Feminist Launches ‘Intersectional Quantum Physics’ to End Newton’s ‘Oppression’ – PJ Media

According to a feminist academic working with the University of Arizona, Newtonian physics is oppressive, and physics needs a new theoryto combat it the theory of "intersectional quantum physics." In a journal published by Duke University Press, she used academic jargon to deconstruct not just physics but basic logic in the service of fighting "oppression."

"The idea of the body (whether biological, social, or of work) is not stagnant, and new materialist feminisms help to recognize how multiple phenomena work together to behave in what can become legible at any given moment as a body," wrote Whitney Stark, a researcher in culture and gender studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands with ties to U.S. colleges.

Newtonian physics is fundamentally oppressive becauseit defines what the word "body" means. No joke: In her paper, Stark identified "Newtonian physics" as a culprit behind oppression, because it has "separated beings" based on their "binary and absolute differences."

In her paper "Assembled Bodies: Reconfiguring Quantum Identities," published in the latest issue of The Minnesota Review,Stark argued that thinkers need to combine "intersectionality and quantum physics" to understand "marginalized people" and to create "safer spaces" for them. But the way in which she argued this spoke volumes.

"This structural thinking of individualized separatism with binary and absolute differences as the basis for how the universe works is embedded in many structures of classification," the researcher wrote. Such "structures of classification," such as male or female, living or non-living, are "hierarchical and exploitative" and therefore "part of the apparatus that enables oppression."

But the basic ability to determine male from female, living from non-living, and other simple binary identities, and to make arguments and conclusions based on these differences, is also called "logic." It enables human beings to understand the world around them, and it is the basic foundation of all science, physics included.

There is nothing unique to Newtonian physics about this simple logic, but Stark attacks it as a vehicle for oppression. To be clear, it is a vehicle for understanding the world and using knowledge. People can use knowledge for good or for ill, for freedom or oppression. The very same logic which allows someone to distinguish a human being from an animal, and to free an enslaved person but not a chained pet, also allows someone to distinguish between a man and a woman, and to treat one better than the other.

Logical categories enable discrimination, but they also enable justice, knowledge, all kinds of relations even love.

But quantum physics blurs the lines between logical binaries, allowing for particles to be in two states at the same time. Even this mind-bending relies on logical and scientific study of physics, starting at easier levels and proceeding toward the more difficult.

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Feminist Launches 'Intersectional Quantum Physics' to End Newton's 'Oppression' - PJ Media