Abstract
Our knowledge of things about and around us involve identifying differences by creating categories and binaries. Differences can be powerful if we use them consciously and through multiple perspectives. Yet more often than not, distinctions oppose and contrast conceptualisations to an extent to which they become antagonistic. This chapter is about differences, opposites, dichotomies, and binaries—the general conceptualisations in our minds in which we organise a concept along a line of two opposing points. Instead of emphasising only the ends of the line, the actual line in between which is connecting both points, is the important aspect in this binary dynamic. As a consequence, looking at binary conceptualisations is going to become a question of similarities, connections, and relations. New materialist philosophy embraces questioning our current notions about differences and our anthropocentric assumptions. This allows us to acknowledge the multifacetedness of things because our understanding of some concepts relies on much too rigid, constricting definitions. Sexuality is a highly complex experience comprising a range of emotions, bodily reactions, social interactions, and a multiplicity of thoughts and fantasies. It cannot be approached with rigidness if we want to acknowledge its diversity. Thus, my ambition is to illustrate that new materialism and in particular, Karen Barad’s quantum perspective can facilitate new understandings in the field of sex research when engaging with the complexity of phenomena on the sexual continuum. Furthermore, it inspires new ways of doing research and interact, or rather intra-act, with our tools for knowledge production, which is particularly crucial when it comes to the entanglements of matter and discourse in phenomena like sexuality.
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Notes
- 1.
New materialism, immanent naturalism, critical posthumanism, antihumanism, speculative realism, complexity theory, object-oriented metaphyics, a philosophy of becoming (Connolly 2013), new metaphysics, postepistemology, intra-actionism (Hekman 2010), new empiricism (St. Pierre et al. 2016), new material turn, the ontological turn, or postconstructionst turn (Åsberg & Lykke 2010)—these terms encompass different aspects within this philosophy and describe partly overlap** concepts and ideas, yet are also very specific to certain discourses or to one scholar’s theorisation and expressions.
- 2.
A total of 20 questionnaires were selected from the Handbook of Sexuality-Related Measures (Fisher et al. 2010).
- 3.
These binaries are a selection. Additional binary conceptualisations in the in-depth analysis included: I-other, comfort-anxiety, goals-scripts.
- 4.
The elaborate textual analysis of the questionnaires was not included in this chapter due to word limitations and relevance for this publication but is available upon inquiry.
- 5.
BDSM = “A continuum of consensual sexual practices that includes bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism.” (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language 2011b).
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Lisy, D. (2019). The Sexual Continuum, a Diffractional Analysis, and Our Apparatuses of Investigation. In: Loh, J., Coeckelbergh, M. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Technology. Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie, vol 2. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_14
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