Chapter 4 From Lines in the Sand to the Wave/Particle Duality A Quantum Imaginary for Critical Border Studies

Michael P. A. Murphy

The 2009 “Lines in the Sand” agenda represented an ambitious call to action for researchers in the interdisciplinary space of critical border studies.1 This agenda was a collective effort of “a range of political theorists, historians, human geographers, anthropologists, and international relations scholars” dissatisfied with the “‘line in the sand’ metaphor as an unexamined starting point for the study of borders.”2 It proposed three axes for further inquiry in critical border studies: “border epistemology,” encompassing questions about the enduring appeal of borders, the search for alternative ways of knowing, alternative topological framings, and experiential/existential characteristics; “border ontology,” including questions about how the border acts as a foundation both for current conceptualizations of world order and for new ontological registers; and “the space-time of borders,” referencing both the spatial and temporal dimensions of borders, as well as their localization at the margins.3

The “Lines in the Sand” agenda, as well as the subsequent special section in Geopolitics, sought to move beyond the conventional epistemologies, ontologies, and spatiotemporal conceptualization of borders. One of the central tensions to emerge from the “Lines in the Sand” project was between the microscopic and macroscopic emphasis points—while shifting away from a generic “concept of the border” toward “the notion of bordering practices” and “the lens of performance,” it was unclear how microscopic and macroscopic levels of critical analysis were to relate.4 To be sure, both microscopic and macroscopic analyses have demonstrated the value that they bring to the study of borders; the value or criticality of both perspectives is not at issue. Rather, the disjuncture is that big-picture analyses of security and sovereignty discourses seem a world away from the micropolitical studies of lived experience and materiality.5 While these novel and nuanced perspectives offer researchers in the critical border studies community a wide range of insights, the reproduction of the conceptual distinction between the border-as-micro and the border-as-macro meant that critical border studies could not escape the structuring principle of its own thought. The “line in the sand” had moved from a core concept of how critical border studies scholars understood borders to instead become an organizing principle that divided macro-focused approaches from micro-focused approaches.

What I explore in this chapter is the possibility that critical studies of borders might benefit from a fourth axis around which questions can circulate: physics. Specifically, in this chapter I state the case for critical border studies to join innovative scholars of critical social theory and critical international relations theory in rejecting the dominant Newtonian assumptions of social science, moving from a Newtonian physical imaginary to one grounded in quantum social theory. As we continue to move beyond the line in the sand, we require new conceptual frameworks that remain open to the complex forms of life that have been marginalized by the dominant Western modes of inquiry that too often seek lawlike regularity, ontological separability, causal linearity, and other Newtonian artefacts. Just as critical social theorists and critical international relations theorists have found that quantum assumptions of complexity, uncertainty, and entanglement fill the sails of critique with a new wind, I argue that critical border studies scholars stand to gain from a quantum leap.

Anzaldúa and Barad

One reason I am hopeful for the possibility of a quantum critical border studies is that—in many ways—this dialogue is already ongoing. Our journey to quantize critical border studies begins not in the laboratory or in the emerging literature of quantum social theory or quantum critical international relations but in the borderlands. Or, more precisely, in Borderlands / La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa’s masterpiece that in fact inspired the development of key elements of Karen Barad’s quantum social theory.6

Borderlands is a deeply personal, insightful, and original text and has rightfully been recognized as a substantial contribution from feminist theory and Chicano studies to the understanding of borders, borderlands, and identity. Anzaldúa rejects the assimilatory pressures of code consistency, infusing Borderlands with multiple languages, dialects, metres, and styles of writing. She problematizes the idea and stability of the border as a concept, introduces the necessarily indeterminate experience of the borderland, and explores the mestiza consciousness that arises there.7 From the physical border to the understanding of identity, Anzaldúa rejects the binaries and dichotomies that dominant societies impose in favour of a new mestiza consciousness of the people who “are forced to live in the interface.”8 While Borderlands does, in concrete terms, discuss the Mexico-US border region, it is a wide-ranging work that explores a variety of ideas, genres, identities, languages, and experiences.

It is precisely this work—Borderlands—that marks this chapter as a quantum return rather than a quantum turn in (critical) border studies. Through the contribution of Anzaldúa, the queered notion of borders and boundaries came to inform the very structure of quantum social theory through the work of a similarly visionary theorist, Barad. Not a traditional social theorist, Barad was first trained as a physicist before a profound shift in their scholarly journey toward queer and feminist social theory. In the somewhat autobiographical “Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart,” Barad outlines the profound impact of Anzaldúa’s work at a crucial time in their transition from physics to social theory:

Santa Cruz and Claremont, CA 1991: I am sitting outdoors with Gloria Anzaldúa talking about quantum physics and mestiza consciousness. It’s the late winter and Anzaldúa has come to Pomona College to talk with our faculty seminar group. I am teaching in the Physics Department, sitting in on Deena Gonzalez’s Latina Feminist Traditions class, and co-organizing a multi-disciplinary faculty seminar on the nature of theory—we’re studying Borderlands.9

And this is no mere historical anecdote. The conceptualization of diffraction—the concept that lies at the very heart of Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway—was profoundly influenced by Borderlands, as Barad continues to explain in this reflective article.

Traditionally, diffraction has described the patterns of interference between waves; however, in Barad’s theory of agential realism, the significance of diffraction goes all the way down, with ontological and epistemological significance for the nature of matter and mattering alike. Diffraction produces fuzzy borders and complex interactions that destabilize conventional assumptions around the separability of objects, linearity of causal relations, and fixity of binary divisions. To this end, Barad states that “diffraction owes as much to a thick legacy of feminist theorizing about difference as it does to physics.”10 Anzaldúa’s rejection of light/darkness as a binary (the “colonizer’s story”) is presented as a direct influence on the interpretation of light diffraction: “Darkness is not mere absence, but rather an abundance. Indeed, darkness is not light’s expelled other, for it haunts its own interior. Diffraction queers binaries and calls out for a rethinking of the notions of identity and difference.”11 And Anzaldúa’s quantum influence is not limited to energy but extends to mass as well; it was in a personal conversation between Barad and Anzaldúa around quantum physics and mita’ y mita’ that Barad would discover a framing of quantum properties of matter: “Elections are queer particles, mita’ y mita.’ They are particles. They are waves. Neither one nor the other. A strange doubling.”12 And to overcome this diffractive confounding of traditional categories, Barad returns to Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness.13 From the diagnosis of the world to the development of an alternative mode of living within it, Barad admits returning frequently to Anzaldúa.14

The radical claims of Baradian quantum social theory—which they call “agential realism”—rely on a reimagination of the world that is grounded in an active diffraction. Barad describes a world where relations precede relata, where differences are made to matter through the interactions that produce them, where the foundational units are entangled phenomena instead of discrete entities and the “action” is internal to the phenomenon rather than external between separate units.15 This foundational ontological connectivity relies on a rejection of separability between inside and outside, and this conceptual move comes to Barad from Anzaldúa’s rejection of bordering. To this end, a critique grounded in Baradian quantum social theory is always and already applicable to a critical theory of borders. By reclaiming the intellectual energy of this theory, we can develop radical critical understandings and reimaginings of borders, life, and identity.

Critical Quantum International Relations Theory

The growing momentum behind quantum approaches to international relations theory through the 2010s demonstrated that the insights that quantum ideas offered to other fields of social inquiry—such as mathematical psychology, queer theory, and economics—were conceptually productive for understanding political dynamics at the international level. Alexander Wendt’s Quantum Mind and Social Science, which draws on broad and interdisciplinary literature to argue for an ontological reimagination of consciousness and all its implications as quantum phenomena, remains the most highly cited work in this field.16 James Der Derian’s ongoing research, including the quantum-themed Project Q symposia at the University of Sydney, has called for a revolution in international theory.17 Their work—individual and collaborative18—has opened new space for a robust and multiperspectival debate on the value of quantum ideas for reimagining international relations.

Of specific interest to critical border studies is the intersection of quantum social theory with critical theories of international relations. Often drawing on Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway, critical quantum international relations has established itself as a conversation that builds on a shared commitment to complexity, uncertainty, critical epistemologies and methodologies, and nonlinear causality.19 Laura Zanotti’s Ontological Entanglements provides a sharp critique of “substantialist” assumptions in international relations theories and the ethical failings that follow therefrom while providing a quantum alternative that approaches a radical ethic of responsibility.20 Her subsequent work has outlined the affinities between quantum social theory, decolonial ethics, and micropolitical resistance.21 In a series of articles building up to Snapshots from Home, Karin Fierke has similarly explored the critical implications of quantum international relations in the context of Daoist ethics, Buddhist thought, and linguistic entanglements.22 Forums appearing in Millennium: Journal of International Studies and Global Studies Quarterly have pushed this conversation further, engaging with affect theory, feminist praxis, the ethics of scholarship, refugees’ ungrieved grief, and other topics.23 This burgeoning literature draws attention to the many ways in which Newtonian assumptions of ontological separability, epistemological certainty, causal linearity, and lawlike regularity inform and ultimately serve to uphold dominant paradigms of Western social science. This implies a choice for all critical scholars: remain in a Newtonian worldview and start every inquiry by fighting back against its most foundational assumptions or adopt a quantum ontology where relations are already complex, causality is already multiple, binaries are already queered, and boundaries are already fuzzy.

Perhaps part of the reason that quantum social theory has found such interest in circles of critical international relations is that there is an intuitively critical disposition that accompanies quantum social theory. My modest suggestion in this chapter is that the same may be true for critical border studies, and—in light of Anzaldúa’s writings on borderlands influencing Barad’s foundational writings in quantum social theory—the affinity may be even more conceptually emancipatory and productive than it has already been for critical scholars in international relations.

The Quantum Border: Three Concepts, Two Theories

Quantum social theory provides a map for overcoming the micro/macro divide precisely because that kind of scalar binary is already queered within quantum social theory, thereby opening new and freer space for critical inquiry. The point here is not that critique in a Newtonian modality cannot object to the conceptual constraints of objectivity, separability, and causal linearity—indeed, there are a panoply of critical projects that begin with a deconstruction or rejection of dominant ideas—but that creative energies can flow more freely in a sympathetic imaginary.24 Shifting to a quantum model facilitates new projects by starting from a position of entanglement, complexity, and uncertainty rather than first fighting to get there.25

What I offer in the remainder of this section is a short introduction to how three connected concepts from quantum social theory—the wave/particle duality, the social wavefunction, and measurement—can help us understand how two theoretical approaches to the study of the border fit together: securitization and new materialism. All five of these conceptual engagements remain necessarily introductory; further reading can be found in the notes. It is my hope that by demonstrating the prima facie case for how the pieces of the puzzle fit together, interested readers may explore how more in-depth treatments of the associated concepts may add new conceptual tools to their toolboxes.

The wave/particle duality is a defining feature of quantum mechanics, both in historical terms of its development and in substantive terms of the theory’s distinctiveness from Newtonian physics. While competing paradigms argued variably that light was either a shower of particles or a wave, an early discovery of quantum mechanics was that both sides of the argument were correct—in some contexts, there was evidence of light behaving like particles, and in others, evidence of light behaving like waves. Albert Einstein proposed a “heuristic view” that light was in fact both wave and particle.26 Simply put, light is a particle in its interactions and a wave on its own, producing particle-like interactions at a small scale and wave-like patterns over a larger scale. In quantum social theory, this makes intuitive sense because we are able to recognize the patterns of social phenomena over time (Alexander Wendt offers the example of a country); specific glimpses of the component parts of a state are smaller and do not represent the whole “thing”—for example, a flag, a police officer, national food, and so on.27

One of the implications of the wave/particle duality is that the trajectory of light is not a linear, predictable path but an undulating expansion through space-time. If we want to make sure that we have an accurate model of where light is (based on prior measurements), we must incorporate all of its potential spread into the calculation; this mathematical expression is called the wavefunction.28 In quantum social theory, the term social wavefunction is used to describe the blurring together of uncertainties in the social realm that can be recognized through patterns over time but not predicted with absolute certainty—for example, the complex intersections of identity, the potential future decisions an individual may make, and so on.29 As with humans, so with nonhumans; the social significances, meanings, and futures of nonhuman animals, material objects, and ideas all have uncertain futures and identities that exist in superposition until they collapse into one definitive state.30 For example, the meaning of particular colours of clothing may shift as new political or social movements adopt a colour, or a discriminatory public policy may produce differential experiences for people depending on their race or gender.

For the scholar, one of the most relevant types of interactions that sees the uncertainty of the wavefunction replaced by the certainty of the particle is found in measurement. There are a number of constituent concepts in quantum mechanics that connect to measurement and change. The observer effect describes the collapse of the wavefunction during observation such that uncertain waves are replaced with certain particles. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle highlights that certain connected concepts cannot be certainly known at once; for example, a measurement device that finds the position of a photon will disturb the movement of the photon and render its momentum unknown (and vice versa). The choices we make about what to measure influence what we find. Finally, Bohr’s complete description principle argues that the description of a phenomenon is only complete if the measurement apparatus is described.31 As quantum social theory has argued, these principles call for a radical recognition of the impact of researchers on their research.32 Not only instrumentation quality but the choices that inform research design, team formation, and individual experiences and expertise can have a profoundly creative impact on the findings produced. Surely, this will come as little surprise to critical scholars; however, the elegance of the argumentation, proceeding from the subatomic to the social, provides a new and powerful argument for the nonobjectivity of research.

Macrowaves

The border appears as a wave when we seek to analyze the macrostructural dimensions of the border, and the most important structural concept at play at the border is that of sovereignty. When considering sovereignty, the border accrues conventional notions of containment, defence, and frontier. The border is the boundary of sovereign control, and protecting the border is a necessary precondition for security within that state’s territory. The border is also a source of insecurity for sovereignty, as external threats conventionally challenge sovereign authority at the border. While these accounts of sovereignty at the border may appear realist, not all sovereign-focused accounts of border politics are. Two ways that critical scholarship has investigated the place of sovereignty at the border are through discussions of securitization and the state of exception.

Securitization theory describes the process by which something becomes a security issue.33 One of the first and still most-cited approaches within the tradition of critical security studies, securitization theory is a linguistic and constructivist approach that seeks to identify how security is intersubjectively constructed. In general, this occurs by a securitizing actor declaring something to be a threat and demanding extraordinary powers to respond to that threat and a relevant audience either granting or not granting assent to that “securitizing move.”34 A successful case of securitization moves the issue from the realm of normal politics to one in which the securitizing actor—in practice, typically a state executive—has extraordinary powers without democratic constraints. Subsequent developments to this theory have offered a broader range of mechanisms to explain how securitizing moves occur and questioned what counts as assent.

Securitization at the border has been analyzed through a variety of case studies and methodological approaches. Mark Salter and Genevieve Piché explore the securitization of the Canada-US border through a series of policy documents, official statements, and government acts (rather than one single securitization speech act).35 Salter had earlier examined how the Canadian government’s risk management approach to border functions led to the securitization not only of the border as such but also of proximate “spillover” categories.36 In the case of America’s southern border, Jason Ackleson analyzed differences between pre- and post-9/11 border security resulting from securitization speech acts.37 The same border plays an important role in Avi Astor’s study of the 1954 “Operation Wetback,” a US government program that increased border controls and government officials’ targeting of Mexican immigrants.38 Cigdem Benam investigated the dynamics of securitization (particularly of migration) in shoring up border controls in the Schengen zone.39 In all of these cases of securitization, the border is studied as a social structure, an object of discourse whose identity can be securitized through discourse.

What these examples of securitization demonstrate is the interactivity of the border and the capacity of the border to produce patterns and effects. When we analyze the securitization of border crossing or the exceptionality of the port of entry, we are examining the invisible social dimension of the border. The end-state effects of detention at the border, unreasonable search and seizure of property, discriminatory treatment, and even “proper” routines of document authentication depend on the social connection to broader social forces. These social aspects of the border represent some elements of what I am calling the wave nature of the border.

The border-as-wave interacts with other social wave functions in ways that are directly invisible but nevertheless real. When we discuss sovereignty at the border, we are connecting the social nature of the border to the entangled social wavefunction of that state—that is, the body politic constituted by the entanglement of the citizenry. When we discuss the power of the state being performed at the border, we assume that the particular interaction—for example, our interrogation by a border guard whose authority comes from the state—is legible only in the broader context of the social relation to the state. The representative of the sovereign adjudicates our social claim of identity and status, a process by which the social wavefunction of the state interferes with our social wavefunction of identity. The border is a privileged locus of social wavefunction dynamics, as the concept itself is animated by a variety of social structures and identity claims (and adjudications) and can only be understood fully in this context.

Microparticles

Just as the waves of light dissolve into precise particles upon interaction with measurement apparatuses, investigations into the practices and materiality of the border and security have demonstrated how close attention to these topics similarly reveals discrete constitutive parts. Materiality and technology-focused approaches draw attention to the agency, or ability to produce effects, of nonhuman entities. One important way that this has happened is through the influence of the so-called new materialist turn in critical international relations more generally, but it is worth recognizing that technological, architectural, and other approaches exist beyond the limits of new materialism. Even to speak of “new materialism” as a homogeneous group is misleading—while actor-network theory has played an important role in the development of this community, it is far from the only new materialist approach.

Critical border studies and critical security studies scholars have demonstrated how the border is constituted technologically (whether through high-tech innovation or more low-tech options like walls). Mike Bourne, Heather Johnson, and Debbie Lisle discuss the interaction between the border security policymakers and the laboratories engaged in developing new handheld security devices, arguing that given the interplay between the two entities, any analysis of the border should consider the laboratory’s effect just as an analysis of the laboratory would have to consider the impact of requests, guidance, and demands from the security policymakers.40 This remains true in the case of “low-tech” forms of security technologies such as passports. As Salter argues, the crossing of the border is in part dependent on the function of the passport as a key tool in that regime.41 Indeed, the increasing demands for security at the border are in themselves bound by the biometric capacity of the passport document: despite all the sovereign power of the state, they are unable to overcome the limitations imposed by the passport materials.

Even in the case of fixed borders, careful attention to their function can highlight the agency of that technological materiality. Polly Pallister-Wilkins argues that the border wall has the ability to interrupt human circulation and to capture data through surveillance technologies.42 While the decisions may be made through a policy of securitization, the effectiveness of the wall is in the physical barrier it creates. Indeed, as the ferocious architecture project has demonstrated,43 purpose-built structures function as articulations of sovereignty in powerful ways. To analyze architecture, structures, walls, and so on requires attention to the agency of that particular material entity.

But the clearest case of the border as particle is found in Peter Nyers’s 2012 commentary on the political significance of dirt.44 Examining the case of Smuggler’s Gulch between the United States and Mexico as well as topsoil theft in the Israel–Lebanon border zone, Nyers demonstrates how the dirt itself becomes central to the political and social success of the states involved. The impact of material changes in the dirt profile of the border is clarified through Nyers’s careful microscopic analysis of the physical constitution of the border. To flatten Smuggler’s Gulch and make the region more easily patrollable, US government officials flattened mountains and filled canyons—moving enough dirt to cover the Empire State Building.45 The governments in both cases recognized the centrality of the dirt in the border zone to the future success of their national interest. Thus, while a reading of total dollar amounts may indicate that the proper level of analysis for these interventions is at the (macroscopic) program management level, it is only because of the political agency of dirt that the policy outcomes were even possible. Nyers offers a powerful call to the microagential, drawing attention to that which is often ignored as the least consequential.

As mentioned, every measurement device created by electrodynamic physicists has demonstrated light to be composed of particles. The tests describe in detail the size and mass of a photon, and these findings have facilitated great insight into how light can be mobilized. In an analogous way, investigations into practices and materialities of the border reveal how the same sort of careful attention to border security reveals specific connections, constitutive parts, and causal mechanisms. The interplay between laboratory and border policy entangles these places fundamentally in the ontogenesis of security technologies. The particular arrangement of dirt at a border plays a larger role in determining political possibilities than could ever be known in macrostructural analysis.

These approaches to the study of border security are particle-like because they, like the measurement apparatuses of light, look for particular details. By highlighting connections, constitutive parts, and causal mechanisms, they disrupt the grand narratives of sovereignty to focus on particularities. This, too, falls in perfect parallel to what takes place in the measurement of light. In the well-known two-slit experiment used to demonstrate the quantum effect of interference, the actual recording of photons passing through the slits can only ever result in particles. The wave effects appear through the firing of many thousands of photons, but this does not change the fact that each measurement is of a particle. At the border, we find that each element is a distinct particle, with its own distinct causes and relations bearing little resemblance to the grand narratives of sovereignty. But as we turn our attention to not wave or particle but their duality, it is useful to keep the two-slit experiment in mind. We may—as have the new materialists—be adamant that our results are particle measurements, but that tells only part of the story. Similarly, the sovereignty-focused approaches can maintain their fervent defence of grand narratives but must also recognize the influence of dirt and architecture on the carrying out of structural politics.

Conclusion

These quantum insights that I have introduced and explored are far from the final chapter in this conversation. Indeed, if the precedent of critical international relations is to offer any guidance, it is that the central intellectual commitments of critical border studies are likely to find productive synergies with quantum social theory. As discussed, the profound legacy of Gloria Anzaldúa as a precursor to quantum social theory only lends further credence to this claim.

While I have provided intentionally accessible and thin introductions to a small number of concepts and research projects in quantum social theory, there is a great deal more to explore. Can the fundamental connectedness of entanglement inform critical border studies scholarship, perhaps building on the prior work of Patricia Noxolo on (post)diaspora identities?46 How does the superposition of Indigenous and settler-colonial legal traditions inform the uncertainty of borders and law?47 How do the differential experiences of intersecting social structures of violence and subjugation interfere with life in and around the borderlands?48 How do surveillance practices produce affect and resistance?49 These questions and more remain to be asked (and answered) in a continuing dialogue.

The “Lines in the Sand” agenda rejected a simplistic binary structure of a physical demarcation of inside and outside, introducing provocative and thoughtful axes of debate for critical border studies. The project of this volume retains that bold critique but also explores how earlier critique left some stones unturned. In this chapter, I have approached the question of physics as a potential future path for critique, noting the radical possibility of quantum social theory and its recent success in conversation with critical international relations. Quantum critical border studies presents an opportunity to transcend the binary of macro- and micro-, grounding a new critical conversation that moves from lines in the sand to social wavefunctions that continually cross all of our lives.

Notes

1. Noel Parker et al., “Lines in the Sand? Towards an Agenda for Critical Border Studies,” 582–87.
2. Noel Parker and Nick Vaughan-Williams, “Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the ‘Lines in the Sand’ Agenda,” 727–28.
3. Parker et al., “Lines in the Sand,” 584–85.
4. Parker and Vaughan-Williams, “Critical Border Studies,” 729.
5. But see Chris Rumford, “Towards a Multiperspectival Study of Borders,” 887–902.
6. Melina Pereira Savi, “How Borders Come to Matter? The Physicality of the Border in Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera,” 181–91.
7. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
8. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 37.
9. Karen Barad, “Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart,” 172.
10. Barad, “Diffracting Diffraction,” 168.
11. Barad, “Diffracting Diffraction,” 171.
12. Barad, “Diffracting Diffraction,” 173.
13. Barad, “Diffracting Diffraction,” 175.
14. Barad also highlights the importance of Anzaldúa in theorizing response-ability and touch. Karen Barad and Daniela Gandorfer, “Political Desirings: Yearnings for Mattering (,) Differently,” 62n14; Karen Barad, “On Touching—the Inhuman That Therefore I Am,” 219n2.
15. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning.
16. Alexander E. Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology.
17. E.g., James Der Derian, “Quantum Diplomacy, German–US Relations and the Psychogeography of Berlin,” 373–92; and James Der Derian, “A Quantum of Insecurity,” 13–27.
18. E.g., James Der Derian and Alexander Wendt, eds., Quantum International Relations: A Human Science for World Politics; and James Der Derian and Alexander Wendt, “‘Quantizing International Relations’: The Case for Quantum Approaches to International Theory and Security Practice,” 399–413.
19. See the following by Michael P. A. Murphy: “Entangled Observers? A Quantum Perspective on Authority in Critical Security Studies,” 1–13; “On Quantum Social Theory and Critical International Relations,” 244–61; and Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists: Quantizing Critique.
20. Laura Zanotti, Ontological Entanglements, Agency and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads.
21. Laura Zanotti. “De-colonizing the Political Ontology of Kantian Ethics: A Quantum Perspective,” 448–67; “Exploring Agency and Resistance in the Context of Global Entanglements,” 103–20.
22. Karin M. Fierke, “Consciousness at the Interface: Wendt, Eastern Wisdom and the Ethics of Intra-action,” 141–69; Karin M. Fierke, “Contraria sunt Complementa: Global Entanglement and the Constitution of Difference,” 146–69; Karin M. Fierke, Snapshots from Home: Mind, Action and Strategy in an Uncertain World; K. M. Fierke and Francisco Antonio-Alfonso, “Language, Entanglement and the New Silk Roads,” 194–206.
23. See, e.g., Nadine Voelkner and Laura Zanotti, “Ethics in a Quantum World,” ksac044; Michael P. A. Murphy, “Forum on Laura Zanotti, Ontological Entanglements, Agency and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads (Routledge, 2019),” 117–25; Şengül Yıldız-Alanbay, “The Matter of Affect in the Quantum Universe,” 151–61; Elisabeth Prügl, “The Gender Thing: Apparatuses and Intra-agential Ethos,” 140–50; Christopher McIntosh, “From Policy Relevance to Present Relevance: Entanglement, Scholarly Responsibility, and the Ethics of Quantum Social Theory,” ksac052; Liberty Chee, “Being of Use: Diffraction and an Ethics of Truth-Telling in Post-Cartesian IR,” ksac049; K. M. Fierke and Nicola Mackay, “Those Who Left/Are Left Behind: Schrödinger’s Refugee and the Ethics of Complementarity,” ksac045. This extends beyond the forums as well—e.g., Italo Brandimarte, “Subjects of Quantum Measurement: Surveillance and Affect in the War on Terror,” olac012; Mark B. Salter, “Quantum Sovereignty + Entanglement,” 262–79.
24. Murphy, “On Quantum Social Theory.”
25. For an accessible introduction to quantum mechanics, see Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.
26. Albert Einstein, “On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” 177–98.
27. Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science.
28. Erwin Schrodinger, “The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics,” 327.
29. I explore the concept further in Michael P. A. Murphy, “Violent Interference: Structural Violence, Quantum International Relations, and the Ethics of Entanglement,” ksac040.
30. This is known as the “collapse of the wavefunction,” and its specific meaning in physics remains hotly contested, with multiple interpretations finding scientific backing. For an introduction, see John Charlton Polkinghorne, The Quantum World.
31. Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science; Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge.
32. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway; Murphy, “Entangled Observers?”
33. Through this section, I refer to the “Copenhagen interpretation” of securitization theory. See Ole Waever, “Securitization and Desecuritization,” 46–86; and Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis. For a review of the “Paris Interpretation” of securitization in borderlands studies, see the recent special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies: Martin Deleixhe, Magdalena Dembinska, and Julien Danero Iglesias, “Introduction: Securitized Borderlands,” 639–47.
34. See Waever, “Securitization and Desecuritization”; and Buzan et al., Security.
35. Mark B. Salter and Genevieve Piché, “The Securitization of the US-Canada Border in American Political Discourse,” 929–51.
36. Mark B. Salter, “Canadian Post-9/11 Border Policy and Spillover Securitization: Smart, Safe, Sovereign?” 299–319.
37. Jason Ackleson, “Constructing Security on the US-Mexico Border,” 165–84.
38. Avi Astor, “Unauthorized Immigration, Securitization, and the Making of Operation Wetback,” 5–29.
39. Cigdem H. Benam, “Emergence of a ‘Big Brother’ in Europe: Border Control and Securitization of Migration,” 191–207.
40. Mike Bourne, Heather Johnson, and Debbie Lisle, “Laboratizing the Border: The Production, Translation, and Anticipation of Security Technologies,” 307–25.
41. Mark B. Salter, “Passports, Mobility, and Security: How Smart Can the Border Be?” 71–91; “Global Visa Regime.”
42. Polly Pallister-Wilkins, “How Walls Do Work: Security Barriers as Devices of Interruption and Capture,” 151–64.
43. Benjamin Muller, Thomas N. Cooke, Miguel de Larrinaga, Philippe M. Frowd, D. Iossifova, D. Johannes, Can E. Mutlu, and Adam Nowek, “Collective Discussion—Ferocious Architecture: Sovereign Spaces/Places by Design,” 75–96.
44. Peter Nyers, “Moving Borders: The Politics of Dirt,” 2–6.
45. Nyers, “Moving Borders,” 4.
46. Patricia Noxolo, “I Am Becoming My Mother: (Post)diaspora, Local Entanglements and Entangled Locals,” 134–46.
47. Salter, “Quantum Entanglement + Sovereignty”; Norah Bowman, “Here/There/Everywhere: Quantum Models for Decolonizing Canadian State Onto-epistemology,” 171–86.
48. Murphy, “Violent Interference.”
49. Brandimarte, “Subjects of Quantum Measurement.”

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Part 2. Cuttings and Crossings