Very pleased to share my latest article in @EuroJournIR "Enfolding wholes in parts: quantum holography and international relations" - Chengxin Pan, 2020 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1354066120938844#articleShareContainer @POLIS_Deakin @DeakinArtsEd

The paper is part of the EJIR Special Issue on 'Interdisciplinarity and the IR Innovation Horizon' to celebrate its 25th Anniversary. Many thanks to the Editors, Reviewers, my discussant @daveckang and workshop participants for their invaluable and constructive feedback and help.

The paper engages with both the relationalism scholarship and the emerging quantum literature in IR, which have largely neglected each other. Addressing this gap, the paper reflects on how relational ontology can benefit from quantum holography. Thus far, the relationalism

literature has usefully highlighted the centrality of relations in IR, but its conceptualisation of relations/relationality could still be enriched by a quantum holographic understanding of relations between whole and parts. Like in a hologram, parts

not only make up of the whole, but contain the whole in them. As Rūmī says, 'You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop.' By drawing mainly on theoretical physicist David Bohm's ideas about wholeness and the implicate order, the paper introduces concepts

such as whole/part duality, external relations, international/implicate/holographic relations, enfolding, and unfolding to IR. Since each part is a holographic reflection (though always dynamic and partial) of the whole, thus part is both a part and a whole, and this duality is

akin to the wave-particle duality of light. The enfolding of the whole into parts has important implications for our understanding of relations. Relations have traditionally been understood as secondary and derivative phenomena between prior things. Such relations do exist, but

they are external relations, not what relations are all about. Thanks to quantum holography and the whole-part duality, a part is always already an embodiment of the whole and its relations. The enfoldment of the whole in parts suggests fundamental implicate relations,

which exist even without apparent external ties. For example, even the most isolated country in the world, being a particular enfoldment of the whole world, is already holographically connected with the world, just as a lone seed on the ground, though seemingly disconnected,

already contains information of the whole plant a priori, and through the plant, contains relations with its 'environment'. Such largely invisible relations, often overlooked, taken for granted, and understudied, can be better understood through quantum holography and its various

conceptual tools. Some of those taken-for-granted connections (travel, global supply chains, connections between humans and nature) have been laid bare by the current pandemic, & the spread of COVID-19 also helps illustrate the almost irresistible enfolding of the whole in parts.

In a sense, quantum holography helps resolve the 'chicken-egg' question of which comes first, things or relations, by assuming relation-thing duality via whole-part duality. They simultaneously exist: a thing is already an irreducible set of relations, often holographic in

nature. Quantum holography emphasises wholeness and wholeness in parts in a way different from conventional holism, which sees whole as greater than the sum of its parts, while assuming parts to be just discrete parts. Whole-part duality allows us to see whole in parts. What does

quantum holography mean for understanding international relations, the state & its survival, national identity, 'foreign' relations & 'foreign' policy, the environment, the micro issues & players, ethics, &responsibility? I have tried to engage with some of these questions in the

the paper proper. So far this is largely a thought experiment, and no doubt will raise more questions than answers. I am grateful to the 3 reviewers for their open-mindedness and encouragement as well as the EJIR editors, who are committed to fostering interdisciplinary

innovation (the theme of the EJIR Special Issue). I welcome all critical feedback & comments. Thank you for reading this thread, and hopefully, reading the paper if some of the new concepts and ideas happen to resonate with you, who, like me, may well be parts of the same whole.