Abstract
Will a desirable apparatus always return a desirable end? This short engagement expresses my hope for Karin M. Fierke’s Snapshots from Home: Mind, Action, and Strategy in an Uncertain World (Bristol University Press, 2022).
In my “mind, action, and strategy,” which hangs in the disciplinary air of International Relations (IR), quantum physics remained metaphorical while the Asian philosophies and traditions of Buddhism, Daoism, and Hinduism remained mystical. They, either alone or together, were not quite present in my “social science” system of thought and practice.
It was not until I encountered Karin M. Fierke’s Snapshots from Home that I have finally inched closer to making sense of the insights of quantum physics and the ancient Asian philosophies. Snapshots from Home not only moves across rigid boundary lines, including that of science-culture, but also interweaves them, elucidating how Asian philosophies help us appraise quantum impermanence, complementarity, and entanglement, as well as draw wider implications from them for the human mind, action, and strategy in contexts of uncertainty.
That is, it was only after my encounter with Snapshots from Home that I began to come to grips with the usefulness of a “parallel” between quantum physics and the ancient Asian philosophies for navigating our world in multiple crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, racism, and climate change. As Fierke writes, to address these issues, we need to see things and relations differently. A crucial entry point is to reposition the taken-for-granted “apparatus” of a Newtonian lens through which only binary either/or oppositions are seen and naturalized. To have a different (e.g., complementary, entangled) angle on what is seen, Snapshots from Home offers a parallel between quantum physics and Asian thought as a new apparatus. Equipped with this apparatus, Snapshots from Home revisits global crises and carves out a view of reality in sync with uncertainty, fluidity, and entanglement. Exploring or, more to the point, exposing the macroscopic implications of quantum physics through Buddhism, Daoism, and Hinduism, Snapshots from Home helps us confront the facts that our world is “entangled all the way up and all the way down” (Fierke, 2022: 15), and that all we can hope for in this world is to find or build a global “shared home” (Fierke, 2022: 25, 251) on the ground of not an “ego self,” but a “relational self” (Fierke, 2022: 246).
The contribution of Snapshots from Home is dense, penetrating, and generative. I become a fellow-traveler with Fierke, finding myself visiting her snapshots and agreeing with their underlying point that the parallel is a useful and desirable apparatus with which to cut into a reality different from the Newtonian one. When seen through the ancient Eastern philosophies of Buddhism, Daoism, and Hinduism in parallel with quantum physics, mutual deference (and respect) becomes what constitutes the very condition of our existence. This apparatus provides a new way of considering what it means to live a “good” life and be at “home” in the universe, throwing necessary light onto how to navigate our uncertain universe without doing harm and thereby “save our home from burning down” (Fierke, 2022: 229).
As rich and perceptive as Snapshots from Home’s contributions for shifting from an either/or to a both/and world and pondering the question of how we ought to live in such a mutually inclusive universe are, I am still struggling to get my head around one simple question: Will a desirable apparatus always return a desirable end? This question takes me to Deleuze’s idea of “rhizome” (Deleuze, 1994; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), the apparatus through which I see the nature of diversity in the study and practice of international relations (Eun, 2021, 2023). Deleuze’s philosophy—although “contemporary” in a linear sense of time and “Western” in a place-based construction of space—has several points of intersection (“parallel”) with the ancient Eastern philosophies, especially in the sense that binary and essentialized uptakes of being and knowing are rejected and instead a morphogenetic and relational line of thinking on what exists is placed front and center of Deleuze’s signature idea of rhizome. Beings or, in Deleuze’s words, “machines,” come into being as they are only through entering intra- and extra-field relations to other machines. In this respect, rhizome as an apparatus also highlights an ontological complementarity as constituting our very existence from which we can draw an ethical responsibility that recognizes our partial, limited positionality, and the value of attending to others’ positionalities. My point is not that there is the (contemporary Western) Deleuzian idea of rhizome—that resonates with quantum impermanence, complementarity, and entanglement—but rather that this idea does not necessarily propel our life toward more positive relational potentials and “mutual respect.” In the mind, action, and strategy of the Israel Defense Forces, for example, the idea of rhizome is used as a “lethal theory” and “warfare tactics” to undertake better maneuvers and more effective attacks in a complex urban terrain and ever-changing fluid combat environment (Weizman, 2007). Although the idea of rhizome can serve as a desirable apparatus with which to see our world as a non-essential, fluid, and entangled assemblage, what comes about through the apparatus of rhizome does not necessarily correspond to its onto-ethical implications for a “good” life.
The same can be said about ancient Eastern thought that constitutes Snapshots from Home’s apparatus. Despite the Buddhist or Daoist teachings of a rotation away from the ego self toward the relational and entangled self, such rotation may still remain within the boundaries of like-minded cultures or religions; this in turn can entail a marginalizing of “others”—even by violent means—as the rise of “militant Buddhism” in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand shows (Lehr, 2019). To be sure, in Mahāyāna Buddhism, violence can be tolerated or justified “so long as carried out with the right intention,” an intention to alleviate the suffering of sentient beings. . .” (Fierke, 2022: 85, 102); yet the line between a right and wrong intention is thin. “Is it right or wrong, tolerable or intolerable?” LHM Ling asked, referring to Buddhist monks’ anti-Muslim act of violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, when we listened to a Buddhist clergy’s preaching at the one of the oldest Zen Buddhist temples in Kyoto, Japan. 1 There was a minute’s silence yet the clergy’s answer was what we all expected.
The ancient Eastern thought may also be deployed as a state’s strategy to serve its own self-interests and seek political influence over other states. “Millennium Buddhist fate” is one of the phrases commonly used by Chinese officials to promote the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) among Buddhist countries in Asia. By projecting narratives on the shared Sino-Sri Lankan Buddhist ties and values, for example, the contemporary Chinese government leadership attempts to garner support for the BRI while mitigating criticism thereof (Rosendal, 2022). China is certainly not alone in this strategic mind and action. India, too, uses Buddhism as a tool of statecraft to increase its soft power attractiveness. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi remarks: “Countries that have Gautam Buddha [. . .] as part of their own culture have a bond with India that transcends diplomatic ties. In the domain of soft power India has a lot to offer to the world. . . India is taking the lead in boosting the Buddhist heritage across Asia” (Scott, 2016: 145, 151). Going a step further, some believe that India is able to “trump” China’s soft power since India is “the original hearth of Buddhism” (Scott, 2016: 145). This “Buddhist diplomacy” invocated by China and India in a materialist and competitive manner is a violation of the core tenets of Buddhism (and Daoism), namely “creative co-existence” and “harmonious synthesis.”
I am not calling into question the value and virtue of the parallel between quantum physics and ancient Eastern thought. This parallel as an apparatus offers a new angle important for taking on a relational view of mind, action, strategy in contexts of uncertainty and coming to terms with a universe replete with impermanence and entanglement. From this angle, we come to see and become conscious of “our responsibility to nature and each other to construct a proper home, characterized not by mechanistic materialism but by care and nurture of that which ‘we’ hold in common, by an ontological parity in which every part has a place” (Fierke, 2022: 252–253). The question is, then, not whether there is a desirable apparatus with which to see things differently, but how to make a shift away from the familiar apparatus anchored in the deterministic and materialist assumptions of Newtonian physics and its associated binary thinking—to which mainstream IR also subscribes—and do justice to the desirable onto-ethical insights of the new apparatus that arises from the parallel between ancient Eastern thought and quantum physics.
Although I do not have a definitive answer, let me take a cue from Fierke’s own position and experience and revisit that question. As her lived experiences show, encounters with difference and diversity (in nationality, residence, and thought system) can “ease the shift” (Fierke, 2022: 11) and go about operating the repositioned apparatus properly. This point reminds me of the life of queer Chicana writer and feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004). It was also her own personal experience of growing up on the US-Mexican border and struggling for her (gender) subjectivity within the patriarchal family and local community of which she was part that became the generative source of her “Mestizaje consciousness” and “border thinking” act (Anzaldúa, 1987). Throughout her life, she actually practiced intersectional identity in which the self-other duality is broken down and instead ambivalence is placed at the center of positive potentials. As Anzaldúa showed, encountering differences in culture and gender can be experienced not only in the physical domain, but also in the emotional and even spiritual dimensions.
Of course, this is not to say that encountering differences in various forms of lived experiences will always result in harmonious synthesis. As with the apparatus, it may unfold in a way that not performs, but erodes the care and compassion we hope for in an uncertain and entangled world. Like the dynamics of yinyang and quantum complementarity, the lived experience of encountering difference necessitates an apparatus through which our attention to difference is recalibrated as a positive force generating co-existence and co-creativity. Again, this idea is not a definitive answer to the question of how we can do justice to the onto-ethical insights drawn from the parallel between ancient Eastern thought and quantum physics. This is why I hope that Snapshots from Home—which has already laid the crucial groundwork to this endeavor—will continue to stay with us, together moving toward that desirable end.
