ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights Audre Lorde's insistence on a notion of agency that is always partial and relational, and that thrives on interdependency. In addition, Lorde connects the question of relating across differences to 'our' entanglement and responsibility with what she calls 'the future of our earth'. The chapter introduces two current perspectives on thinking relating-in-difference that connect well with the 'degrees of freedom'. It focuses on Lorde's texts: Donna J. Haraway's notion of nonmimetic sharing and Karen Barad's ideas on touching and responsibility in quantum entanglements. In Donna Haraway's When Species Meet she writes about the relation between laboratory animals and the human laboratory workers and caretakers in 'Sharing Suffering: Instrumental Relations between Laboratory Animals and Their People'. The moments in Barad's theorizing most directly related to, and interesting for, Lorde's question of relating across/in differences, and where she seems to be very 'in touch' with what Haraway describes as nonmimetic sharing of suffering.
