Agential realism
| Karen Barad | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Karen Michelle Barad 29 April 1956 |
| Alma mater | Stony Brook University |
| Notable work | Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Feminism |
| Institutions | University of California, Santa Cruz |
|
Main interests
|
Theoretical physics, feminist theory |
Karen Michelle Barad (born 29 April 1956), is an American feminist theorist, known particularly for her theory of agential realism. She is currently Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Her research topics include feminist theory, physics, twentieth-century continental philosophy, epistemology, ontology, philosophy of physics, cultural studies of science, and feminist science studies.
Barad earned her doctorate in theoretical physics at Stony Brook University. Her dissertation presented computational methods for quantifying properties of quarks, and other fermions, and in the framework of lattice gauge theory.
According to Barad's theory of agential realism, the universe comprises phenomena, which are "the ontological inseparability of intra-acting agencies". Intra-action, a neologism introduced by Barad, signals an important challenge to individualist metaphysics. For Barad, phenomena or objects do not precede their interaction, rather, 'objects' emerge through particular intra-actions. Thus, apparatuses, which produce phenomena, are not assemblages of humans and nonhumans (as in actor-network theory). Rather, they are the condition of possibility of 'humans' and 'non-humans', not merely as ideational concepts, but in their materiality. Apparatuses are 'material-discursive' in that they produce determinate meanings and material beings while simultaneously excluding the production of others. What it means to matter is therefore always material-discursive. Barad takes her inspiration from physicist Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum physics. Barad's agential realism is at once an epistemology (theory of knowing), an ontology (theory of being), and an ethics. For this, Barad employs the term onto-epistemology. Because specific practices of mattering have ethical consequences, excluding other kinds of mattering, onto-epistemological practices are always in turn onto-ethico-epistemological.
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