consciousness as a particular physical process is undertaken without explanation of what the analogical benefit of such an argument

8 Her earlier work Through the Time Barrier (Zohar 1982) is primarily focused on precognition and draws on a number of sources from myths and psychiatry to Einsteinian relativity in addition to quantum physics.

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would be, which I take to mark the moment where Zohar has shifted completely from “useful metaphor” to “well-grounded speculation.”9 This quantum model of consciousness then redefines the mind/body relationship, the nature of selfhood, and the relation of self to cosmos. The latter conceptualization is continued in Zohar and Ian Marshall’s (1994) The Quantum Society, which sought to draw out the implications of the quantum model of consciousness for diverse societies. Since this time, Zohar (1997, 2016) has developed a quantum theory of management and leadership, describing a fusion of Western and Eastern business practices. The stakes of Zohar’s quantum social theory are not easily defined in response to the actuality-or-analogy question, and indeed it seems as though Zohar is comfortable with the benefits of both sides of that question. Perhaps the clearest sign is found not in her substantive books on quantum social theory, but rather in the encyclopedia of key concepts that she and Marshall wrote, branded by the subtitle as “An A-to-Z Guide to All the New Science Ideas You Need to Keep Up with the New Thinking” (Marshall and Zohar 1997). The concepts of quantum physics are taken as the scientific harbingers of a social paradigm shift which “gives us the vision of an entangled universe where everything is subtly connected to everything else” (Marshall and Zohar 1997, xxvii). As an encyclopedia, this hefty tome introduces in more accessible terms key concepts from quantum mechanics (and some from relativistic physics). The “ambitious reader,” they say, can read the encyclopedia “and gain a fairly detailed knowledge of the main ideas of the new science and how all these are related parts of an across-the-board paradigm shift in culture at large” (Marshall and Zohar 1997, xxix–xxx). I would like to suggest that the core project of Zohar’s quantum social theory is the sociological translation of physical concepts, such that knowing the links between quantum theory—or “the new science” as she brands it in the late 1990s—and social connection can both describe and guide social change. Zohar’s quantum world is both a pop-psychology theory of the relationship between mind and society, and a guide to what might more broadly be termed “leadership for the 21st century.” While these works

9 But it is never exactly clear what the stakes of such a shift in the method of argumentation are. The text in general remains elusive in defining when metaphor gives way to reality, perhaps due to a reluctance to overuse philosophical jargon in a work of pop psychology or perhaps as a manner of avoiding the choice between having or eating the cake of quantum consciousness.

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are lively page-turners that may serve well to evangelize the good news of quantum, it would be difficult to propose systematic scholarly studies grounded only in Zohar’s quantum social-theoretic framework given the contradictory—or at least unclear—methodological claims about actuality and analogy. Karen Barad, on the other hand, offers a carefully constructed feminist quantum social theory beginning from an ontological rereading of Niels Bohr. Rather than analysing a system by beginning with constituent agents or social structures, Barad describes a world composed of entangled phenomena that flips our conventional ontological view on its head—“relations do not follow relata, but the other way around” (2007, 136–137). The boundaries of each object are diffractive and fuzzy, constructed only through the performance of interiority and exteriority, and all action is not interaction between agents that come into contact inside a system, but intra-action (actions taking place within a system) that creates the meaning of agential boundaries and entities. Various apparatuses within which we are imbricated lead to what Barad calls agential cuts, which produce seemingly the stable relata we then take as semantic and material reality (2007, 148). What appears as a world of separable entities is in fact an entangled world where entities emerge from relations and in the context of phenomena, where entities and environments are constantly connected through diffractions at their so-called boundaries. In Barad’s quantum world, questions of ethics, epistemology, and ontology are fundamentally intertwined. The reconceptualization of the world as one of phenomena that are always in a process of becoming— or, more deeply steeped in her specialized vocabulary, phenomena that are continually differentially articulated through intra-actions including agential cuts—means that “our (intra)actions matter [because] each one reconfigures the world in its becoming” and we are therefore an “intimate part of the universe” (Barad 2007, 394). Breaking the possibility of boundaries between actor and environment means that each action must be considered in the context of the phenomena with(in) which we are entangled, and “intra-acting responsibly as part of the world means taking account of the entangled phenomena that are intrinsic to the world’s vitality and being responsive to the possibilities that might help us flourish” (Barad 2007, 396). Indeed, Barad’s title Meeting the Universe Halfway is precisely this ethical expression of bringing together the ontological realization that entangled phenomena are the fundamental units of

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reality and the possibility for human intra-action within our specific and universal entanglements where we find ourselves. Beyond the significant contribution found in Meeting the Universe Halfway, Barad has continued to develop her quantum philosophy of entangled ontology and agential realism through a productive engagement with queer theory. A future development of the book’s discussion of brittle fish would see Barad (2008) reflect on how queer accounts of causation embody an ethics of mattering, disabused of classical notions of linear and proximate causes. Her argument for a posthuman ethic— one that does not seek to transplant nature into the social domain but to reconfigure the “naturalcultural” as a sphere where “mattering” unfolds— extends as a quantum critique of the anthropocentrism of performativity in queer theory (Barad 2011). In a meditation on the queerness of touching, Barad (2012) reads quantum field theory in response to a special issue on feminist theories of science studies. And, to take a final example, a reflection on the complementarity of imagination and materiality, Barad (2015) again returns to a quantized queer theory to explore how natural indeterminacy demands a radical rethinking of the ethical stakes of being and becoming. While her heavy use of specialized language—drawing not only on quantum physics but also on other branches of scientific inquiry, feminist and queer theory, and a diverse array of continental philosophical traditions—poses a challenge to the initiate, Barad’s contributions to quantum social theory call to a radical rethinking of foundational assumptions of reality, and wrestling with unfamiliar terminology is part of the thrill in engaging with her work.

Quantum Mind and Its Discontents Alexander Wendt’s (2015) Quantum Mind and Social Science was the first book-length exploration of how quantum theory might apply to International Relations. Building on his earlier (2006, 2010) reflections on the links between quantum theories of consciousness and constructivist IR, Quantum Mind and Social Science offers a radical rewriting of social science from the first principle of human consciousness—and, indeed, the primitive consciousness of all matter—as a phenomenon emerging from quantum coherence. The publication of the book and subsequent series of journal fora—in combination with the work of Project Q discussed below—rapidly elevated the disciplinary visibility of quantum social theory in IR circles.

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In many ways, Quantum Mind and Social Science can be understood as a continuation of the scientific realism that characterized Wendt’s earlier work. There, he claimed that “if mature scientific theories did not at least partially correspond to the deep structure of reality, the success of science would be an unthinkable ‘miracle’” (1987, 353); the difference is that in the quantum work, Wendt moves to an experimentally stronger theory corresponding to a deeper structure of reality. Wendt builds his arguments from physics to politics, beginning with a section on the development of quantum physics that encompasses key experiments, how quantum properties challenge core assumptions of scientific materialism, and different interpretations of quantum theory from the philosophy of science. He then introduces the themes of quantum consciousness from neuroscientific research, philosophical accounts of panpsychism and vitalism, and an introduction to the model of quantum cognition and decision. The key argument through these foundational sections (Chapters 2–10) sets up a quantum-realist sociophysical ontology—that is, an ontology that grounds both physical phenomena and social phenomena (via the physical basis of cognition) in quantum-mechanical reality. The final two parts apply this quantum realism to language and the agent-structure problem, thereby completing Wendt’s argument that not only consciousness but also its products—cognition, emotion, decision, sociality, etc.—proceed from quantum coherence in our brains and therefore the social world can only be understood by properly accounting for its quantum basis. Or, as Wendt states, because “human beings and therefore social life exhibit quantum coherence…we are walking wave functions” (2015, 3). In addition to language functioning as an important form of entanglement, so too are social structures understood as entanglements binding all constituent walking wavefunctions—or, as we might more conventionally call them, citizens. The radical nature of this quantum-realist claim must not be underappreciated: “what social structures actually are, physically, are superpositions of shared mental states” (2015, 258). Grounding his argument in the collapse known as the observer effect, Wendt’s argument is that social structures have a physical reality, but that because that physical reality exists in superposition—that is, as a wave—it is never observable as such. Whenever we actually see a social structure, we observe a singularly-positioned particle rather than the wave in superposition. Beyond the constructivist claim that social structures, norms, and practices have social effects or impose constraints on particular ways

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of being, this quantum-realist argument stakes a much stronger claim that the constraints are physical, but unobservable. The main response to Wendt’s argument has occurred through a series of journal fora, one in a political theory journal, one in an International Relations journal, and one from sociological theory.10 The first published forum in Critical Review brings together a variety of mostly sceptical but welcoming interpretations. For Stephen DeCanio (2017), the success of quantum social theory is unlikely because of the constant revision of physical theories and lack of common interpretive framework within quantum theory, while David Waldner (2017) challenges the basis of quantum decision theory on the grounds of decoherence. Waldner does, however, see value in the ideas of quantum decoherence in rethinking the agent-structure problem. This opinion is shared by Robert Jervis (2017) and Sven Steinmo (2017), who both remain unconvinced by the particular case made by Wendt, but applaud the challenge to unfit and unquestioned Newtonian foundations made by introducing new quantum analogies. In this first forum, the most positive intervention comes from Karin Fierke (2017), who explores the opportunities for quantum thinking to bridge the gap between Wendt’s perspective and Eastern theories informed by Daoism and Buddhism. The same link is explored—more critically, however, as a missed encounter—by J. Peter Burgess (2018) in his contribution to the Millennium forum. Similarly, Torsten Michel (2018) critiques the focus on beings over being, and Oliver Kessler (2018) the turning between analogical application of quantum terms at the macro-level and ontologically descriptive language at the micro-level. While the prior three interventions take aim at the building of the argument, Bentley Allan (2018) and Badredine Arfi (2018) are more generally sceptical of the quantum foundations of social life, while being appreciative of the turn away from classically-founded and deterministic social theory. The forum in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour is a mixed bag, with Vicki Kirby (2018) and Steve Fuller (2018) reflecting positively on specific aspects of Wendt’s argument, Douglas Porpora (2018) commending the discussions of panpsychism and consciousness while critiquing other elements, and Matthew Donald (2018) and Daniel Little (2018) challenging the plausibility of Wendt’s quantum-realist claim on the nature of consciousness. As Wendt himself 10 In addition to a number of book reviews, including Patrick Thaddeus Jackson’s (2016) substantial response in Perspectives on Politics.

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(2018) notes in his rejoinder, the book has received a generally mixed reaction, with some interlocutors taking the ideas and running with them, others critiquing the assumptions root and branch, and still others sympathizing with the project but remaining uncertain or unconvinced about particular elements.11 At time of writing, this body of literature responding directly to Wendt’s book (in a forum or a review) dwarfs the remaining stack of quantum IR publications.

Other Sources of Quantum IR Since 2014, the Project Q symposia hosted by James Der Derian at the University of Sydney have served as a rallying point for a different approach to quantizing international relations. Whereas Wendt articulates his starting place as the hard problem of consciousness and builds a new social theory drawing on quantum physics, Der Derian’s vision is one of confronting quantum head-on, rupturing classical and conventional modes of thinking in face of the quantum challenge. Der Derian’s earliest writings in this conceptual territory present quantum thinking as a radical alternative for a radically new era. For example, quantum thinking allows a novel imaginary for diplomacy in the era of globalized media, radical interconnectivity, and the entanglement that binds those forces (Der Derian 2011),12 and a new appreciation for the role of numbers, visuality, words, among other forces in the wars of the future (Der Derian 2013). It is only through the new thinking that quantum allows— a kind of thinking that is always and already attuned to uncertainty, entanglement, simultaneity, and other strange and classically impossible phenomena—that we might hope, in Der Derian’s view, to grasp the conceptual challenges of the twenty-first century. In this vein, Project Q seeks to bring together physicists, philosophers, soldiers, computer scientists, diplomats, and scholars of peace, security, and International Relations under the shared assumptions that the uncharted territory of quantum social science should not be seen as a limit to be obeyed but challenged (Der Derian, n.d.). To transgress these traditional boundaries 11 Wendt notes that the individually-mixed reviews are less frequent. While some people enjoy Quantum Mind and others do not, reactions have typically been strong. 12 Der Derian notes in a footnote here that the initiation into quantum occurred from a diplomatic speech, as he only became aware of Wendt’s 2010 chapter as a result of peer review.

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means to form new scholarly alliances that will permit, for examples, careful and multifaceted understandings of the security dilemmas arising from quantum technology, but also a full appreciation for the manifold social implications of quantum cosmology and consciousness (Der Derian 2019). Drawing together an impressive variety of experts from these many fields, Project Q has carried out many discussions on the implications and applications of quantum thinking. The third major source in quantum IR takes Barad’s quantum social theory into International Relations theory through feminist perspectives. The major monograph in this approach is Laura Zanotti’s Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads.13 In this work, Zanotti (2019) begins with a sharp critique of substantialism14 in both mainstream and critical variants of IR theory—moving beyond the familiar critique of state-centric ontologies to encompass the Newtonian assumptions embedded in theories of governmentality, biopolitics, and multitude. Zanotti’s quantum move, following Barad, is to begin not by picking one side or the other of the agent-structure problem, but by adopting an entangled ontology that recognizes phenomena as the primary ontological units of world politics and rejects theses of separability. Through an application of Barad’s theory of agential cuts, the ethical stakes of world politics are recognized as a radical responsibility for those entities with(in) which we are entangled. Zanotti’s account of quantum IR is fundamentally critical in its orientation, deeply concerned with international ethics and engages empirically with literatures on humanitarian interventions and peacebuilding. As the effects of this work continue to ripple through the quantum community, the monograph offers an example of how scholars can critique Newtonian IR in empirical, conceptual, and ethical terms.

The Many Paths to Quantizing IR In the editorial introduction to a special issue of Security Dialogue, James Der Derian and Alexander Wendt explicitly frame their discussion as “quantum approaches (in the plural) rather than…a quantum theory

13 I have argued elsewhere (Murphy, n.d.) that Zanotti’s book marks an important move beyond the analogy/actuality division, toward a new way of thinking. 14 See also Zanotti (2017) for a similar critique of substantialism.

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(in the singular) of international relations” (2020, 11). The process of quantizing IR—just like the process of quantizing all non-atomic phenomena—has proceeded in multiple directions all at once. Peering beyond the contours of the actuality or analogy question, we see that there exists a diversity of approaches in quantizing IR, encompassing deep reflections on Eastern wisdom (Fierke 2017, 2019), the ontological stakes of anthropocentric security (Hamilton 2017), language (Fierke and Alfonso-Antonio 2018), economics (Orrell 2020), traumatic memory (Fierke and Mackay 2020), and far, far, beyond. The discussions of quantizing IR are not merely a matter of following the analogical or the actual set of claims. Nor is there one particular theorist behind whom everyone follows—although in general Bohr appears to receive favourable citations. The rise of quantum social theory and quantum IR out of physics and other sciences offers an important model for the specific next steps in quantizing critique. The next two chapters will offer two key models for how to quantize critical IR—first, by finding common ground, and second by quantizing from first principles. The conclusion section also sketches out a series of new directions where quantum and critical thought come into contact. New entrants into the quantum IR conversation may well include some that are easily defined by actuality or analogy, follow the discussion in the introduction of adopting a quantum imaginary, or take a wholly other path. Regardless of the specific strategy, the pluralism of quantum IR is sure to increase as a greater diversity of epistemological, ontological, and methodological engagements come forward. My own intervention takes quantum to offer an alternative imaginary, one better suited to the conceptual project of critical International Relations theory. Claiming homology between the quantum model of light and ontologically “social” entities means that I would appear at a midway point on a spectrum between actuality and analogy. My claim is not that light is merely a familiar scientific concept that serves well as an allusion, but that the wave/particle duality corresponds in type to the sociality of so-called social phenomena and social entities. The Newton particle cannot imagine social characteristics or structural effects, but the quantum wave/particle duality can; if we are to take seriously structural and social phenomena and seek a consistent fundamental ontology, we either accept internal contradictions within or move past the Newtonian model. But beyond structural correspondence, part of the explanatory power of the quantum imaginary is that functional similarities—though not

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required for homological investigation (Owens 2015, 7)—can be found through socially-homologous correlates to entanglement, the observer effect, interference, diffraction, and other quantum phenomena. A full discussion of quantum properties exceeds the bounds of an introductory text, but entanglement and the observer effect with be discussed in Chapter 4.

References Aerts, Diederik. 2009. Quantum Structure in Cognition. Journal of Mathematical Psychology 53 (5): 314–348. Aerts, Diederik, Liane Gabora, and Sandro Sozzo. 2013. Concepts and Their Dynamics: A Quantum-Theoretic Modeling of Human Thought. Topics in Cognitive Science 5 (4): 737–772. Allan, Bentley B. 2018. Social Action in Quantum Social Science. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 47 (1): 87–98. Arfi, Badredine. 2005. Resolving the Trust Predicament: A Quantum GameTheoretic Approach. Theory and Decision 59: 127–174. Arfi, Badredine. 2018. Challenges to a Quantum-Theoretic Social Theory. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 47 (1): 99–113. Bandyopadhyay, Jayendra N., Tomasz Paterek, and Dagomir Kaszlikowski. 2012. Quantum Coherence and Sensitivity of Avian Magnetoreception. Physical Review Letters 109 (110502): 1–5. Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: The Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Barad, Karen. 2008. Queer Causation and the Ethics of Mattering. In Queering the Non/Human, ed. Noreen Giffney and Myra J. Hird, 311–338. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Barad, Karen. 2011. Nature’s Queer Performativity. Qui Parle 19 (2): 121–158. Barad, Karen. 2012. On Touching—The Inhuman That Therefore I Am. Differences 23 (3): 206–223. Barad, Karen. 2015. TransMaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings. GLQ 21 (2–3): 387–422. Bruza, Peter, Jerome Busemeyer, and Liane Gabora. 2009. Introduction to the Special Issue on Quantum Cognition. Journal of Mathematical Psychology 53 (5): 303–305. Burgess, J. Peter. 2018. Science Blurring Its Edges into Spirit: The Quantum Path to Atma. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 47 (1): 128–141. Busemeyer, Jerome, and Peter Bruza. 2014. Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Busemeyer, Jerome, Zheng Wang, and James Townsend. 2006. Quantum Dynamics of Human Decision-Making. Journal of Mathematical Psychology 50 (3): 220–241. DeCanio, Stephen J. 2017. What Is It Like to Be a Social Scientist? Critical Review 29 (2): 121–140. Der Derian, James. 2011. Quantum Diplomacy, German-US Relations, and the Psychogeography of Berlin. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 6: 373–392. Der Derian, James. 2013. From War 2.0 to Quantum War: The Superpositionality of Global Violence. Australian Journal of International Affairs 67 (5): 570–585. Der Derian, James. 2019. A Quantum of Insecurity. New Perspectives 27 (2): 13–27. Der Derian, James. n.d. Q Vision. Project Q: Peace & Security in a Quantum Age. https://projectqsydney.com/about-project-q/q-vision/. Last Accessed 10 Apr 2020. Der Derian, James, and Alexander Wendt. 2020. ‘Quantizing International Relations’: The Case for Quantum Approaches to International Theory and Security Practice. Security Dialogue 51 (5): 399–413. Donald, Matthew J. 2018. We Are Not Walking Wave Functions: A Response to ‘Quantum Mind and Social Science’ by Alexander Wendt. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48: 157–161. Engel, Gregory S., Tessa R. Calhoun, Elizabeth L. Read, Tae-Kyu Ahn, Tomas Mancal, Yuan-Chung Cheng, Robert E. Blankenship, and Graham R. Fleming. 2007. Evidence for Wavelike Energy Transfer Through Quantum Coherence in Photosynthetic Systems. Nature 446: 782–786. Feynman, Richard P. 2006. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fierke, Karin M. 2017. Consciousness at the Interface: Wendt, Eastern Wisdom, and the Ethics of Intra-Action. Critical Review 29 (2): 141–169. Fierke, Karin M. 2019. Contraria Sunt Complementa: Global Entanglement and the Constitution of Difference. International Studies Review 21 (1): 146–169. Fierke, Karin M., and Francisco Alfonso-Antonio. 2018. Language, Entanglement, and the New Silk Roads. Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 3 (3): 194–206. Fierke, Karin M., and Nicola Mackay. 2020. To ‘See’ Is to Break an Entanglement: Quantum Measurement, Trauma, and Security. Security Dialogue 51 (5): 450–466. Fuller, Steve. 2018. A Quantum Leap for Social Theory. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48: 177–182. Gabora, Liane, and Diederik Aerts. 2002. Contextualizing Concepts Using a Mathematical Generalization of Quantum Formalism. Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 14 (4): 327–358.

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Gauger, Erik M., Elisabeth Rieper, John J.L. Morton, Simon C. Benjamin, and Vlatko Vedral. 2011. Sustained Quantum Coherence and Entanglement in the Avian Compass. Physical Review Letters 106 (040503): 1–4. Goswami, Amit. 2017. The Everything Answer Book: How Quantum Science Explains Love, Death, and the Meaning of Life. Newburyport: Hampton Roads Publishing. Hamilton, Scott. 2017. Securing Ourselves from Ourselves? The Paradox of ‘Entanglement’ in the Anthropocene. Crime, Law, and Social Change 68 (5): 579–595. Hanauske, Matthias, Jennifer Kunz, Steffen Bernius, and Wolfgang Konig. 2010. Doves and Hawks in Economics Revisited: An Evolutionary Quantum Game Theory-Based Analysis of Financial Crises. Physica A 389: 5084–5102. Haven, Emmanuel, and Andrei Khrennikov. 2013. Quantum Social Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hiscock, Hamish G., Susannah Worster, Daniel R. Kattnig, Charlotte Steers, Ye Jin, David E. Manolopoulos, Henrik Mouritsen, and P.J. Hore. 2016. The Quantum Needle of the Avian Magnetic Compass. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113 (17): 4634–4639. Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. 2016. Fundamental Grounding. Perspectives on Politics 14 (4): 1153–1157. Jervis, Robert. 2017. One World or Many? Critical Review 29 (2): 170–188. Kessler, Oliver. 2018. The Mind-Body Problem and the Move from Supervenience to Quantum Mechanics. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 47 (1): 74–86. Kirby, Vicki. 2018. Originary différance: A Quantum Vitalism. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48: 162–166. Lee, Hohjai, Yuan-Chung Cheng, and Graham R. Fleming. 2007. Coherence Dynamics in Photosynthesis: Protein Protection of Excitonic Coherence. Science 316 (5830): 1462–1465. Little, Daniel. 2018. Entangling the Social: Comments on Alexander Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48: 167–176. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marshall, Ian, and Danah Zohar. 1997. Who’s Afraid of Schrodinger’s Cat? An A-to-Z Guide to All the New Science Ideas You Need to Keep Up with the New Thinking. New York: Quill & William Morrow. McFadden, Johnjoe, and Jim Al-Khalili. 2014. Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology. New York: Crown Publishers. Michel, Torsten. 2018. Of Particles and Humans: The Question of ‘Human Being’ in Alexander Wendt’s Quantum Mind and Social Science. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 47 (1): 114–127.

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Murphy, Michael P.A. n.d. Quantizing Post-Critique: Entangled Ontologies and Critical International Relations. Millennium: Journal of International Studies. Forthcoming. Orrell, David. 2018. Quantum Economics: The New Science of Money. New York: Icon Books. Orrell, David. 2020. The Value of Value: Quantum Social Science and the Economy. Security Dialogue 51 (5): 482–498. Owens, Patricia. 2015. Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pauling, Linus, and E. Bright Wilson. 1985. Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry. New York: Dover. Pauls, James A., Yiteng Zhang, Gennady P. Berman, and Sabre Kais. 2013. Quantum Coherence in the Avian Compass. Physical Review E 87 (062704): 1–5. Piotrowski, Edward W., and Jan Sladkowski. 2004. Quantum Games in Finance. Quantitative Finance 4 (6): 61–67. Porpora, Douglas V. 2018. Materialism, Emergentism, and Social Structure: A Response to Wendt’s Quantum Mind. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48: 183–187. Rovelli, Carlo. 2016. Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity. New York: Riverhead Books. Sarkissian, Jack. 2020. Quantum Coupled-Wave Theory of Price Formation in Financial Markets: Price Measurement, Dynamics, and Ergodicity. Physica A 554: 1–11. Sension, Roseanne J. 2007. Quantum Path to Photosynthesis. Nature 446: 740– 741. Stapp, Henry P. 2011. Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer, 2nd ed. Heidelberg: Springer. Steinmo, Sven. 2017. Wendt’s Challenge to Social Science: Quantum Physics, Consciousness, and Society. Critical Review 29 (2): 189–198. Surov, Ilya, Sergey Pilkevich, Alexander P. Alodjants, and Sergey V. Khmelevsky. 2019. Quantum Phase Stability in Human Cognition. Frontiers in Psychology 10 (929): 1–6. Vaio, Franco. 2019. The Quantum-Like Approach to Modeling Classical Rationality Violations: An Introduction. Mind & Society 18 (1): 105–123. Waldner, David. 2017. Schrodinger’s Cat and the Dog That Didn’t Bark: Why Quantum Mechanics Is (Probably) Irrelevant to the Social Sciences. Critical Review 29 (2): 199–233. Wang, Zheng, and Jerome R. Busemeyer. 2016. Interference Effects of Categorization on Decision Making. Cognition 150: 133–149. Wendt, Alexander. 1987. The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory. International Organization 41 (3): 335–370.

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Wendt, Alexander. 2006. Social Theory as a Cartesian Science: An Auto-Critique from a Quantum Perspective. In Constructivism and International Relations, ed. Stefano Guzzini and Anna Leander, 181–219. Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis. Wendt, Alexander. 2010. Flatland: Quantum Mind and the International Hologram. In New Systems Theories of World Politics, ed. Mathias Albert, Lars-Erik Cederman, and Alexander Wendt, 279–310. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wendt, Alexander. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wendt, Alexander. 2018. The Mind-Body Problem and Social Science: Motivating a Quantum Social Theory. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48: 188–204. Zanotti, Laura. 2017. Reorienting IR: Ontological Entanglement, Agency, and Ethics. International Studies Review 19: 362–380. Zanotti, Laura. 2019. Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads. London: Routledge. Zohar, Danah. 1982. Through the Time Barrier: A Study in Precognition and Modern Physics. London: Heinemann. Zohar, Danah. 1990. The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics. New York: Quill & William Morrow. Zohar, Danah. 1997. Rewiring the Corporate Brain: Using the New Science to Rethink How We Structure and Lead Organizations. San Francisco: BerrettKoehler. Zohar, Danah. 2016. The Quantum Leader: A Revolution in Business Thinking and Practice. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Zohar, Danah, and Ian Marshall. 1994. The Quantum Society: Mind, Physics, and a New Social Vision. New York: Quill & William Morrow.

Further Reading Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: The Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. • Karen Barad’s thorough and provocative ontological rereading of Bohrian philosophy of physics offers a major contribution to feminist materialism and quantum social theory. As discussed in the chapter, the breadth of this inquiry makes it an essential reading for anyone seeking to enter quantum social theory from a critical perspective. Wendt, Alexander. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology. New York: Cambridge University Press. • The first full monograph on quantum International Relations, Wendt’s Quantum Mind offers a user-friendly introduction to a wide variety of topics, from key experiments and interpretations of quantum mechanics through

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the application of quantum theory to psychology, biology, neurology, and consciousness studies. The final sections of the book sketch out a provocative account of how the social world emerges through quantum consciousness. Wendt’s book is the preeminent work in quantum social theory staking a claim to what I have termed “quantum realism.” Zanotti, Laura. 2019. Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads. London: Routledge. • Zanotti’s Ontological Entanglements is the first book-length intervention taking a critical approach to quantum International Relations. In addition to a critique of Newtonian substantialism in both problem-solving and critical approaches to International Relations theory, Zanotti draws on Barad and international ethics to critique the impact of abstract norms in world politics.

PART II

Quantizing Critique through Translation and Application

CHAPTER 4

Translating on Common Ground: Borders, Autoethnography, Assemblages

Abstract This chapter introduces the method of quantizing through translation, the approach that brings critical IR and quantum social theory together by finding common ground. Three examples discussed in the chapter are: (1) the macroscopic/microscopic paradox in defining what a border is, which can be translated to the wave/particle duality, (2) the insights of autoethnography and reflexive methods, understood through the observer effect, and (3) the complex concept of the assemblage, described with reference to quantum entanglement. The chapter also discusses the benefits of quantizing through translation as a method of moving beyond the limits imposed by a Newtonian physical imaginary. Keywords Critical border studies · Autoethnography · Assemblages · Quantizing International Relations · Critical IR

Introduction While the previous chapter discussed prior interventions into quantum social theory, within and beyond the framing of actuality and analogy, the next two discuss new approaches that will, I hope, build welcoming inroads to the quantum community. Quantizing through translation and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. P. A. Murphy, Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60111-9_4

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quantizing though application both describe methods for exploring the crossroads of quantum thinking with existing critical International Relations. Just as scholars may employ both feminist and queer theory or new materialism and securitization theory in their work, it is my hope that the methods of translation and application can help scholars to use quantum social theory in conjunction with existing conceptual tools from critical approaches to International Relations. Translation as an approach to quantizing International Relations focuses on identifying what we might call quantum-like concepts in those previously existing theoretical frameworks. Or, following the term employed earlier, quantizing through translation identifies homologies (Murphy 2020b; Owens 2015) between quantum and critical concepts. Employing a strategy similar to what Barad (2007) calls diffractive reading,1 translation seeks to explore how the language of quantum social theory can help explain, and expand the utility of, existing concepts in critical International Relations. As will be discussed below, despite the process of translation into quantum language entailing the introduction of some complicated terminology—though perhaps not quite as much as some might expect—the power of quantum language actually can allow concepts to embrace a level of complexity that can be difficult to articulate in a Newtonian vocabulary of social science. The technical language emerging from critical theories of IR often becomes so technical precisely because it must express a kind of hidden complexity that lurks beneath simplified (Newtonian) reality. As discussed in the introduction, this quest to reveal and understand the complexity existing beneath the surface is a shared project with quantum mechanics. Thus, the paradoxical nature of the wave/particle duality, for example, can offer a homological model for expressing complexity that critical theory identifies as hidden beneath the simplified narratives of mainstream approaches to International Relations. Application, on the other hand, seeks not to complement but to complete and asks how shortcomings of an existing critical approach to International Relations might be addressed through quantizing the framework at a foundational level. More specifically, quantizing through application presumes that the shortcoming in question is a natural result of the constraints that a Newtonian imaginary imposes on critical social 1 Barad describes diffractive reading as the practice of “reading insights through one another in attending to and responding to the details and specificities of relations of difference and how they matter” (2007, 71).

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science. The conceptual tools of quantum social theory, in this case, offer an alternative that can capture the complex and/or paradoxical details that must be bracketed when working within a Newtonian ontology. Whereas quantizing through translation begins with quantum-like concepts or properties and then expresses them in the quantum vernacular, quantizing through application begins with Newtonian concepts or properties that are limited precisely by virtue of their embedded Newtonian assumptions. A quantum social-theoretic framing is then applied to the existing theory, producing a new, quantum version of the previous theory. This approach will be dealt with in the next chapter. The remainder of the chapter proceeds in five sections. The next one reflects more deeply on the motivation for quantizing through translation, while the three middle sections develop examples of critical concepts or approaches translated into quantum social-theoretic terms: the border, autoethnography, and assemblages. The quantum-like concept of the border moves beyond the choice of focusing on either the (materially or practically) constructed nature of the border on the one hand or the social, political, and sovereign implications on the other. Instead, the wave/particle duality permits a heuristic view of the border, and thereby allows different strands of critical scholarship to find common ground for dialogue. A quantum translation of autoethnography takes place in the subsequent section, reflecting on how the language of the observer effect can help frame the insights in terms of reflexivity and the creative act of research that the autoethnographic tradition offers. The final case taken is that of assemblage thinking, which mobilizes the quantum concept of social entanglement to describe how the complex inter-relations of the assemblage are more easily explained when viewed through the lens of social entanglement. The concluding section reflects briefly on the opportunities for dialogue opened up in the light of such homological translations.

Translating IR into Quantum Social Theory As I argued in the introduction, I believe that quantum and critical theories have a shared drive to uncover the ways in which the world is more complex than models emphasizing predictability and regularity would suggest. As the title of a recent book by Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli (2017) tells us, a core lesson of quantum mechanics is that “reality is not what it seems.” Is this not strikingly similar to the call to action

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of Robert W. Cox (1981) and countless others who have taken up the moniker of “critical” in International Relations theory, to highlight the influence of hidden processes and forgotten histories? Quantum social theory, especially those approaches inspired by Karen Barad’s (2007) feminist philosophy, is a comrade in the search for complexity. Beyond alliance formation, which is more of a strategic concern than anything else, there are two preliminary justifications for quantizing critique through translation that I would like to reflect upon at this point. First, while specific critical approaches all have unique terms that serve to highlight the key actors and factors relevant for that theoretical perspective, remaining bound by the vocabulary of Newtonian social science—like any other specific linguistic set—limits the explanatory power of the theory.2 One important example of the power of language in limiting the possibility of meaning-making is found in Carol Cohn’s (1987a) landmark article in feminist security studies discussed in the introduction, where she highlights how core concerns of peace and humanity become unthinkable once assimilated into the common parlance of the defence and security establishment. While the explosion of critical approaches to International Relations brings a number of new terms that allow for new questions to be asked about different aspects of world politics, remaining within the bounds of Newtonian social science means that the limits of that physical imaginary have not been transcended. While this may be inconsequential for problem-solving theories in search of predictability and regularity, approaches which seek to recognize and disentangle complexity should recognize the dangers of remaining within the constraints of a Newtonian imaginary. While that Newtonian imaginary may work well for problem-solving approaches that

2 The point is not that the language of quantum social theory is without limit, but that its limits better align with the aims of critical approaches to International Relations. As Philip Mirowski argues in a study of Newtonian econophysics, quantum mechanics “preaches fundamental and irreducible indeterminism at the micro level, wreaking havoc with the neoclassical penchant for Laplacian determinism and methodological individualism. Were the quantum metaphor to be imported into economics, it would precipitate mistrust and perhaps full dissolution of the vaunted neutrality of the economic scientist with respect to the social object of his research, and hence force consideration of the interaction of the economist with the pecuniary phenomenon” (1989, 391–392). I would wager that most critical theorists are ready to welcome an end to vaunted neutrality and methodological individualism, and its replacement with complexity and a recognition of the interaction of researchers with their subjects.

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seek to improve function or predict regularities, the critical quest for questioning problems and recognizing complexity is seriously hindered by the constraints imposed by Newtonian assumptions of lawlike regularities, the objective observer, and so on. When ideas are moving in a quantum-like direction—recognizing paradox, in search of complexity, and beginning with an acknowledgement of uncertainty—translating them into the vernacular of quantum social theory permits a new set of questions to be asked in the diagnosis of the existing world and the imagination of alternative and emancipatory political futures. In short, quantum social theory dovetails with the broad aims of critical International Relations in a way that Newtonian social science does not—rather than continuing to speak always and only within the limits of a Newtonian vocabulary (and therefore imaginary), the translation to quantum social theory frees concepts to explore the complexity, uncertainty, and paradox that critical IR theory seeks to identify. Because the pair are related homologically—that is, they share a common form beyond mere surface similarity—the shift in language and adoption of a quantum imaginary is primarily a matter of fit. While Newtonian language must be pushed against for the development of critical scholarship, within a quantum imaginary the door is open. To this end, the practice of quantizing through translation approaches the practice of translation similar to the efforts described by Walter Benjamin in his reflections on Baudelaire: Translation is a mode. To comprehend it as mode one must go back to the original, for that contains the law governing the translation: its translatability. The question of whether a work is translatable has a dual meaning. Either: Will an adequate translator ever be found among the totality of its readers? Or, more pertinently: Does its nature lend itself to translation and, therefore, in view of the significance of the mode, call for it? (Benjamin 2007, 70)

Quantizing through translation is not a matter of forcing new language where it is superfluous, but—following this first motivation—to appreciate the translatability already present within the critical approach, answering its call to move beyond the limits imposed by a Newtonian linguistic imaginary. A second preliminary justification for translating concepts into a quantum physical imaginary comes from the fact that critical theories

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expressing their core concepts in quantum terms can find a common parlance for complexity. Difficulties of discourse between research “camps”3 can arise when specific meanings of jargon are only known to initiates in that particular community. Because technical concepts within a particular approach limit the extent to which the theory can “travel,” quantum social theory provides a new set of key terms that can describe phenomena appearing across different critical traditions without a contest to see which competing community’s vernacular must win out.4 For example, the insights of an autoethnographer on the positionality of the researcher vis-à-vis the practice of inquiry may at first seem separate from speech-act analysis of securitization theory. However, framing both in terms of the observer effect can open up a space for conversation that does not require deference towards the language of one research community or the other. Through the remainder of this chapter, I will refer to how the three examples help illustrate the two preliminary justifications for quantizing through translation.

Wave/Particle Borders5 Borders are a familiar subject of investigation in International Relations, as they mark the spaces where claims of territorial sovereignty abut one another. But while this brief definition may work well in the abstract, or for approaches built on assumptions of Westphalian sovereignty, borders are often more complicated than a line in the sand. Contested borderlands (e.g. Bouzas 2012; Mukherjee 2015; Zarinebaf 2019) are places where ongoing disputes lead to overlapping rather than abutting claims to sovereignty. Even when borders become more well defined, as through the construction of border walls, the effects produced through walls are complex, as they can produce new sites of resistance, data sources, and an object of new political discourses (e.g. Pallister-Wilkins 2011, 2016; Rosière and Jones 2012). Arguments around the deterritorialization, offshoring, and extension of the border (e.g. Mountz 2011a, b) further complicate any idea that the border is simply a line between 3 For more on the idea of camp IR, see the work of Christine Sylvester (2007, 2013). 4 To this end, the quantum translation strategy is a more emancipatory form of what

Gerard van der Ree (2013) calls regrounding the field. 5 For a full treatment of the promise of quantum thinking for critical border studies, see Murphy (n.d.).

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two sovereign nations when the functions of borders occur at “airports, rail stations, cruise line terminals, prescreening points [in addition to] the physical frontier” (Salter 2008, 366). While there is an abstract notion of the border as a physical place where claims to sovereignty are enforced, the reality underneath the surface demonstrates that the border is a much more complicated phenomenon with messier boundaries and many connected practices, constituent elements, and nonlocal connections. While borders may appear in the problem-solving literatures on security and strategic studies—especially in the context of “stopping threats at the frontier” (e.g. Flynn 2000)—critical approaches to the study of borders highlight the complexity of the topic beyond the assumption of discrete and objective physical entities. But this does not mean that there is only one way to study the border “critically.” Indeed, the research community known as “critical border studies” includes approaches using securitization theory (e.g. Salter and Piché 2011) or drawing explicitly on theories of sovereignty (e.g. Murphy 2019), which have highlighted the macro-social nature of borders as social institutions and instruments of power, whereas more fine-grained analysis of the materiality (e.g. Nyers 2012) and technologization (e.g. Bourne et al. 2015) of the border draw attention instead to the constituent parts that construct the border. This separation between macro- and micro-approaches to border studies highlights how there is a constitutive paradox in the ontology of the border—that is to say, the heart of how critical scholarship understands the border holds tension at its deepest level. This perspectival fracture can be easily understood as a macro/micro divide. The macroscopic analyses typically focus on how the invisible social structures interact with the border and draw on familiar concepts of state theory such as security, sovereignty, and territorial control. While singular events such as policy announcements may be recognized as key shifts in these social-structural aspects of the border, macroscopic analyses are more likely to take place either through abstract theorization or analysis of a longer time-scale. In both cases, we might say that they are focused on that patterns and global impacts of changes in governance rather than precise differences from one place to another. Conversely, microscopic analyses proceed by unpacking the complex reality into its constituent parts, tracing precise developments, and uncovering connections from “the border” into procedural manuals, laboratories, and beyond. The border as understood in conventional and macroscopiccritical analyses may very well disappear from view, as the focus turns

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from the structural effects over time to the precise details of practical and material construction of borders. Phrased in terms of patterns versus precision, the perspectival fracture in critical border studies has a clear parallel with the wave/particle duality introduced at length in Chapter 2.6 The macroscopic, pattern-focused analysis is homologous to the wave-focused recognition of interference patterns in Young’s Two-Slit Experiment. Understanding the role of sovereignty at the border requires abstraction—the social-theoretic equivalent of mathematical modelling of the unseen variables that Schrodinger “blurred” together. The microscopic analysis, instead, focuses on particularities of complex interactions. But, in so doing, the careful focus on minute details renders invisible the structural dynamics discovered in the first instance. Just as a photoelectric plate interacts only with the particleform of the photon, the research apparatus designed for the microscopic study of the border can only ever find the small interactions that constitute it. This perspectival fracture is a problem of measurement, in the quantum sense, as prioritization of patterns over precision can only ever reveal structural over agential dynamics (and vice versa). Translating critical border studies into quantum terms, then, relieves a serious tension within that field. The border, understood as a social wavefunction exhibiting properties of both wave and particle reorients the relationship between macroscopic and microscopic analytical frames as measurement problems. The paradoxical nature of the border is identified through these two radically different approaches, and it is—referring to Benjamin’s remarks—as if that inner tension calls out to be translated into a new physical imaginary that clearly and cleanly expresses that constitutive tension. Once we enter into the quantum realm, we gain an entirely new vocabulary to explore key issues. How do policies destructively interfere to limit our freedom of movement in the borderlands? How do the prejudices circulating through society diffractively differentiate the experiences of some border-crossers from others? By identifying the wave/particle duality as a powerful frame for drawing research perspectives together, we can also ask a whole new set of questions about how quantum phenomena become visible in the subject matter of border studies.

6 I have made a similar argument about the market as a social wavefunction in Murphy (2020a).

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Autoethnography, Reflexivity, and the Observer Effect The next example of common-ground translation that I would like to discuss is the method of autoethnography, generally understood as an example of narrative and reflexive approaches to International Relations. Specifically, I address how the quantum notion of the observer effect can help strengthen the articulation of reflexive methodologies. Autoethnography was first developed as an anthropological research method (e.g. Hayano 1979) that involves the reflexive study of one’s own cultural milieu. In line with other constructivist accounts of knowledge production (e.g. Latour and Woolgar 1986), a central claim of reflexive approaches to research is that the apparent objectivity of positivist epistemologies misses the productive and creative nature of research. In response, a method like autoethnography places the creativity of the researcher front and centre in the understanding of knowledge production. Before the specific term “autoethnography” was familiar to scholars of critical International Relations, there was already a well-established critique of assumptions of objectivity and detachment in research. One landmark intervention in this discussion is Carol Cohn’s (1987a, b) investigation of defence intellectual establishment. Carefully reflecting on her own experiences as a participant in a summer 1984 workshop on nuclear weapons, Cohn discusses—among other issues—the ways in which her engagement with the subjects of deterrence and nuclear warfare was powerfully mediated by the inner logic of the language spoken by defence intellectuals. Not only is Cohn’s article an example of a protoautoethnographic account because the empirical material comes from her careful reflection from her own experiences—as autoethnography is often casually understood in IR—but the piece is profoundly and reflexively attentive to the ways in which the language and practice of research constrain what is thinkable and knowable. “The objective of autoethnography,” Morgan Brigg and Roland Bleiker state in their framing piece for a Review of International Studies special section on the topic, “is to (re-)introduce the self as a methodological resource” (2010, 788). The researcher is significant not only as the name appearing under the title but through the body of the text, which brings “the author into a more fundamental relation with the empirical world” that allows the author to “access important insights that would otherwise remain dismissed or devalued” (Brigg and Bleiker 2010, 789).

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Autoethnography also raises important questions on ethics and positionality in research. Elizabeth Dauphinee (2010) argues that autoethnography disrupts the orthodoxy of academic writing that silences the subjects and objects of inquiry, building “a community of interested participants” in place of the previous “dispassionate observers” (817). The autoethnographer recognizes and indeed is inseparable from the complex relation between context, craft, and partners in discussion. Acknowledging and writing from the first person position allows the autoethnographer “to be forthright about complexity and violence” rather than applying abstract principles from the position of assumed objectivity (Naumes 2015, 825).7 Sarah Naumes (2015, 831) argues that a key contribution of autoethnography to International Relations is how its narrative method can reveal the dynamic and contradictory nature of world politics. The researcher is an important part of the creation of this knowledge, and ignoring the researcher’s own place in the process leaves out key information. As discussed in Chapter 2, the observer effect in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics describes how the act of measurement disturbs a system in such a way that the system is fundamentally altered. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle teaches us that if I choose to measure the momentum of photon, my interaction with the system means that knowledge of the photon’s position is no longer possible. In some (ontological) corners of the Copenhagen interpretation, this goes a step further, and the observer effect is taken to mean that the observer’s act of measurement actually causes the wave to collapse into a particle. Whether we take the stronger or weaker claim, we are left with a great deal of creative agency on the part of the observer—our intervention through measurement changes the nature of the system in producing that measurement. While this conceptual example may already suggest how autoethnography might be translated into quantum terms, the point is even more strongly articulated in Barad’s discussion of the observer effect in relation to the famous Stern-Gerlach experiment. Following the earlier argument of Niels Bohr (e.g. 2010, 89–90) on the importance of accounting for the entire measurement apparatus, Barad (2007) argues that any full account of the research apparatus must always include the researcher—

7 From a perspective of quantum ethics, a key part of Zanotti’s (2019) Ontological Entanglements is her critique of the application of abstract principles in international interventions.

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the agency and intentionality of the researcher provides a spark to the whole apparatus that cannot rightfully be assumed away. In general terms, the Stern-Gerlach experiment shot a beam of silver atoms between two magnets, towards a glass recording plate.8 This experiment was later understood to reveal the important property of electron spin, but at Walter Gerlach’s first look at the recording plate, there was no evidence of the silver atom beam. It was only after Otto Stern—smoking a cheap cigar—breathed on the plate while examining it that the high sulphur content of the smoke interacted with the silver on the plate to produce silver sulphide, which was easily recognized by the researchers (Friedrich and Herschbach 2003). There is a first, generic claim, that the construction of the experimental apparatus contributed to the production of the result, insofar as the silver markings on the recording plate would not be there were it not for the practices of the researchers in that particular laboratory. But the more interesting observer effect that Barad draws attention to arises from Stern’s ability to see what Gerlach could not. Stern was a junior researcher and his relative impoverishment at that time meant that he was unable to purchase good quality cigars to satisfy his tobacco addiction—but if he had been sufficiently wealthy, there would not have been enough sulphur on his breath to produce silver sulphide on the recording plate and reveal the markings of the experiment. Not only his smoking habit but the specific intersection of the habit with his socioeconomic standing is necessary for the specific sulphur content, and therefore, as Barad argues, “class, nationalism, gender…among other variables, are all part of this apparatus” (2007, 165). Much like Cohn’s experience in the “rational” world of defence intellectuals, results in the “objective” world of experimental physics are conditioned by the positionality of its participants. A quantized autoethnography speaks to the entanglement of the observer within the research apparatus and the importance of the observer effect—both specifically and generically—in the production of knowledge. The recognition of complexity in the material (Naumes 2015) or the inseparability of the researcher from research (Briggs and Bleiker 2010) are possible in part because there is a recognition of the broader system of which the researcher is a part as well as the productive difference that the activity of research makes in the system. But it is perhaps the specific

8 For a technical discussion, see Schmidt-Bocking et al. (2016).

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observer effect that plays the largest role. It is not only a matter of observation making a difference, but of how my observation makes this or that specific difference. My positionality across classed, gendered, racialized, and other structures of society participates in the kind of effect that my observation has. The germ of this claim exists in autoethnography, but the lack of a clear explanatory model for why autoethnography centres the researcher led to many critiques of this approach as narcissistic, intellectually lazy, and relying on an unstable self (e.g. Delamont 2007; Gannon 2006; Goode 2006). Quantum social theory’s explanation of the entanglement of the observer within the measurement apparatus offers a clear response to these challenges—whether in physical or human sciences, intervention into a system enacts irreversible change and researchers must recognize their important role in the creation and production of knowledge. To the poststructuralist critique, the acknowledgement of the centrality of the researcher is not a presumption that the research occupies a stable position, but that the continual becoming of the researcher across all planes of existence plays an important role in the production of the researcher (and thereby any research that the researcher conducts). The chemical production of silver sulphide in the example of the SternGerlach experiment is a clear example, and social scientists will not always have as visible an experience of how their positionality enters into the measurement apparatus. But that is a call to reflexive interrogation, not to bracket that which we do not yet know. Through the observer effect, quantum social theory offers autoethnography an explanation of how both generic and specific effects contribute to the construction of knowledge. While the epistemological argument made by Barad and others is that this entangled and intra-active constitution is always the case, the specific method of autoethnography benefits from the language more than other approaches because of the specific embrace of the positionality and agency of the researcher in this mode of inquiry. Recognizing, with Zanotti (2019), that scientific claims to objectivity proceeds directly from the Newtonian substantialism prevalent across the social sciences, the key assumptions that autoethnography and broader reflexivist approaches bring to International Relations challenge the foundational Newtonian assumption of objectivity.

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Entangled Assemblages The concept of the assemblage has received a great deal of attention in recent decades, drawing on a variety of theorists including Manuel DeLanda, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, and Saskia Sassen. Defined variably as an “approach” (Abrahamsen 2016), a “thinking tool” (Salter 2013, 12), and “theory” (Bueger 2018), the concept of the assemblage appears in different places across the research process. Growing in attention since the turn of the millennium, the concept of the assemblage was introduced to many by Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson’s (2000) oft-cited article on the “surveillant assemblage,”9 which argued that surveillance no longer functioned through a hierarchical logic, but as the complex and interwoven network of convergent systems. Rather than an analysis of ontologically separable component parts, the assemblage describes a messy web. While a full review of how the concept of the assemblage is deployed in International Relations is beyond the scope of this chapter, an examination of the work of Rita Abrahamsen and Michael Williams offers sufficient depth to ground our discussion on the insights that quantum entanglement can offer to the study of assemblages. In the context of research on security privatization, Abrahamsen and Williams argue that the trends are not merely a transfer of power from public institutions to the private sector, but instead encompasses a complexification of security governance and “a broader rearticulation of public-private and globallocal relations” where states participate in their own disassembly (2009, 3). Assemblage, in this sense, refers to “these new geographies of power that are simultaneously global and national as well as public and private” (Abrahamsen and Williams 2011a, 175). Whereas the security sector in the twentieth century was commonly understood as state-centric,10 this concept of the (global security) assemblage calls attention to the complexity and density of relations that stretch across the globe while also producing profound implications for everyday life. Abrahamsen and Williams are clear that part of their call to action is to begin with a

9 This work continues to drive research agendas in critical approaches to surveillance and security (e.g. Topak 2019). Beyond surveillance, assemblage research has covered a wide variety of topics, such as piracy (Bueger 2018), health (Voelkner 2011), and parasport (Heffernan 2020). 10 Consider here Max Weber’s oft-cited definition of the state.

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different conceptual model of what it means to study security in a way that can understand the complex world of private security: Situating the emergence of security privatization and global security assemblages within the state draws attention to the inadequacy of explanatory accounts that look at security only in relation to the traditional institutions of the state, such as the police, military, paramilitary forces or ministries of home affairs or justice. Instead, it is imperative to examine the relationship between these institutions and other components of the state involved in global processes. (Abrahamsen and Williams 2011b, 95)

We cannot make clean assumptions about state containers11 preceding interactions, but must prioritize the complex and long-distance relations that produce the “complex hybrid structures that inhabit national settings but are stretched across national boundaries in terms of actors, knowledges, technologies, norms, and values” (Abrahamsen and Williams 2011b, 95). Earlier, simplistic assumptions that describe security in terms of discrete units that can be objectively analyzed within a boundary must give way to a new, assemblage model that recognizes important global influences on local realities, and complex multiplicities of interaction and interconnection. Translating the assemblage into the conceptual language of quantum social theory involves a recognition of entanglement and its effects. Here, the assemblage can be defined as an entangled system (in opposition to a separable Newtonian entity). Fundamental connectivity between the different elements means that for the entity to be understood in its entirety, the full apparatus—following Barad’s (2007) use of the term—must be considered. Hiving off the global dimension to focus on apparently local actors entails a loss of context for the actors and factors under analysis.12 While Abrahamsen and Williams do not go so far as to claim that relations ontologically precede relata (as we see in Barad’s work), they do draw attention to the strength and impact of relationships in the emergence of assemblages. The entirety of the apparatus—read, the global aspects—must be considered precisely because entanglement

11 The container model describes the state as a body that contains or captures power and politics within it (e.g. Giddens 1985; Taylor 1994). 12 See also the work of Patricia Noxolo (2020) on the notion of (post) diaspora read diffractively through local/nonlocal entanglement.

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describes a situation where nonlocal causation can take place. Just as the death of Socrates made Xantippe a widow instantly (Kim 1974), the implications of decisions in a commercial security corporation’s office in London have immediate impacts on the lived experience in Nigeria.13 If we are to ignore the global in our focus on the local, we miss the nonlocal forces of entangled entities. This is precisely the kind of attention that assemblage-thinking draws to the complex and interrelated entities that must be considered for a holistic view. The formation of assemblages can be more specifically quantized through Alexander Wendt’s discussion of language as an entangled social wavefunction.14 While his argument is ultimately grounded in the quantum-realist claim that human consciousness actually is a wavefunction and entanglement therefore appears as a claim of physical reality rather than as a way of seeing the world, the specific discussion of language is argued in terms of everyday spoken interactions. Wendt outlines a thought experiment where a Vietnamese tourist encounters a merchant in Denmark: at first, their interaction is limited to gestures, but “if one ventures to say ‘English?’ and the other says ‘yes,’ then suddenly a new superposition will be created in which the meaning of their potential English speech acts will be entangled with their meaning in the other’s mind” (2015, 234). The social wavefunction of language entangles the expression of one with the interpretation of the other, and an isolated assumption focusing only on the language, the speaker, or the listener cannot capture the conversation. “Linguistic competencies,” Wendt argues, “are no longer fully separable, but correlated non-locally through an over-arching system of meaning between them” (2015, 234). A conversation may be seen as an assemblage of words and their etymologies, sentences and their grammar and syntax, statements and their connotations and logic, as well as interlocutors, their fluidity and vernacular, their familiarity and comfort, and many other factors. To analyze a conversation is to take account of all aspects because they are inseparable from—they are entangled with—one another.

13 I discuss nonlocal effects in the context of quantum global political economy in Murphy (2020). 14 A different approach to the concept of the social wavefunction appears in the next chapter.

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The assemblage—like the conversation—is not a single and discrete thing but a complex composite of entangled elements. Assemblages push back against the spatio-temporal limitations of Newtonian social science and call attention to relations beyond contained relata, disabusing the observer of the assumption of separability. But in a Newtonian imaginary, there is a leap of faith necessary to research an assemblage—we suspend our disbelief in nonlocal connections within the assemblage by bracketing certain elements of the Newtonian physical imaginary. But we need not research while holding our ontological noses, as quantum social theory provides the missing physical imaginary for the social arrangements that assemblage-driven inquiry draws attention to. The approach—to borrow Benjamin’s turn of phrase—calls out to be translated precisely because of the significance of the difference between Newtonian modes of inquiry and the radical challenge that the concept of the assemblage poses.

Conclusion As the three examples discussed in this chapter demonstrate, quantizingby-translation grants critical concepts that reject the assumptions and implications of Newtonian social science an alternative physical imaginary and a powerful new vocabulary. This new conceptual-linguistic mode opens up space for new ways to explain and explore the insights of critical International Relations. From critical border studies, we see how the wave-particle duality can help unpack the relationship between macroscopic and microscopic orientations of critique. In the case of autoethnography and reflexive approaches to International Relations, the observer effect explains the necessity of recognizing the imbrication of the researcher in the creative project of research to appreciate the full apparatus of investigation. And finally, the notion of the assemblage receives a powerful explanatory framework for discussing nonlocality, the necessity of recognizing all entangled elements, and the shared wavefunction produced as a new answer for what the assemblage is. Much of the conceptual heavy lifting that critical International Relations scholars undertake must be heavy because they must bear not only the weight of mainstream assumptions within the discipline, but also the Newtonian physical imaginary that posits a boundary of the imaginable. The partial solutions that can be developed by a perspectival fracture to move beyond a paradoxical object of inquiry, vulnerability to criticism of self-aggrandisement in research, or simply bracketing the question of how

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it works. All inquiries following these MacGyvered Newtonian methods entail an authoritative claim by the researcher, that may well become accepted as a critical method but nevertheless is to a greater or lesser extent unimaginable in terms of the physical imaginary. The strength of quantizing through translation is that each of these approaches can now express itself free from the linguistic limitations of Newtonian social science. Critical concepts that speak to complexity, paradox, and uncertainty can be expressed in the vernacular of a sympathetic imaginary. Where we move in the next chapter, however, is a step further on the journey of quantizing critique. Rather than beginning from a place where quantum-like concepts such as borders, autoethnography, or assemblages can be translated into the language of quantum social theory, we identify a problem in critical social theory proceeding from its Newtonian limitations, and posit a quantum solution.

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Mountz, Alison. 2011a. Border Politics: Spatial Provision and Geographical Precision. Political Geography 30: 65–66. Mountz, Alison. 2011b. The Enforcement Archipelago: Detention, Haunting, and Asylum on Islands. Political Geography 30 (3): 118–128. Mukherjee, Kunal. 2015. Comparing China’s Contested Borderland Regions: Xinjiang and Tibet. Millennial Asia 6 (1): 61–80. Murphy, Michael P.A. 2019. The Double Articulation of Sovereign Bordering: Spaces of Exception, Sovereign Vulnerability, and Agamben’s Schmitt/Foucault Synthesis. Journal of Borderlands Studies OnlineFirst: 1–17. Murphy, Michael P.A. 2020a. Markets are Constantly Collapsing: Reconceptualizing ‘The Market’ as a Quantum Social Wavefunction. Competition & Change Forthcoming. Murphy, Michael P.A. 2020b. The Securitization Audience in TheologicoPolitical Perspective: Giorgio Agamben, Doxological Acclamations, and Paraconsistent Logic. International Relations 34 (1): 67–83. Murphy, Michael P.A. n.d. From Lines in the Sand to the Wave/Particle Duality: A Quantum Imaginary for Critical Border Studies. In The Line Crossed Us: New Directions in Critical Border Studies, ed. Julie Young, Sheila McManus, and Paul McKenzie-Jones. Athabasca: University of Athabasca Press (Under Contract). Naumes, Sarah. 2015. Is All ‘I’ IR? Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43 (3): 820–832. Noxolo, Patricia. 2020. I Am Becoming My Mother: (Post)Diaspora, Local Entanglements, and Entangled Locals. African and Black Diaspora 13 (2): 134–146. Nyers, Peter. 2012. Moving Borders: The Politics of Dirt. Radical Philosophy 174: 2–6. Owens, Patricia. 2015. Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pallister-Wilkins, Polly. 2011. The Separation Wall: A Symbol of Power and a Site of Resistance? Antipode 43 (5): 1851–1882. Pallister-Wilkins, Polly. 2016. How Walls Do Work: Security Barriers as Devices of Interruption and Data Capture. Security Dialogue 47 (2): 151–164. Rosière, Stéphane, and Reece Jones. 2012. Teichnopolitics: Re-considering Globalisation through the Role of Walls and Fences. Geopolitics 17 (1): 217–234. Rovelli, Carlo. 2017. Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity. New York: Riverhead. Salter, Mark B. 2008. When the Exception Becomes the Rule: Borders, Sovereignty, and Citizenship. Citizenship Studies 12 (4): 365–380. Salter, Mark B. 2013. To Make Move and Let Stop: Mobility and the Assemblage of Circulation. Mobilities 8 (1): 7–19.

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Salter, Mark B., and Geneviève Piché. 2011. The Securitization of the US– Canada Border in American Political Discourse. Canadian Journal of Political Science 44 (4): 929–951. Schmidt-Bocking, Horst, Lothar Schmidt, Hans Jurden Ludde, Wolfgang Trageser, Alan Templeton, and Tilman Sauer. 2016. The Stern-Gerlach Experiment Revisited. The European Physical Journal H 41: 327–364. Sylvester, Christine. 2007. Whither the International at the End of IR? Millennium 35 (3): 551–573. Sylvester, Christine. 2013. Experiencing the End and Afterlives of International Relations/Theory. European Journal of International Relations 19 (3): 609– 626. Taylor, Peter J. 1994. The State as Container: Territoriality in the Modern WorldSystem. Progress in Human Geography 18 (2): 151–162. Topak, Ozgun E. 2019. “The Authoritarian Surveillant Assemblage: Authoritarian State Surveillance in Turkey.” Security Dialogue 50 (5): 454–472. van der Ree, Gerard. 2013. Saving the Discipline: Plurality, Social Capital, and the Sociology of IR Theorizing. International Political Sociology 8 (2): 218– 233. Voelkner, Nadine. 2011. Managing Pathogenic Circulation: Human Security and the Migrant Health Assemblage in Thailand. Security Dialogue 42 (3): 239– 259. Wendt, Alexander. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zanotti, Laura. 2019. Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads. London: Routledge. Zarinebaf, Fariba. 2019. Azerbaijan Between Two Empires: A Contested Borderland in the Early Modern Period (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries). Iranian Studies 52 (3–4): 299–337.

Further Reading Abrahamsen, Rita, and Michael C. Williams. 2011. Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. • A major intervention into both the literature on privatizing security, Abrahamsen and Williams’ theorization of global security assemblages demonstrate the method of thinking through assemblages in International Relations research. Clearly written, empirically rich, and conceptually sophisticated, this monograph demonstrates how assemblage-oriented research can draw out insights that would have been invisible to traditional analyses.

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Bleiker, Roland, and Morgan Brigg (eds.). 2010. RIS Forum on Autoethnography and International Relations. Review of International Studies 36 (3 and 4): 777–778. • Published over the course of two issues of the Review of International Studies, this forum on autoethnography canvasses the politics and ethics of autoethnographic research while also including two examples of autoethnographic research in action. Bringing both strands together into one forum makes this a strong introduction to the approach. Parker, Noel, and Nick Vaughan-Williams (eds.). 2014. Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the ‘Lines in the Sand’ Agenda. London: Routledge. • Originally published as a special issue of Geopolitics, this edited collection serves as a rich introduction to the rich diversity of perspectives and methods in critical border studies. It offers the reader a good sense of the breadth of the research community, as well as what I call above the ‘perspectival fracture’ between micro- and macro-oriented orientations.

CHAPTER 5

Applying a Quantum Imaginary: The Example of “Quactor”-Network Theory

Abstract This chapter explores the other method of quantizing critical approaches to International Relations, which I call “quantizing through application.” In this method, we begin with a particular critical approach that has hit a (Newtonian) conceptual roadblock and then apply quantum assumptions in place of the Newtonian ones. To explore this method, I discuss the disappearance of structural power in actor-network theory, demonstrating how introducing the social wavefunction can help move beyond the limits of the Newtonian imaginary. Keywords Actor-Network theory · Quantum game theory · Quantizing International Relations · Critical IR

Introduction The second strategy of quantizing critique consists of applying a quantum imaginary onto existing concepts and approaches found in critical International Relations, particularly at points where the fundamental Newtonian imaginary embedded in the theory produces lingering problems. Unlike the translation technique discussed in Chapter 4, the core argument of this chapter is not that there is already quantum thinking happening in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. P. A. Murphy, Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60111-9_5

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the critical approach in question. Rather, the argument is that there is a problem created by the inherent limits of a Newtonian imaginary that an application of an alternative quantum imaginary can rectify. Instead of arguing that there are quantum-like ideas longing to be freed from a Newtonian imaginary, the point is that there is no quantum thinking where there ought to be. Actor-network theory developed as a sociological method attuned to the microrelations between entities, turning conventional sociology on its head not only by its rejection of macrostructural categories but also its rejection of traditional logics of inclusion in what counts as sociologically relevant. Not only human actors but also nonhuman “actants”—baboons, ships, scallops, walls (Strum and Latour 1987; Law 1986; Callon 1986; Latour 1992)—are central players in this method of analysis. Simply stated, to understand the big picture, we must look to its small details and not just at humans we assume to be important beforehand and without the conventional sociological categories to serve as conceptual stumbling blocks. But, by rejecting a priori conceptual definitions, we lose the ability to narrate the social importance of the associations we are tracing, the actors we are following, the translations we are mapping. The benefit of studying constituents and their relations is intimately connected to the problem of moving away from macroscopic social analysis. The social structures, institutions, and practices that we feel in our daily life disappear into an assemblage of materials, technologies, processes, and people. Social structures, institutions, and practices are invisible, but their effects are real, just as the wave nature of light is directly invisible but nevertheless produces clearly real effects based on visible patterns. When individuals interact with social entities, or when social scientists study them, all we see are the constituent actants, effects, and end states, just as an observing physicist sees a shower of discrete particles or a pattern indicating particular wave behaviours. Despite the mission of casting aside conventional categories of sociological analysis, however, actor-network theory remains fundamentally Newtonian in its ontological approach. Structures decompose into separable and discrete “actants” that then are traced as they come into relation. Any separate agency of the macroscopic structure is assumed away by virtue of inability—if you can’t follow it, it doesn’t exist, and social structures are impossible to “follow” in the same way that objects and people are (e.g. Latour 1987). As I will argue in this chapter, actor-network theory’s careful methodology is unable to

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capture structural forms of power precisely because it confronts a barrier of Newtonian unimaginability. To apply a quantum imaginary to actor-network theory in this chapter, I begin with a brief review of key tenets of actor-network theory, such as the call to deconstruct the macroscopic social entities by following constituent actants. I then discuss how the engagement between critical International Relations theory and actor-network theory has revealed the limits of actor-network theory’s Newtonian imaginary. In the third section, I outline my theory of the social wavefunction and discuss how the method of quantizing through application can help us to move beyond conceptual barriers implied by a Newtonian imaginary. Finally, I provide an outline of how a “quactor”1 -network theory would address the unimaginability of structural forces in actor-network theory by reimagining the fundamental ontological model as the wave/particle duality rather than the discrete Newtonian particle. The conclusion also notes how some of the engagement between critical International Relations and actor-network theory has pushed the latter in a quantum-like direction. This may indicate that other critical approaches that face growing pains when brought into the “borrower discipline” (Barkin and Sjoberg 2019) could rectify ontological contradictions by quantizing through translation, whereas adjustments to the theories themselves require a root-and-branch application of a quantum imaginary.

Actor-Network Theory Actor-network theory emerged as a way of thinking about society informed by science and technology studies. Scientific research in the laboratory is not a process of observing an objective reality, but an activity of constructing facts that mobilizes particular measurement apparatuses, inscription practices, dissemination cycles tied to the credibility of researchers, and separation of noise from signal (Latour and Woolgar 1986). Crucially, there is no ontological distinction between the agency (capacity to make a difference) of a measurement apparatus and a lab technician. Humans and nonhumans alike are enlisted in the process of building a credible argument, and this means that our concept of an “actor,” bound as it is to human being, ought to be replaced by the more

1 This term is used to describe the actor in quantum game theory (e.g. Arfi 2007).

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neutral “actant,” which signifies the entity that makes a difference (Latour 1987). This particular attention to the discursive and material practices of laboratory activity was “intended to emancipate the public from prematurely naturalized facts,” and served to play a central role in the so-called Science Wars of the late twentieth century (Latour 2004, 227). The major proponents of actor-network theory—including Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, Annemarie Mol, and John Law—branched out into broader sociological inquiry, with innovative writings on economic markets (Callon 1998), train accidents (Law and Mol 2002), administrative law (Latour 2009), and diseases (Mol 2003). These expansions, as well as reflective works on the development of actor-network theory (e.g. Law and Hassard 1999; Latour 2005), helped to “refine the tools and concepts used by this group of scholars” (Salter 2015a, xi). While a complete review of the development of actor-network theory far exceeds the scope of this intervention, it is worthwhile to draw attention to two major assumptions, and the limit inherent in accepting them: (1) Sociologists should eschew pre-given macroscopic levels of analysis, and instead (2), follow the actants. When we commit to the methodological destruction of the macroscopic social phenomena, we can push our inquiry into new, radical directions. However, our analysis also becomes separated from our experiences of macroscopic social phenomena, as all structures disintegrate into their component parts. Early accounts of actor-network theory emerged from the laboratory and began to explore society with similar methods. Choosing to treat the social in the same manner as they treated the scientist in the laboratory was a natural step for an approach that saw the only difference between the social and the scientific being that the latter has a laboratory (Latour and Woolgar 1986, 257). Thus, to approach society as a laboratory, one must attend to the “black boxes”—those entities taken as “‘hard facts,’ or ‘highly sophisticated machines,’ or ‘powerful theories,’ or ‘indisputable evidence’” to the point that their complexity becomes superfluous, and all that we need to know about them is their input and output (Latour 1987, 3, 139). In the laboratory, examples of black boxes are measurement apparatuses such as mass spectrometers or bioassays but also concepts that arose from controversies but are now accepted as if dogma, such as the double helix structure of DNA or the sequence of a particular known peptide (Latour 1987, 1–11; Latour and Woolgar 1986,

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105–149). Looking at the black box itself reveals little; thus, the task of the sociologist is “either [to] arrive before the facts and machines are blackboxed or [to] follow the controversies that reopen them” (Latour 1987, 258). Actor-network theorists then bring these conceptual tools developed to analyse scientific knowledge production to bear on questions beyond the laboratory’s walls. Approaching the social world and looking to unpack its black boxes means that the a priori assumptions that we will find particular structures and objects of analysis must be pushed aside. In one essay by that name, Michel Callon and Bruno Latour call this process “unscrewing the big Leviathan.” The critical thrust of the essay pushes against researcher bias in sociology, highlighting the methodological limitation of research designs that presume the existence of some large social structure “out there” to be investigated. The problem of analysing society in this manner comes from the predisposition of the sociologist to frame their investigation in terms of a priori structures, and to “change their framework of analysis depending on whether they are tackling a macro-actor or a microactor, the Leviathan or a social interaction” (Callon and Latour 1981, 220). Callon and Latour argue that instead of reifying the Leviathans of the social world—that is, instead of assuming that there are large structures and small actors and roles appropriate to each—that care be taken to deconstruct the macrostructure into its visible constituent parts. If we proceed from the ontological equality of all actants, then a macro-actor “grows with the number of relationships he or she can put…in black boxes” and “the more elements one can place in black boxes—modes of thoughts, habits, forces, and objects—the broader the construction one can raise” (Callon and Latour 1981, 284–285). By this logic, to understand a macro-actor, we cannot look only at the final composite, because focusing on all small actors will offer a deeper sort of knowledge that reveals hidden dynamics of co-constitution and knowledge production sealed within the black boxes. After all, the only real difference between the so-called macro-actor and any given microactor is that the former has enrolled many of the latter: “macro-actors are microactors seated on top of many (leaky) black boxes” (Callon and Latour 1981, 286). By attending to the formation and controversies of these black boxes, sociologists can understand the constituents that occupy what we in short hand call the space of the macro-actor. While the specific research techniques evolved, specified, and then multiplied, the general

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drive to unscrew the big Leviathan remained consistent throughout the development of actor-network theory. The direction that our sociological inquiry must take once we have moved to unpack the black boxes of society is to follow the individual actants through their interactions. Actor-network theory-inspired sociological studies, then, follow the same guiding principles but attempt to avoid a particular formula to be applied to any given situation. “Instead of imposing a pre-determined grid of analysis” that ontologically prioritizes a particular class of actors, form of relations, or mode of power, “the observer follows the actors in order to identify the manner in which these define and associate the different elements…[of] their world” (Callon 1986, 201). Each time we approach an inquiry from this perspective, we eschew socio-structural determinism in favour of observing the controversies of social network formation as discrete objects begin to interact and develop patterns. By following the actors, we observe the microactors that struggle to macrostructure their reality. This is a test of building relations, agreeing to definitions, and forming associations between actants and ideas. A macro-actor—any of those familiar social entities we call the state, society, the market—“is performed through everyone’s efforts to define it” and thus a macro-actor cannot be “what holds us together [as] it is what is held together” (Latour 1986, 273, 276). Sociological inquiry that uncritically assumes the existence of a macro-actor thus misses the negotiation and association of microactors that constitute it. When we assume a reality, we lose the opportunity to understand its constitution. With the perils of assuming reality clearly explicated, the importance of rejecting a priori assumptions becomes clear. We cannot see the macrostructures in the world, so to assume their existence causes us to miss what we actually can see—the negotiation of their definition, association, and construction. Our world is not one where Leviathan monsters exist, but one where our interactions black box certain assumptions. By casting off blinders of a priori assumptions and examining in detail the interactions between microactors that constitute the reality we understand ourselves to inhabit, actor-network theory draws our attention to the materially real world around us and offers new insights into the agency of the micro-world—not only individual humans, but animals and material objects as well.

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ANT and IR: Finding the Imaginary’s Limit The implications of this detailed focus become only clearer in the context of International Relations. Actor-network theory-inspired approaches have highlighted the important role that material objects play in the construction of contested moments in international politics (Gros et al. 2017; De Goede and Sullivan 2016; Salter 2019; Schouten 2014; Walters 2014) and have proven ontologically invaluable for critics of anthropocentrism wishing to analyse nonhuman actants—either to include animals or material objects (Cudworth and Hobden 2013; Youatt 2014). The strength of actor-network theory in explaining small things, however, is met by a challenge in conceptualizing larger phenomena. Andrew Barry highlights the common criticism that actor-network theory approaches “remain on the ‘surface,’” while “in the field of international relations, the question of the relation between what is visible to observers and what is beneath the surface cannot be avoided” (2013, 427). The central concerns of IR, as well as many other social sciences, are often precisely these invisible forces and entities beneath the surface. Thus, any investigation into actor-network theory in the context of the international must “remain attuned to [the] limits and gaps” in this focus on the microworld, “to pay attention to what gets lost” alongside the insights found (Best and Walters 2013, 332–334). The Making Things International project edited by Mark Salter examined precisely this tension between the increased insights into the micro at the expense of the macro. Salter argues that this tension is itself productive: “an exclusively object-oriented analysis might start with the state as analytically weak, just as an object-free analysis might focus exclusively on the state.” Bringing actor-network theory into the realm of the international thus marries the theoretical understanding of the strength of “the state” with the insights of actor-network theory into the material world—“IR benefits from ANT, just as ANT benefits from IR” (Salter 2015a, xiv). This project offered readers “the multiple ways, methods, politics, and conclusions that object-oriented analysis can illuminate” (Salter 2016, xxi), and opened up a number of ways to engage actornetwork theory within disciplinary IR by mobilizing the concepts and methods of actor-network theory to tease out the international implications of objects. By focusing closely and discarding pregiven scales of analysis, we can understand where the international is constituted through the continual interaction of its constituents. But the problem of how to

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analyse a social structure itself and not in terms of its relations remains— this is simply beyond the physical imaginary of actor-network theory, a decidedly Newtonian portrait of clearly discernible and separable objects. What I would like to suggest here is that the problem of the disappearing macrostructure can in fact be solved by applying quantum social theory. More specifically, the wave/particle duality as developed in quantum mechanics offers a structural model that complements and completes the micro-relational insights of actor-network theory. The quantum moment in IR thus provides the key to understanding the relationship between the constituent actants and the macroscopic Leviathan. The observations of actor-network theory are, in this framing, the particle behaviours of observed photons, and the invisible social entities are the waves that we know to be real by the effects of their behaviour. Just as physicists, try as they might, were unable to see the wave that they knew to exist, actor-network theory-inspired researchers across the social sciences follow the actors to the point that the macroscopic disintegrates. This leads actor-network theory to a certain degree of counterintuitiveness, but one that can be remedied by turning to a scientific frame constructed to solve precisely the same problem: how to “see” the unseeable. Pursuing this synthesis stands to offer researchers a grander, more complete ontology to match the methodology of following actors developed by actor-network theory (though I am under no illusion that I will in the coming pages canvass all elements of either quantum physics, social theory, or actor-network theory).

Quantizing Where Newton Failed Us As discussed in previous chapters, the core assumptions of the Newtonian imaginary serve to limit critical insights, and actor-network theory is no exception. In the case of actor-network theory, the intuition that all actants are identifiable and all relations can be traced entails two key Newtonian assumptions—the discernibility and separability of objects, on the one hand, and the pre-existence of relata before their relations, on the other. Structural forms of power and other social phenomena are simply—to put it provocatively—unimaginable in the Newtonian/actornetwork-theoretic worldview, because the focus can only be about the object-actants themselves. While this insight is undeniably productive in exploring and interrogating microrelations, such forces as racism, sexism,

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inequality, and sovereignty are all rendered unimaginable in a fundamental sense, despite their important structural effects (see also Zanotti 2019). That actor-network theory misses structural factors and forces is not an entirely novel claim. Indeed, as we saw in the case of the IR theorists who have encountered actor-network theory, strategically un-flattening the core ontology to permit the existence of sovereignty, for example, can draw out important insights into the continual constitution of sovereignty. But this requires the theorist to pay the same price as the assemblage theorists in the last chapter who held their noses so that they might explore nonlocal connections. The sovereignty that actor-network theory-inspired IR scholars describe so powerfully cannot abide their Newtonian assumptions of discernibility and separability. But by applying a quantum imaginary—by quantizing actor-network theory—through the adoption of the guiding concept of the social wavefunction, the insights of the actor-network theorists find an imaginary more suited to their careful analysis. In Chapter 2, we first encountered the idea of the wave/particle duality, one of the powerful discoveries occurring at the turn of the twentieth century that led to quantum mechanics as we now know it. While Newton’s model of light described a shower of particles, physicists focusing on the patterns created by light over the longer term argued that this would be possible only if light were a wave. The quantum solution posited that the photon is a single unit that propagates through space as a wave, but interacts with other entities as a particle. Thus, it is not a surprise that measurement apparatuses report photons as particles—the act of measurement itself is an interaction, of course! While measurements of particles are more precise compared to models of a wave—insofar as the wave is an approximation of the unseen that “blurs” together all possible positions (Schrodinger 1980)—they do not capture the full picture. Wave dynamics, such as the interference pattern demonstrated clearly in the two-slit experiment, tell at least half of light’s story and cannot be ignored. When the physicist wants to conceptualize the unseen wave of a photon or stream of photons, this can clearly be accomplished by the mathematical model of the wavefunction. In the case of quantum social theory, our

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modelling concept is not a mathematical formula but a different ontological unity. The concept that I call the “social wave function”2 draws attention to the invisibility of social entities, always and already observable only in their constituent parts, end states, or effects (both as macroscopic social phenomena and the social essence of an individual beyond her or his merely physical-biological nature). In other words, our observations of the social world are only ever observations of the constituent parts, end states, or effects of the social entity about which we seek to gain knowledge. Social entities themselves are essentially and categorically invisible, so when we say that we are analysing a social entity, in reality we look at the humans, animals, objects, and other constituent parts. These constituents and end states—just like the constituent particles and illuminated spaces of a light wave—are all that we can actually see. But that does not mean that the effects of a macroscopic social entity that we experience are any less real, and to deny their existence as mere illusion or fantasy would be to ignore a fundamental aspect of human life. In fact, as generations of scholars studying patriarchy, racism, capitalism, governmentality, and myriad other directly invisible social forces have demonstrated, the invisibility of social entities demands that attention be drawn thereto, building on evidence of its constituent parts, end states, and effects. These invisible social wavefunctions, like the invisible wavefunctions of photons, are just as real as their constituents and effects. Analysis of the social wavefunction can either proceed by the direct observation of their observable appearances or by the analysis of their behavioural effects. That is to say, if we were to analyse the social wavefunction of the state, we could either look to the material infrastructure of legislative buildings and border walls, the practices of public servants, or objects such as a passport or a flag3 that denote particular relations vis-à-vis “the state.” We could also analyse the behavioural effects 2 It is worth noting that Wendt’s (2015) “socially shared wave function,” while similar to the conception of the social wavefunction that I develop in this article, is distinct. Given his quantum realism, the socially shared wavefunction exists because of the quantum coherence scaling up from our neurons through our cognition, consciousness, and intentionality to an entangled entity called “the State,” where our quantum brain mingles with the cognition, consciousness, and intentionality of other quantum people. 3 The power of these objects in material terms can be found in the New Materialist literature in IR in the work of Salter (2015b), Walters and Vanderlip (2015), and Andersen et al. (2016).

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of that which we cannot see, such as national identity or culturally specific values. In a sense we listen twice to Callon and Latour’s warning about a priori assumptions—we eschew our own predetermined grids of analysis, but also eschew eschewing large forces. If the macroscopic social wavefunctions have effects, they act! The suggestion of the social wavefunction as a conceptual model is that accounting for the macrostructural entities of the social world need not entail the discounting of their microconstitution nor their reduction thereto. Rather than a model of the macro as mere aggregation or phantasm, the social wavefunction concept posits that the structures may have real effects, discernible through attention to the patterns in their interaction, that are only visible through attention to constituent part(icle)s. Just as we found in the idea of the border as a social wavefunction discussed in the last chapter, this quantum imaginary—taking the wave/particle duality as our fundamental ontological unit in place of the Newtonian particle, thereby integrating the social wavefunction into our analysis—allows us to explain and explore social phenomena both in terms of microrelations and macrostructures. The quantum assumption of the wave/particle duality is an alternative fundamental ontological unit to the Newtonian particle previously assumed in actor-network theory. This single change in assumption radically rewrites the boundaries of the imaginable in actor-network theory by opening ontological space for structural forces to be acknowledged and interrogated. Even if we do not see social structures, patterns allow us to recognize the effects that they produce on and for their constituents as well as others who become entangled without membership.

“Quactor”-Network Theory and Beyond International Relations theorists who have engaged actor-network theory have reaped the rewards of bringing a radically new ontological perspective to bear on big questions of economics, politics, and security on an international scale. However, when all the black boxes are unpacked, the power imbalances that macrostructuring creates become much more difficult to see. Sovereignty remains relevant for those who wish to cut off the king’s head each time they display their passports at a border crossing, just as economic pressures are relevant for those who follow scallops as intently as fishermen and scientists. The solution proposed here mobilizes the wave/particle duality of quantum mechanics to schematically

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represent the broader social entity constituted by the actants that actornetwork theory highlights so well. Quantizing through application of an alternative physical imaginary, this “quactor”-network theory seeks to understand the social wavefunctions of those invisible entities with which we interact in our social world the only way it can—by unpacking the black boxes that are enrolled in conventional categories of sociological analysis, but simultaneously recognizing how the structures that those boxes are packed into have their own forms of effect-production. Social structures permit and produce radically different outcomes depending on an agent’s positionality vis-à-vis that structure, and the quantum imaginary’s concept of the social wavefunction makes this structural power imaginable in a way that was simply impossible in a Newtonian imaginary. While the idea of recognizing invisible (or indirectly visible) wavefunctions may seem difficult—if not preposterous—Alexander Wendt gives a clear example that will be familiar to many. In our everyday lives, we intuitively recognize connections between particles and their macroscopic social wavefunctions. When we see a police car driving down the street, we would likely not “normally say ‘there goes the state.’ Rather, police cars stand in for something much bigger, a giant Leviathan that can be almost literally seen trampling across the stage of history” (Wendt 2010, 279). Behaviours that accept the legitimacy and the power of police officers do not come specifically from the metal used to create the badge or the materiality of the firearm, but from the social wavefunction that we recognize when we see the police officer. When we recognize the authority of the police officer as representative of the state, we macrostructure the social wavefunction of the state by recognizing a constituent microactor. Deference to the officer is not chosen because of my assessment of the individual, but a recognition of a socially-constructed authority in the police qua institution. Memories of prior interactions, perception of threat from the officer’s weapons, or influences of other social structures and relations may similarly interfere in the range of possibilities for my own interaction with the officer. The concept of the social wavefunction allows us to model macroscopic social entities with which we interact on a daily basis, and which we experience as having real effects. Actor-network theory scholars are critical of macrostructuring reality through a priori categories because the presumption of levels of analysis hides the activity and interactivity of microactors within macrostructures. This objection holds against a structure understood in Newtonian terms, as we have no evidence of a

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classically physical institution in the case of any social structure. There is no one thing that we can say that Germany is, or that the Catholic Church is, or that systemic racism is. The objection does not hold, however, when the social structure is conceptualized as a social wavefunction, because, like the photon-wave, it (1) does not define existence as requiring a separable and discrete physical entity, and (2) can only be observed directly in terms of the patterns of activities and interactions among its constituent microactors. The visible, observable microactors are particle-states of the social entity, exercising agency as described by actor-network theory; however, the discrete actions of constituent microactors are not the only ways in which a social entity exercises agency. The concept of a social wavefunction retains the possibility for the social entity itself to exercise agency through interference effects, where wave interactions either amplify or destroy one another.4 The affective, structural, and diffused agency that circulates through a social entity can also influence the actions of its own constituent microactors or other actors (inter)acting with or near that social entity. This agency that is not properly reducible to the constituent microactors of a social entity makes itself known through patterns identifiable in the constituent microactors, like the light and dark bands of light (interference patterns) that photon-waves create as they pass through the two-slit experiment. We cannot directly observe the activity, but we observe the end states and effects. In so doing, we can both withhold a priori categorization and account for macrostructural effects not reducible to the important activity of constituent microactors. To some extent, the engagement that critical International Relations has had to this point with actor-network theory has introduced aspects that we might call quantum-like, in the sense discussed in Chapter 4. Layering a structural concept on top of the microsociological methods of actor-network theory draw out important aspects that may otherwise have been left unseen, but this insightful conceptual move is only possible through an ad hoc pausing of the otherwise operative Newtonian ontological imaginary. In effect, the various invocations of actor-network theory have argued for a mostly, but not entirely flat ontology. Salter’s investigations of sovereignty (2015a) and securitization (2019) through actor-network theory both call for examination with detailed precision 4 For more on interference effects of social wavefunctions in the case of international political economy and the concept of the market, see Murphy (2020).

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categories that would normally dissolve in actor-network theory analysis—for Salter, the ability to conceptualize the macro-force of sovereignty is something that IR offers actor-network theory. Andrew Barry argues that actor-network theory must be modified for deployment in International Relations because “the student of International Relations cannot so readily bracket the question of history” (Barry 2013, 427)—indeed, the continued operation of the macrostructural and invisible force of history cannot be accounted for in an unadulterated actor-network theory applied to IR, but must be to understand the subject matter. Quantizing actornetwork theory means opening ontological space for the categories that have been incorporated into actor-network theories of International Relations anyways—the macrostructural and invisible forces that appear only through the patterning of particular actants, but exist as real in their own right. And, just as these other approaches have “reassembled” the “International” by unpacking the black boxes but also tracing the shadows those boxes cast, a “quactor”-network theory5 analyses the International with an eye first to the constituents and then to the patterns within. This critical intuition not only mobilizes the microsociological insights of actor-network theory, but also questions how those constituents develop and catalyse macrostructural entities.

References Andersen, Rune Saugmann, Xavier Guillaume, and Juha A. Vuori. 2016. Flags. In Making Things International 2: Catalysts and Reactions, ed. Mark B. Salter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Arfi, Badredine. 2007. Quantum Social Game Theory. Physica A 374: 794–820. Barkin, J. Samuel, and Laura Sjoberg. 2019. International Relations’ Last Synthesis? Decoupling Constructivist and Critical Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barry, Andrew. 2013. The Translation Zone: Between Actor-Network Theory and International Relations. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41 (3): 413–429.

5 I believe that “quactor”-network theory introduces the concept well, but I recognize that it is a garish neologism, and fully endorse “quantum approach to actor-network theory” in its place.

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Best, Jacqueline, and William Walters. 2013. Introduction: ‘Actor–Network Theory’ and International Relationality: Lost (and Found) in Translation. International Political Sociology 7: 332–334. Callon, Michel. 1986. Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fisherman of St. Brieuc Bay. In Power, Action, and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, ed. John Law, 196–223. London: Routledge. Callon, Michel (ed.). 1998. The Laws of the Market. London: Blackwell. Callon, Michel, and Bruno Latour. 1981. Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: How Actors Macro-Structure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them to Do It. In Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies, ed. K. Knorr-Cetina and A.V. Circouel. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Cudworth, Erika, and Stephen Hobden. 2013. Of Parts and Wholes: International Relations Beyond the Human. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41 (3): 430–450. de Goede, Marieke, and Gavin Sullivan. 2016. The Politics of Security Lists. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34 (1): 67–88. Gros, Valentin, Marieke de Goede, and Beste Isleyen. 2017. The Snowden Files Made Public: A Material Politics of Contesting Surveillance. International Political Sociology 11: 73–89. Latour, Bruno. 1986. The Powers of Association. In Power, Action, and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? London: Routledge. Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno. 1992. “‘Where Are the Missing Masses?’ The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts.” In Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, 225–258. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Latour, Bruno. 2004. Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry 30 (2): 227. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2009. The Making of Law: An Ethnography of the Conseil d’Etat. Malden, MA: Polity. Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Law, John. 1986. On the Methods of Long-Distance Control: Vessels, Navigation, and the Portuguese Route to India. In Power, Action, and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, ed. John Law, 234–263. London: Routledge.

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Law, John, and Annemarie Mol. 2002. Local Entanglements and Utopian Moves: An Inquiry into Train Accidents. Sociological Review 50 (2): 81–105. Law, John, and John Hassard (eds.). 1999. Actor Network Theory and After. London: Blackwell. Mol, Annemarie. 2003. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Murphy, Michael P.A. 2020. Markets Are Constantly Collapsing: Reconceptualizing ‘the Market’ as a Quantum Social Wavefunction. Competition & Change. Manuscript Under Review. Salter, Mark B. 2015a. Introduction to Making Things International 1: Circuits and Motion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Salter, Mark B. 2015b. Passport Photos. In Making Things International 1: Circuits and Motion, ed. Mark B. Salter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Salter, Mark B. 2016. Introduction to Making Things International 2: Catalysts and Reactions. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Salter, Mark B. 2019. Security Actor-Network-Theory: Revitalizing Securitization Theory with Bruno Latour. Polity 51 (2): 349–364. Schouten, Peer. 2014. Security as Controversy: Reassembling Security at Amsterdam Airport. Security Dialogue 45 (1): 23–42. Schrodinger, Erwin. 1980. The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, trans. John D. Trimmer 124 (5). Strum, Shirley, and Bruno Latour. 1987. Redefining the Social Link: From Baboons to Humans. Social Science Information 26 (2): 783–802. Walters, William. 2014. Drone Strikes, Dingpolitik, and Beyond: Furthering the Debate on Materiality and Security. Security Dialogue 45 (2): 101–118. Walters, William, and Daniel Vanderlip. 2015. Electronic Passports. In Making Things International 1: Circuits and Motion, ed. Mark B. Salter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wendt, Alexander. 2010. Flatland: Quantum Mind and the International Hologram. In New Systems Theories of World Politics, ed. Mathias Albert, Lars-Erik Cederman, and Alexander Wendt. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wendt, Alexander. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Youatt, Rafi. 2014. “Interspecies Relations, International Relations: Rethinking Anthropocentric Politics.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43 (1): 207–223. Zanotti, Laura. 2019. Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads. London: Routledge.

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Further Reading Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. • One of the early and influential texts in actor-network theory, Science in Action is an accessible introduction because it includes clearly-defined rules of method and principles of sociological inquiry into scientific knowledge production. Latour is still in this volume primarily focused on the laboratory application of actor-network theory, but the clarity presented here makes it an important introductory volume. Salter, Mark B. (ed.). 2015, 2016. Making Things International, vol. 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. • The two-volume Making Things International project is the largest intervention at the crossroads of actor-network theory and International Relations. Salter’s introductory remarks offer clear outlines of the promises and pitfalls of bringing actor-network theory into contact with IR, and the contributors offer a wide variety of thought-provoking case studies. Zanotti, Laura. 2019. Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads. London: Routledge. • Recommended elsewhere for its place in quantum International Relations, I recommend Zanotti’s book in the context of this chapter because her discussion of the radically new insights accessible when moving from a Newtonian to a quantum (or in her case, entangled) ontological imaginary makes a strong case for the method of quantizing-through-application that I outline in this chapter. While the focus of this chapter was almost entirely theoretical, her empirical application of quantum social theory offers an important demonstration of how this alternative imaginary can inform our understanding of politics in the “real world.”

CHAPTER 6

Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions

Abstract The concluding chapter discusses how quantum social theory offers critical International Relations a new form of critique similar to the transition in physics from the Old Quantum Theory to Quantum Mechanics. A brief series of potential future directions are discussed, including possible dialogue with research on Indigenous thought, Eastern philosophy, environmental ethics, postcolonial theory, and potentiality. The role of critical approaches to protecting pluralism in quantum IR is considered. Keywords Quantum IR · Critical theory · International Relations theory

Introduction If it takes three occurrences to make a pattern, then a curious pattern that has emerged in works of quantum social theory is a tendency towards short, forward-looking conclusions. While her final chapter brings the ethical discussion together with threads that had been let loose throughout the work, it is not until the final paragraph of Meeting the Universe Halfway that Karen Barad (2007) begins to conclude her opus. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. P. A. Murphy, Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60111-9_6

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Half of Alexander Wendt’s conclusion consists of “night thoughts” on the epistemological stakes of his quantum argument, which he comments in a footnote “are more trial balloons that I hope others will clarify and/or criticize” (2015, 284n1). Finally, Laura Zanotti’s summary and call to ethical research are called “Conclusions (just briefly),” and truly lives up to the title (2019, 143–144). In this spirit, my conclusion will remain similarly brief and forward-looking: after reviewing the discussions of quantizing through translation and quantizing by application, I will summarize how I see the relationship between Newtonian and Quantum critique, before exploring potential future threads and finally presenting my case for the role of critical quantum approaches in protecting pluralism in the quantum community.

Translation and Application Taken at its broadest level, the core problem that I began this project with was the disjuncture between a Newtonian physical imaginary—the set of assumptions from Newtonian physics that set the boundary for what is imaginable in social science—and the project of critical International Relations. To rectify this problem, I suggested two methods for moving towards an alternative quantum imaginary, quantizing through translation and quantizing through application. While the former identifies concepts and approaches that express quantum-like ideas while remaining caught within the snares of a Newtonian imaginary, the latter identifies how a critical project has run aground on a Newtonian sandbar in order to set it free on quantum waters. Many terms used in technical ways in quantum physics—such as entanglement and interference—are often used casually in social-theoretic inquiry to describe the behaviour of social entities. Global value chains are entangled with the market because their ability to sell is closely related to the effective demand of the consumers (to say nothing of the nonlocal connections between GVC constituents!). Neoliberal international financial institutions interfere with the sovereignty of indebted states by effectively forcing austerity. While casual usage does not verify homology of form, these examples and others provide low-hanging fruit for attempts at quantizing through translation because part of the work of identification has been completed already. When critical approaches are quantized, they gain access to a powerful new vocabulary that embodies complexity in place of simplification,

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paradox over binary, and uncertainty over a fetishism of regularities. Because of the importance of language in shaping our ability to understand and ask questions about the world (see Cohn 1987), enrolling the vernacular of quantum social theory is an important step in quantizing critique. This new linguistic space is also a new register where critical approaches can enter into dialogue without having to adopt the language of a dominant discourses, marginalizing the novel insights developed in their critical “camps” (cf. Sylvester 2007).

A New Form of Critique? Because quantizing critique allows critical International Relations theory to harness the power of quantum language to express complexity, paradox, and uncertainty, this is one strategy to explore a wider potentiality of critique. The concepts and approaches discussed in Chapters 4 and 5 are examples of critical approaches that offer considerable conceptual purchase on their own terms, developed within but pushing back against the excesses of Newtonian social science. Much like the early work in the Old Quantum Theory,1 this critical work seeks to express complexity but is bound by the confines of Newtonian assumptions. It was only after Max Planck’s work on the harmonic oscillator that the formalisms of Heisenberg and Schrodinger were possible—through no fault of Planck’s, the quantum model was incomplete while the Old Quantum Theory continued to operate through modifications of the Newtonian model. Similarly, the critical theory tradition that pushes back on dominant approaches without moving beyond the Newtonian imaginary that grounds dominant Western traditions of social science can only ever be incomplete in the search for radical alternatives. I would like to suggest that the leap from a Newtonian imaginary to a quantum one will be nothing short of revolutionary for the practice of critical scholarship. As Cohn’s (1987) investigation of defence intellectuals demonstrates, the language that we have access to shapes and limits the kinds of questions that we are able to ask. In a reverse-course of her experience, the embrace of a quantum imaginary offers a medium where critical scholars can naturally express the complexity, paradox, and uncertainty that problem-solving theories gloss over in their search for 1 See the discussion of the Old Quantum Theory in Chapter 2, and Pauling and Wilson (1985, ch. 2).

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regularities and predictability. While it is far beyond the scope of an introductory volume—much less a brief conclusion—to canvass all possible avenues for quantization of critical International Relations, I believe that framing this enterprise in terms of finding a fitting physical imaginary can help to structure future engagements between quantum and critical approaches.

Future Directions While there are a number of exciting developments in the field of quantum social theory, I would like to draw attention to five particularly significant conceptual connections that are in their early stages of development. Opportunities exist for scholars working in these areas of critical inquiry to engage with the quantum imaginary, and for quantum IR scholars to consider foundational questions circulating in the discipline today that challenge the way that we think about IR and responsible research in general. Indigenous Thought While a dominant Western-colonial epistemology has historically marginalized Indigenous ways of knowing, a growing movement in social theory engages seriously with the insights of Indigenous thought. The possibility for Indigenous-quantum dialogue has opened important doors, as scholars have noted the conceptual similarities between these onto-epistemologies. The most recent intervention in this space comes from the work of Norah Bowman (2019), who argues that resource-extractivist, legal-positivist and settler-colonial systems designed to exclude Indigenous voices and people are fundamentally Newtonian in their assumptions, and that adopting a quantum worldview opens space for decolonial action. Other scholars working in this space include Glenn Aparicio Parry (2006)—who argues that the quantum revolution must lead Western society to move beyond its illusion of being separate from the Earth, towards Indigenous ways of living in harmony—and F. David Peat (2002), whose Blackfoot Physics discusses the similarities between Indigenous and quantum ontologies.

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Postcolonial Theory Emerging from postcolonial literary criticism, Patricia Noxolo’s work on quantum entanglement and the matter/mattering relation opens up another important avenue for considering how the alternative imaginary of quantum social theory and quantum International Relations can empower voices shut out of the hegemonic Newtonian Western discourses. Noxolo and Marika Preziuso (2012) draw on Barad’s reading of measurement as an act of meaning production in their theorization of how the linguistic production of Caribbean literature involves the translation of matter and the materialization of language. More recently, Noxolo (2020) has described the ways in which (post)diaspora experiences involve entanglement with the materiality of homeland, hostland, and memory. Both postcolonial and quantum theories draw attention to the influence of worldviews on ways of thinking and acting, and exploring this common ground can provide a powerful critique of received wisdom in the West. Environmental Ethics The possibility for quantum thinking to offer a new and more responsible model for environmental ethics is a promising development in ecologically-minded applications of quantum social theory. Karen O’Brien (2016) argues that quantum social theory can inspire change in ecological thinking in three ways: methodologically, through quantum psychological models’ ability to accommodate subjectivity and nonrationality (such that climate change models could include those considerations); metaphorically, by framing sustainability as collections of small actions; and meaningfully, by offering an explanation of connectedness and agency. On the other hand, however, Scott Hamilton (2017) argues that the application of quantum terms is insufficient on its own to overcome what I have called above the dominant Newtonian imaginary, as merely discussing entanglement with our environment reifies the boundaries of the individual and climate. With a radical commitment to a quantum imaginary, however, we gain a powerful language to critique the destructive interference that extractivism participates in, offering a model of fundamental entanglement.

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Eastern Philosophy Long a favoured link for mystic and pop-science writers, the link between quantum physics and Eastern philosophy has received a small but not insignificant amount of attention in International Relations—particularly considering that neither has been a dominant discussion in the field until recently. Both writing in response to Wendt’s Quantum Mind and Social Science, Karin Fierke (2017) explores the “interface” of quantum social theory with Buddhism and Daoism, while J. Peter Burgess (2018) attends to what he argues is a missed encounter with the early Hindu philosophy.2 In the light of the interest generated by Yaqing Qin’s (2018) Relational Theory of World Politics, which was explicitly presented as informed by Eastern philosophy, the potential exploration of quantum and Eastern perspectives on IR theory promises great insights. Potentiality I have recently argued that paying attention to potentiality can aid greatly in disentangling claims of political protest and constitution (Murphy 2019a) as well as freedom (2019b). Essential in both arguments is Giorgio Agamben’s (e.g. 1999) insight that one is only free to exercise a potentiality if one is also free not to, i.e. if it can become impotential. In his own discussion of the metaphysics of quantum mechanics, Agamben argues that the quantum revolution entails a radically different worldview where “pure possibility…replaced reality, and knowledge now knows only knowledge itself” (2018, 40). While Zanotti’s (2019) analysis draws out the ethical stakes of entanglement, the ethical stakes of impotentiality are far less certain and deserve serious consideration.

Critical IR and the Future of Quantum Pluralism The quantum “turn” in International Relations theory continues to draw attention from a variety of locations, as a provocative and interesting set of concepts that pose fundamental questions to the discipline. As I argued in the introduction, this rise of quantum approaches in opposition to Newtonian ones is similar to critical IR’s growth in opposition to 2 Specifically, the non-dualistic relationship between atma and brahman in Vedantic philosophy.

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problem-solving theories of world politics. The commitment to asking new questions, discerning how particular orderings came to be, and challenging conventional wisdom all contribute to the success of critical theories of IR as a pluralistic and productive intellectual community. While the preceding chapters have been focused on what quantum social theory can offer critical IR, it is also worth considering that critical IR might very well contribute in a significant way to the quantum turn. I suggested in the introduction that the pursuit of critical quantum approaches to International Relations is the pursuit of a new and open space for questioning. Because both critical IR and quantum theory naturally ask questions around uncertainty, paradox, and complexity, there is an important opportunity for collaboration between the theoretical traditions. But there is a key role to be played here by critical scholars—let us not forget that the successes of quantum in finance and psychology have come largely from improved predictive capacity (incorporating nonrational and subjective decision-making, for example), and post-Bohrian quantum mechanics proceeded largely with questions of meaning bracketed. A strong presence of critical scholars within the quantum International Relations community will ensure that the powerful toolkit of the quantum imaginary does not proceed on a problem-solving autopilot. It is to a mutual benefit that the quantum community and critical approaches to International Relations expand their newfound dialogue.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 1999. Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Agamben, Giorgio. 2018. What Is Real? Stanford: Stanford University Press. Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: The Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bowman, Norah. 2019. Here/There/Everywhere: Quantum Models for Decolonizing Canadian State Onto-Epistemology. Foundations of Science OnlineFirst: 1–16. Burgess, J. Peter. 2018. Science Blurring Its Edges into Spirit: The Quantum Path to Atma. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 47 (1): 128–141. Cohn, Carol. 1987. Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals. Signs 12 (4): 687–718. Fierke, Karin M. 2017. Consciousness at the Interface: Eastern Wisdom and the Ethics of Intra-Action. Critical Review 29 (2): 141–169.

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Hamilton, Scott. 2017. Securing Ourselves from Ourselves? The Paradox of ‘Entanglement’ in the Anthropocene. Crime, Law, and Social Change 68: 579–595. Murphy, Michael P.A. 2019a. Potentiality, Political Protest, and Constituent Power: A Response to the Special Issue. Journal of International Political Theory OnlineFirst: 1–20. Murphy, Michael P.A. 2019b. What Does It Mean to Be Anti-Social? Potentiality and Political Ontology in The Buribunks. Griffith Law Review OnlineFirst: 1–19. Noxolo, Patricia. 2020. I Am Becoming My Mother: (Post)Diaspora, Local Entanglements, and Entangled Locals. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 13 (2): 134–146. Noxolo, Patricia, and Marika Preziuso. 2012. Moving Matter: Language in Caribbean Literature as Translation Between Dynamic Forms of Matter. Interventions 14 (1): 120–135. O’Brien, Karen L. 2016. Climate Change and Social Transformations: Is It Time for a Quantum Leap? WIREs Climate Change 7: 618–626. Parry, Glenn Aparicio. 2006. Native Wisdom in a Quantum World. Shift 9: 29– 33. Pauling, Linus, and E. Bright Wilson. 1985. Introduction to Quantum Mechanics: With Applications to Chemistry. New York: Dover. Peat, F.David. 2002. Blackfoot Physics: A Journey into the Native American Universe. Boston: Weiser. Qin, Yaqing. 2018. A Relational Theory of World Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sylvester, Christine. 2007. Whither the International at the End of IR? Millennium 35 (3): 551–573. Wendt, Alexander. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zanotti, Laura. 2019. Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads. London: Routledge.

Index

A Actor-network theory, 84–86, 88–91, 93–96 Actuality/analogy question, 38 Apparatus, 23, 25, 27–29, 70–72, 74, 85 Arfi, Badredine, vi, 39, 48 Assemblages, 63, 73–77, 91 Autoethnography, 63, 69–72, 76, 77 B Barad, Karen, 1, 29, 39, 43, 45, 46, 50, 62, 64, 70–72, 74, 101, 105 Benjamin, Walter, 65, 68, 76 Bohr, Niels, 5, 26–29, 42, 45, 51, 70 Borders, 63, 66–68, 77, 93 C Cohn, Carol, 3, 9, 64, 69, 71, 103 Copenhagen Interpretation, 22, 26, 27, 29, 31, 32, 70 Critical border studies, 10, 67, 68, 76

Critical International Relations, 6, 9, 38, 51, 62, 65, 69, 76, 83, 85, 95, 102–104

D Der Derian, James, 2, 32, 49, 50 Diffraction, 26, 45, 52

E Einstein, Albert, 5, 17, 20, 21, 28 Entanglement, 9, 18, 30, 31, 39, 41, 46, 47, 49, 52, 71–75, 102, 105, 106

F Feynman, Richard, 6, 19, 29, 40 Fierke, K.M. (Karin), 48, 51, 106

H Haven, Emmanuel, 1, 38, 42

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. P. A. Murphy, Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60111-9

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Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, 28, 70 Heisenberg, Werner, 21, 22, 28 Homology, 5, 6, 42

I Imaginaries, 5, 8, 9, 19, 39, 65, 91 Intra-action, 45, 46

K Khrennikov, Andrei, 1, 38, 42

L Language, 3, 9, 47, 48, 51, 62–66, 69, 72, 75, 77, 103, 105

M Measurement, 6, 18, 19, 23, 25–29, 68, 70, 72, 85, 86, 91, 105

Q Quantum behaviour, 23, 40, 41 Quantum interpretations, 32, 33 Quantum realism, 2, 3, 11, 47, 57, 92 Quantum thinking, 2, 11, 23, 31, 39, 43, 48, 49, 62, 66, 83, 84, 105 R Reflexivity, 63, 69 S Schrodinger, Erwin, 21, 22, 24, 25, 91, 103 Schrodinger’s cat, 25 Stern-Gerlach experiment, 70–72 T Two-slit experiment, 26, 68, 91, 95

N New materialism, 62 Nonlocal causation, 75 Noxolo, Patricia, 74, 105

W Wave/particle duality, 9, 10, 18, 19, 21, 23–25, 32, 51, 62, 63, 68, 76, 85, 90, 91, 93 Wendt, Alexander, 1, 2, 7, 8, 11, 18, 32, 38, 39, 43, 46–50, 56, 75, 92, 94, 102, 106

O Observer effect, 9, 10, 18, 26, 27, 29, 30, 47, 52, 63, 66, 69–72, 76 Old quantum theory, 5, 21, 22, 103

Z Zanotti, Laura, 1, 7, 8, 18, 50, 57, 70, 72, 102, 106 Zohar, Danah, 43, 44