tentacular thinking

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Tentacular thinking is RB3’s Haraway-derived attention to partial, situated connections and trajectories rather than a fantasy of total connectivity. Things appear as provisional knots in continuing entanglements, not isolated units linked only afterward. The proposal preserves selective material relations without implying that everything directly connects to everything, distinctions disappear or connection by itself establishes ethical goodness.

Explanation

The source explicitly uses Haraway’s constraint against total connectivity and links tentacularity with life along lines. The entry preserves that lineage and its emphasis on partial relations, rather than converting the image into a complete network topology, a universal physical equation or an empirical assertion that every possible pathway actually exists.

The adjoining discussion of Ingold’s meshwork gives another attributed comparison: lines and movements form knots rather than ready-made points merely acquiring connections. These are related images with distinct antecedents. The proposal does not merge them into a single thinker’s terminology or infer that local stabilized organizations therefore lack reality.

RB1 separately limits cross-domain equivalence to bridges that respect heterogeneous practices and each domain’s power to constrain interpretation. This comparison preserves answerability when relational images travel. It prevents a successful image in one setting from automatically determining another domain’s mechanism or granting its users unrestricted interpretive authority.

Scope and attribution

Partial situated linkages differ from total connectivity, erased local organization or one image’s authority over every domain.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

The developed account belongs to RB3 in the cited local scope, with antecedents and qualifications retained.

Occurrence locators: 340.

Background used in the editorial explanation

RB3 p.341 develops Ingold’s meshwork, retained as a separately attributed comparison rather than a Haraway tentacular-thinking occurrence.