Harmonics: Frequencies of Inheritance from Scotland to Aotearoa, New Zealand

Abstract

I am a first-generation immigrant from Scotland who moved to Aotearoa, New Zealand as a young child. Using the metaphor of ‘harmonics’, which comes from playing the cello, I consider the ‘frequencies’ I have inherited through two women in my ancestral  lineage. This work is grounded by theories of non-linear time, such as ‘quantum entanglements’ and ‘hauntings’, primarily through the work of Karen Barad. My writing theorises an approach to tracing family histories using these ideas from quantum physics alongside ‘harmonics’ as an analytical tool. This method explores how frequencies of inheritance can be tracked through generations and what this might mean for immigrants who do not live in their ancestral lands. In my writing, I recall stories and memories, pad them with historical literature about what was occurring societally at the time, and analyse them through embodied and place-based theories. Towards the end, I finish by elucidating how the ‘harmonics’ of these stories ‘sound’ through me, in poetry. Our ‘I’ is a story of entanglements; our ancestors are the metaphysical and genealogical dust in which we are coated.