Chapter Night Sky: Temporal Diffraction: A Constellation *** of ‘New’ Electrifying Insights in Conversation with Karen Barad

This chapter works with the notion of constellations to help us to think otherwise about chronological time. Intricate patternings of insights from before, after and during Karen Barad’s presentation Troubling Time(s) (2018) at the Cape Town seminar flash up in constellations for us as authors in our deliberations on how queering chronological time might have the potential for doing response-able research and pedagogy. In the chapter, we re-turn to various texts and presentations we worked on collaboratively and independently to trace our engagement with temporal diffraction. The chapter shows the significant impact the presentation on temporal diffraction made on the participants’ scholarship and thinking, including that of our (future) collaborators and ourselves. The chapter is a collaborative re-turn to dispersed and diffractive moments traversing complex patternings that give glimpses into constellations of scholarly work about temporal diffraction and its political difference for scholarship in South Africa. This is important in a context where colonialism and apartheid continue to haunt the temporal and spatial configurations of education and the geopolitical environment.