Entangled

Context

In complex networks—particularly those involving people, power, and relationships—the idea of observer and observed, actor and environment, quickly breaks down. The longer we engage, the more evident it becomes that we are not outside the network. We are of it.

Problem

When we operate from a position of separation—treating the network as an external object—we risk:

Creating interventions that are disconnected from lived dynamics.
Ignoring how our presence, assumptions, and methods shape the very behaviors we observe.
Maintaining illusions of control or neutrality that limit systemic insight.
Failing to see how our own identities, histories, and roles entangle with outcomes.
Reinforcing boundaries between “us” and “them,” designer and designed, which the network does not recognize.

This false distance reduces networks to techniques, and blocks the kind of deep participation required for transformation.

Forces

Traditional approaches reward objectivity, expertise, and detachment.
Reflexivity requires vulnerability and humility—traits not always valued or easy to embody.
Entanglement complicates agency: we are never fully in control, nor entirely passive.
It is easier to analyze a network than to acknowledge how we are part of it.

Solution

Therefore, acknowledge your entanglement. Recognize that you are not external to the network, but co-emerging with it. Practice reflexivity, humility, and responsibility for the dynamics you participate in and shape.

This includes:

Asking reflexive questions like: How am I shaping what I’m trying to understand? and What is this network revealing about me?
Letting go of the idea of neutral observation or detached action.
Embracing Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action—where parts of a system co-constitute one another, rather than act independently.
Understanding agency as emergent and relational, not individually held.
Allowing yourself to be changed by the work—ethically, emotionally, materially.
Centering responsibility, not for fixing the network, but for being accountable to the relational becoming you are part of.

Entanglement is not a limitation. It’s the deep ground from which meaningful, ethical networks grow.

Resulting Context

Practitioners develop deep self-awareness alongside systemic insight.
Networks become ethically rooted, not just technically competent.
Interventions become more responsive, relational, and grounded in lived realities.
Trust, responsibility, and co-creation emerge through shared becoming.
The boundary between “network” and “self” dissolves—replaced by a web of mutual shaping.