Animating Ancestors: From Representation to Diffraction

Working with a letter written in 1799, the author turns to a post-humanist diffractive methodology to work with both the material specificity of the one who wrote the letter, the letter itself, and the lines of force brought into play in the letter-writer's account of himself. Arguing the necessity of moving beyond representationalism, the author sets out to animate the letter, and the author of the letter, examining the flows in between human subjects, material objects, and a range of onto-epistemological lines of force.