“And yet when essays draw on the work of Barad or Haraway but do not attend to nonhuman life, environments and material agencies, the lack is notable. Feminist materialisms, especially in their posthuman forms, are worlds apart from the conventional classroom, an all too-human place cordoned off from more-than-human liveliness. The chasm between the two suggests how intrepid and inventive we must be to teach with a (posthumanist) feminist materialism”

–Stacy Alaimo / “Book Review: Teaching with Feminist Materialisms” (179)

Part I: Diffraction

I was moving the above quote, which has been tapping at my thoughts for a while, trying to find where to insert it in Chapter 4, and as I scrolled through the screen in front of me, I saw the Spacetimemattering video stutter to a close on that last frame that’s been tapping at my thoughts for a while…

I think: {Alien. Still. Powerful.}

And type my student’s words: it doesn’t have to be alive…

{Feels like its brand of alive}. {Insert the words again here:} Alien. Still. Powerful.

Powerful.   {Full.}

With something I don’t have a word for, but that light that’s always on is saying it: something like, deep breath, fill back up, they’re gone.

{You’re anthropomorphizing.}

Still. But full.

A not-at-all-human space. With that one light off to the side that never turns off and the blue computer glow and the silence of the video now stopped (the music I added gone). Designed to be, built to be, for and by humans. But, in this light, from this view, not-at-all.

Still. Matter. Full of mattering.

Elsewhere is not Terrapolis.

Part II: Calibration