The novel feminist diffraction concept : Its application in fifty-one peer-reviewed papers

Diffraction,as conventionally defined, is a term for one among a number of wave phenomena.Since the 1990's, when it was introduced by Donna Haraway, it is also a concept within feminist methodology. While particularly the cyborg figure – the cybernetic organism – already in its mainstream scientific-technological scope involves both fantasy and innovation, the term diffraction is in its conventional meaning descriptive. This paper investigates the broad strokes of how the novel diffraction concept is taken in use. Fifty-one papers published in peer-reviewed journals from 2001 to June 2016. The results indicate that the opposition to traditional contemplation- i.e. reflection that Haraway sets as target when introducing the novel concept is the point around which the dynamics evolve.That far, the novel concept could be just any metaphor, like describing thinking things through as ‘reflecting’. Several authors however claim an interdisciplinary connotation, especially to physics. In the material investigated, every implementation and elaboration does not abide to the letter to each attribute in Haraway’s concept. The discovery of how dominant it nevertheless has become to do just that is an important result of this study. Haraway’s sketch of a mirror and a diffraction laboratory experiment is dealt with as was it a full description of wave theory, a complete representation that perfectly meshes with nature. In a fair share of the material, Haraway’s invention of putting diffraction and reflection as metaphors for thinking in hierarchical opposition is literarily interpreted into physics