MAPPING QUANTUM
STORYTELLING
A G U I D E T O T H E I N T R A - P L AY O F 7 P L U S M AT E R I A L I T I E S
Quantum
Storytelling
MAPPING THE ASSEMBLAGES
OF HUMAN & NON-HUMAN
Your
cosmetics
Your Food
Your Tools
Your
Clothing
Inside &
carried along
Make up,
deodorant,
sprays…
Computers,
pencil,
pen…
Each item
tells a
quantum
story
Is part of
larger socioeconomic
assemblage
processes
Not of
same
Places, or
Times, or
Pressures,
or
Agencies,
or Optics
?
You
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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STORYTELLING
Working
Conditions
STORYTELLING
Structures
STORYTELLING
Behaviors
STORYTELLING
Hidden Costs
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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SEAM-STORYTELLING
WORKING CONDITIONS
Are assemblages of tools,
material resources, changes
over place, changes over time,
job designs, sociotechnical
assemblages, materiality in
relation to social groups,
processes of material
production, distribution, etc.
WORK ORGANIZATION
Are material assemblages of
sociomaterial networks,
dialogic relations, supply
chains, specialties,
administrative order, etc.
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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SEAM-STORYTELLING
3 C’s
TIME MANAGEMENT
Assemblages of human and
digital projectors, image
screens, asleep students,
coordination calendars,
meetings face-to-face, meeting
virtually, a TAMARA-LAND of
simultaneous 3 C’s.
Times different throughout the
assemblage, with short,
medium and long term
horizons, cycles, spirals,
rhizome assemblages, some
linear ones, delegation, putting
out fires, value-added time,
value-less time
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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SEAM-STORYTELLING
TRAINING
STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION
Assemblages of people getting
training, doing CITI HR and
safety certification, people
needing trianing not getting it,
apprenticeship needed,
mentoring happening or not,
training in habitudes, untraining
ones no longer valued.
Transforming from one
assemblage of processes to
another, merging and acquiring,
divesting, getting accounting
assemblage inline with market
and production assemblage,
moving to materialize the
staregy
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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ANATOMY OF SEAM-STORYTELLING
STORYTELLING
Working
Conditions
SEAM-STORYTELLING
Material
STORYTELLING
Structures
STORYTELLING
Behaviors
Quantum
SEAMSTORYTELLING
STORYTELLING
Hidden Costs
Birth of new Methods
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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SEAM-STORYTELLING
3 times Better
than 1
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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Sociomateriality
Socioeconomic Accounting
Distrust of Speculative
Economics
Petrified Narrative
Linear Narrative
De-material Narrative
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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1ST QUANTUM STORYTELLING EXERCISE
On paper, make a list of every material thing you wear,
carry, or bring into this room. Include every item of
clothing, jewelry, hair brush/comb, cosmetics,
glasses/contacts, perfume, food, tools, computers,
chargers, cords, iPhone, ear buds, nail polish, books,
papers, notebooks, post-it notes, etc.
After a complete list is written out, join with a partner
and interview them about their material
accompaniments.
Everyone is a quantum storytelling assemblage!
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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STAR ACTOR-NETWORK-THEORY: BRUNO LATOUR
NOT SAME
PLACES
(not isotopic
NOT SAME
OPTIC
(not synoptic)
NOT SAME
AGENCIES
(not
homogeneous)
NOT SAME
TIMES
(not
synchronic)
NOT SAME
PRESSURES
(not isobaric)
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
1.
Which of your
material items
are not of same
places?
2.
Which are not of
same times?
3.
Which are not of
same pressures?
4.
Which are not of
same agencies?
5.
Which are not of
same optics?
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DEFINING VITAL MATERIALISM
“Picture an ontological field without any unequivocal
demarcations between human, animal, vegetable,
and mineral,” Bennett (2010: 117) writes, “all forces
and flows (materialities) are or can become lively,
affective, and signaling. And so an affective, speaking
human body is not radically different from the
affective, signaling nonhumans with which it coexists,
hosts, enjoys, senses, consumes, produces, and
competes”
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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EXERCISE 2: TELL THE ‘ONTO-STORY’ OF
YOUR ASSEMBLAGE OF MATERIAL THINGS
 Jane Bennett (2010:3-4) says ‘onto-story’ is a qualitative methodology,
tracing the ASSEMBLAGES of human artifacts, the human body (part of
Nature), and non-human forces
 Each of you assemblages are different! (Boje, 2011; 385).
 Trace the onto-story of the various PLACES, TIMES, PRESSURES, AGENCIES,
OPTICS of different assemblages you brought into the room.
 Each assemblage is part of a larger socioeconomic process. Trace the socioeconomic processes of which various artifacts are participants (in larger
assemblages).
 Define Vibrant Matter of your most lively thing-assemblages (aka ‘material
vitalism).
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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QUANTUM STORYTELLING
Its all about what we use, reuse, care for, or just are careless about.
Its all about our entanglement as material body in larger
assemblages of material processes.
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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SOCIO-ECONOMIC ASSEMBLAGES
“Performance is not the result of putting together resources (things);
it’s the result of dynamic historical movement: -Savall in Boje
2011:383)
Boje: “An assemblage is migrative, iterant, in movement whereas a
network is ties, connections that recur, that pattern being more
stable” (p. 384).
“Agency is not just juman, but the configurative assemblage of
materiality has energy --- ‘vibrant energy’ (p. 384).
We do not find an assemblage process, complete, in form, but it is of
different places, times, etc.
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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EXERCISE 3: CAN YOU TELL A STORY
WITHOUT YOUR MATERIALITY?
In what ways are you always in
relationship to materiality
assemblages?
How is all this materiality, the
material assemblages, related to your
storytelling practices?
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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WHAT IS OBSERVER EFFECT?
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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OBSERVER EFFECT?
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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EXERCISE 4: WHAT ARE OBSERVER
EFFECTS OF QUANTUM STORYTELLING?
Quantum storytellers observe the materiality assemblages all
around them.
How do you observe your embeddedness in material
assemblages?
How does your voice use material waves, your writing is
material, your sight uses light waves, your hearing, the sound
waves, your smelling uses it, your body sense touch of
vibrations, and your gestures move in spacetimemattering?
 What effect does you observing your body in space, in time, in
mattering, i.e. in spacetimemattering have on you?
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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EXERCISE 5: WHAT IS QUANTUM
STORYTELLING BEYOND THE SENSES
Tell a story with out the wave of voice or sight, the
smells, or touches of material, or any material gestures.
Can this be done?
How are you in your body, yet not in your body, only in
language?
Is your consciousness separate from the material world?
Are you a social construction?
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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EXERCISE 6: SUBATOMIC QUANTUM
STORYTELLING
Can you exist with out photons of light?
Can you exist without oxygen? How long can you hold your breath?
Can you live in artificial light?
Can we be blind, deaf, mute, and still tell stories?
How does closing your eyes change your mood, in your storytelling?
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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EXERCISE 7: WHAT KIND OF MATERIAL
IS LIGHT?
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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TAMARA-LAND (BOJE, 1995 AMJ)
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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QUANTUM
STORYTELLING
EVOLUTIVE INTERACTIVE
ACTORS POLYGON (EIAP)
 EIAP is Savall’s answer to Latour’s ANT.
 EIAP is part of Qualimetric Intervention Research (QIR)
 Actors A and B have a meeting at 10:45AM
 Both arrive on time
 The meeting lasts till 10:55AM
 B leaves
 11AM Actor C takes a meeting with actor A – what A says to C is not same
as said to B
 You cannot trace the meaning if you do not understand the dynamic
assemblage happening (TAMARA-LAND)
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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Quantum
Storytelling
TAMARA-LAND POINT
You cannot understand the very different meanings of simultaneous
conversations in different rooms, if you have not been a part of the
different assemblages.
10:45 to 11:45 is Act One
10:55-11:15 is Act Two
The acts make up a scene, that are part of other scenes.
In a bad play, the props are not appropriate
Organization change, is a change in assemblages, and the props and
actors, the acts and scenes matter
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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TYPE 1:
Representationalist
Materialist Rhetoric
(Russian Formalism |
Structuralism |
Linguistics
TYPE 6: Bakhtinian
Dialogical Materialist
Rhetoric
TYPE 7: Liquid
Quantum
Materialist
Rhetoric
TYPE 5: Postmodern
Althusserian Aleatory
Materialist Rhetoric
TYPE 2: Marxist
Historical Materialist
Rhetoric
TYPE 3: Foucauldian
Postmodernist
Fragmented
Materialist Rhetoric
TYPE 4: Barad/Strand
Constitutive
Materialist Rhetroic
(Bohr)
Presented By: David M. Boje, Ph.D.
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