Travels With My Father

Abstract

Barad’s diffractive methodology was used to explore one man’s encounter with Parkinson’s disease after long exposure to pesticides in home maintenance. The study moved from a realist account of relevant studies in toxicology, entomology, and neurology toward an onto-ethico-epistemological enquiry that asked how humans and insects live and work within the shared mattering of minerals, water, and time. Constructed memories of my father’s later life were explored within masculine discourses about protection of the family from invading insects and an intra-active reconsideration of the contradictions involved in the use of poison as both care and harm. New materialist theorizing took the focus from an exploration of the difference experienced by one fragile body toward a larger engagement with material and discursive forces, ending with questions about U.S. modernism and the tenaciousness of human subjectivities in a time of changing climate and movement of species around the globe.