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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, using Barad´s notion of "diffraction" (2007), I will explore how a long-standing amateur radio relationship, between a radioaficcionado in Santiago, Chile and a station in the Chilean south called "Friendship", became a cornerstone for the Chilean ufology movement and its detractors.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will explore how a long-standing amateur radio relationship, between a radioaficcionado in Santiago, Chile and a station in the Chilean south called "Friendship", became a cornerstone for the Chilean ufology movement and its detractors. One of the ways I will be understanding the "Friendship effect" is by attending to a "performative understanding of technoscientific" (Barad, 2007: 90) practices, especially ones related to the radio and to auditory sensations. I will be exploring Barad´s notion of "diffraction" whereby "subject and object do not preexist as such, but emerge through intra-actions" (2007: 89). We could think of this diffraction, or interference, of radio signals and messages in non-representational ways; ways that do not assume the "object" out there, but reconstruct it, phenomenally, auditively, in the continual moment of occurrence and also in the after-fact, and importantly, collectively. Media images, newspaper coverage, and social media all contribute to these diffractions and to the construction of the "object" in question (in this case the "aliens" assumed to be living in Chiloé, and a strange craft in the sky that made its appearance in Santiago in 1985). I argue that in this case, media and technologies intermingle with the sensory and affective dispositions of users, creating certain atmospheres across ontological thresholds; more importantly, they exhibit a vitality that overruns their material properties and enmeshes with the ontological specifics of the lives of their users, participating directly in the generation of a so-called "reality".