Entangled observers? A quantum perspective on authority in critical security studies

ABSTRACT The conventional author-driven summary of the Stern–Gerlach experiment omits the fact that their famous measurements only appeared when the smoke of a poor graduate student’s cheap cigar produced a reaction with the silver atoms. Indeed, this crucial experiment in the history of quantum physics would have been impossible if not for the fortuitous intersection of behavioural norms for white male elite – cigar smoking at the laboratory bench – and the material conditions of the junior scientist – a socioeconomic status that left him unable to afford higher-quality cigars. While the simplistic narrative of authorship may conveniently reduce this experiment to Stern and Gerlach, a quantum reading of this quantum experiment reveals the ontological entanglement of identity, materiality, social norms and the experimental apparatus itself with the authors – and, just with other entangled phenomena, our apparently simple description is woefully incomplete without acknowledging its entangled reality. Intervening into a decades-long debate on the nature of authorship, observation and rigour in critical security studies, I argue that the quantum model of ontologically entangled observation offers a powerful model for problematising authority in critical security studies .