The philosophy of immanence of Deleuze and Guattari and Barad’s new materialism temporarily gather in a togethering play. Thinking with the concepts and diffracting, I believe that life is material and discursive, social and natural at the same time, as therefore is career learning. There are no “foundational texts” (Murris and Bozalek, 2019a), which would presuppose hierarchical arborescent order, therefore philosophical works, interviews with the students and career development theoryandpractice are read through one another, which can be referred to as diffraction (Barad, 2014). Though this article focuses on human activity, it is an attempt to shift the attention to the process of career learning, constant becoming, connections and intra-action, to the rhizomatic nature of career learning, entanglements with human and non-human entities. Affected by post-structuralist and the new materialist concepts I find myself in a creative journey of thinking differently, driven by desire and curiosity. Could life be the rhizome, a network of connections without hierarchy, without centre? Then, can career learning be a plateau that constitutes and continues the life-rhizome? Also, I engage in thinking with Barad’s relational ontology, concepts of entanglement and intra-action. The reading is an encounter with what MacLure (2017) calls data’s “bad behaviour” – any pre-thought suppositions blur, forcing emergent thought through intra-action. I become allured by the “glow” (MacLure, 2017).

The idea of pre-given tools, pure methods and prescribed stages is incommensurable with post-qualitative research. Instead, it is viewed as experimentation (Murris and Bozalek, 2019b), engagement in a creative process (St. Pierre, 2021), wonderings (Sheehan, 2022) “reimagining what a method may do” (St. Pierre, 2016), where “we know the world because we are of the world” (Barad, 2007). Diffractive analysis aims at new different knowledge creation (Mazzei, 2014), generating fresh insights as well as rich speculations (Fox and Alldred, 2023); rearranging, playing, disturbing, generating new  questions (Murris and Zhao, 2022) instead of describing, categorizing the world. Therefore, the purpose is to produce different knowledge about students’ career learning through diffractive analysis and thinking with theory. This includes questioning, rearranging and perturbation of traditional thinking about career learning through reading texts together with and through one another. These are the questions that drive the work in different directions:

➢ How do post-structuralist and new materialist concepts work for career learning?

➢ What difference may be produced through diffraction?

Along with the questions that move thinking in different directions, I cut-in with doubts/emerging questions/encounters in the process and re-turn to them later on.

Inspired by the concepts of Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari in partnership works as well as Barad’s new materialism, I engage in non-representational diffractive analysis of career learning of university students, a multilogue of interviews which serve as “data”, thinking with philosophical concepts of rhizome, desire, becoming, assemblage (Deleuze amd Guattari, 2013) and entanglement, intra-action (Barad, 2007), career theoryandpractice and my own experience through reading, where new ideas and meanings are diffracted. Here, I do not “interrogate” data (MacLure, 2017), but focus on connections, entanglements. I diffract and map differences rather than reflect and interpret (Barad, 2007). Diffraction in physics defines the coming of waves together and overlapping when they encounter an obstruction and how they bend and spread (Barad, 2007). Diffraction is contrasted (but by no means denied) to reflection as diffraction works in a different way: it goes beyond mirroring and producing of the same, but rather seeks to capture differences and their effects (Bozalek and Zembylas, 2017). Diffractive analysis is concerned with phenomena - “material-discursive intra-active enactments” where matter and meaning co-constitute one another (Lenz Taguchi and Palmer, 2013). To engage in the process of producing difference rather than reflection (Barad, 2007), theory and practice are not separated and material is paramount in the new empiricism (St Pierre, 2016). Diffractive analysis is not based on theory/practice, subject/object and similar dichotomy, it brings together ontology and epistemology (Barad, 2007). This is where different ideas as well as data and experiences encounter, interplay and intra-act.

The analysis is a non-linear, inconsistent rhizome or a maze of intensities and lines, a neurotic net of connections. It is not easy to skim or extract the essence and summarize. Still, in order for the author to respect the reader and to give a short summary, several insights are drawn. I refer to them as illuminations (the highlight is used intentionally), that emerged through reading the texts together, through the entanglement and intra-acting with them: 1. Career learning as life. 2. Desire as productive force in career learning. 3. Encounters and chance events as career learning moments. 4. Career learning as an entanglement and intra-action with human and non-human. 5. Grand narratives of career learning – how they are created and ingested.

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