Finite freedom: diffraction patterns in psychotherapy

This paper elucidates the work of science and technology studies (STS) feminists Donna Haraway and Karen Barad as their theories relate to the production of matter, agency, and knowledge in psychotherapy. Haraway’s and Barad’s work center on questions of epistemology and highlight the ontological and ethical dimensions of knowledge production. Haraway and Barad articulate a diffractive methodology which attends to the situatedness of knowledge and the materiality of perception, articulating the conditions for an ontological-epistemological-ethical entanglement which situates agency in the entanglement as a whole. I will begin by illuminating this aspect of their work, which will then be interwoven with the life of another STS feminist, my patient Marianna. My clinical entanglement with their work will borrow and hopefully resonate with the focus of this special issue on academic freedom.