Superpositionality

Superpositionality is a theory of identity originating in critical race theory for understanding how identities can exist in multiple places simultaneously before being collapsed by an observer.^[1][2] Identities that are superpositional are located at two different locations concurrently, such as the racial identity of being white and Black, or the gender identity of being a man and a woman. The goal of the theory is to explain certain identities, such as being nonbinary, gender fluid, MENA, Jewish, Romani, Bisexual, and mixed-race, that cannot be adequately explained by mainstream identity politics. Superpositionality combines identity politics with the metamodernist both/and approach to social theory.

The name of the theory refers to quantum mechanics, in which something can exist in two locations simultaneously until it is collapsed into a single point by the act of measurement.

Schrödinger’s minority

Superpositionality describes superpositional identities as Schrödinger's minority^[3][4] in reference to Schrödinger's cat, which is a theoretical situation where an unobserved cat in a box is both dead and alive. Like the cat, certain social identities are in two states at once as long as there is no external observation.

Denotation, friction, and collapse

When someone holds a superpositional identity, such as being nonbinary or Jewish, that internal identity is denotation. When a nonbinary person is labeled as a man, or a Jewish person is labeled white, they experience a friction between the imposed label and their own social experience.^[5] The act of an observer measuring the superpositional identity causes it to collapse into a unitary label.

Applications

Race

Asian American, MENA, Jewish, Sápmi, Romani, and mixed-race people experience some form of superpositionality by facing factors such as legal whiteness, social whiteness, racism, and subordination.^[1] Instead of referring to Sápmi people, for example, as either white or people of color, superpositionality describes them as both simultaneously.^[6] Mixed-race individuals may hold a superpositional identity, or one that is composed of multiple labels at once, with hypodescent and hyperdescent implicating the collapse differently. For hypodescent, mixed-race people are reduced to the unitary label of their subordinate side, and for hyperdescent, the opposite is true.

Many Jewish scholars and rabbis articulate Jewish identity as not easily reduced into mainstream understandings of Western “race.”^[7] Superpositionality sees the question of racial identity not as one of either whiteness or non-whiteness, but both simultaneously. Jewish scholars sometimes refer to themselves as Schrödinger's minority.^[8] MENA and Asian American people also refer to themselves as Schrödinger's minority, arguing that they are in multiple locations at once.^[3] MENA people have a hard time fitting into one racial box, and Asian Americans experience a tension between being the mythical model minority and facing issues such as poverty and the bamboo ceiling.^[4]

Gender

Nonbinary individuals who are both man and woman are superpositional, and the external application of one gender label, such as man, causes friction and collapses that identity.^[9] Gender performativity describes how gender identity is learned through socialization, and superpositionality sees the identity that one acquires as potentially compound, which then remains vulnerable to friction and collapse. Gender fluid people also face collapse in this sense.

Sexuality

Bisexuality and pansexuality are superpositional, and the measurement of a bisexual person's identity as either straight or gay collapses it.^[9] Bisexual and pansexual people experiencing superpositional friction, especially in the case of biphobia, undergo feelings of tension and invisibility.

See also

• Critical race theory
• Gender theory
• Identity politics
• Intersectionality
• Quantum superposition