There is so much to say about Vicki Kirby’s (2011) wonderful book, Quantum Anthropologies, but in the meantime, here is a short note which I have been itching to express.
Earlier this year, I withdrew from a conversation about further study. There were many reasons, but one of them was the institution’s unquestioning commitment to binary distinctions, which seemed to override the fact that the very proposal I was suggesting addressed the persistence of dualisms. Despite the existence of various schools of thought aiming to address injustices perpetuated by dualism, from post-structuralism to New Materialism or Posthumanism, I was repeatedly encouraged to embrace the dogmatism that labels itself ‘practice-led, and paradoxically told in the same breath that dualism was more or less done and dusted. While I kept stumbling over the irony, it seemed not to register beyond my personal screen/body space.
From what I’ve seen, the moment we posit a ‘split’ – theory vs practice, making vs thinking, process vs representation, mind vs body (or mental vs. physical health), digital vs analogue, speech vs writing, kitsch vs authentic, the poor image vs the commodified image, absence vs presence, human vs machine, form vs content, sensation vs reason, human vs nonhuman, language vs matter, and the overriding metaphysics, subject vs object or nature vs culture – we risk re-inscribing the very binaries we claim to challenge..
Kirby (2011; 68) convincingly argues that there is a contemporary
…need to interrogate the Nature/Culture division and the entire conceptual apparatus that rests upon it. Although one might be forgiven for assuming that the insights we can glean from such an examination have been exhausted, [she aims to] illuminate the more counterintuitive and surprising aspects of this problematic that could open new and unusual avenues for critical attention.
Hurrah!!!
Quantum Anthropologies may have been written in 2011, but splits, dualisms, and binaries are still deeply embedded in esoteric academic corners and the broader public alike. Words like entanglement, along with its implications, may have entered public consciousness through exhibitions such as the 2024 Royal Academy’s Entangled Pasts. Even so, the splits seem more embedded than ever. And as far as I can tell, splits such as ‘mental health’ as opposed to ‘physical health’ are not remotely questioned. Equally, in art and art pedagogy, reason vs some imagined ‘anti-logic, feminine, feeling only’ space remains pervasive and unquestioned. As Amanda Beech (2021: 1) argues in Art’s Intolerable Knowledge, the widespread rejection of reason within artistic research – especially in the context of practice-led models – amounts to:
[…] a defense of artistic research as a deteritorizalized [sic], non-programmatic, anti-formal, antifoundationalist, and [ultimately a] non-instrumentalized landscape of inquiry. However, this non-project has cause, because written through this is the grand idea of art as “resistance”. Having cause, it also has a reason …
Despite this apparent rejection, she goes on to say:
…we can ask if its critique of reason is simply incorrect especially when this critique is forced to obfuscate the reason that underwrites its claim, which in itself indicates a bottom-line theism or dogmatism.
In other words, the rejection of reason that accompanies practice-led models often ends up preserving the very logic it disavows – rooted, still, in oppositional binaries.
Elsewhere, Kirby pertinently asks:
” …if every maneuver to escape binary logic effectively reinstates it in a disavowed and subtle way, then perhaps we need a more careful examination of what we are actually dealing with in this mirror-maze of unwitting duplication”.
Evidently, my attempt to address these issues was not clear or bold enough a few months ago. I admit that I have often felt somewhat awkward and even embarrassed, as many respected voices seem to insist on some form of dualism; language is seemingly assumed to be immaterial even among those deeply embedded in New Materialism or Posthumanism, for instance. Similarly, practice-led pedagogy is often valorised as the only legitimate form of inquiry, [edit 10/08: in the arts] even by those who purport to reject hierarchy. It can be hard to maintain one’s position in the face of institutional authority. Kirby’s excellent book makes me feel somewhat vindicated, and I am immensely grateful to have found it (via Thomas Nail’s writing).
The implications are vast and far-reaching, but as promised at the top of this page, this is a short note. However, what a blessed relief it has been to find Kirby!
Images from Sense and Reason (ongoing project) – a combination of text, photography and AI images mediating on sense in the contemporary Western understanding (logical), as well as the broader term – sensation, along with this older meaning’s binary partner, reason.
Refs
Kirby, V. (2011) Quantum Anthropologies: Life at Large. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
Beech, A. (2021) Art’s Intolerable Knowledge. Utrecht: Metropolis M Books. Available at: http://amandabeech.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/AmandaBeechUtrechtPub2021.pdf (Accessed: 22 July 2025).