“Intra-actions” (Interview of Karen Barad by Adam Kleinman) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Introduction: The Possibilities of Feminist Quantum Thinking (2016)
In this extended introduction to the journal special issue guest co-editors, Sellberg and Hinton, situate its contributions by way of the different and resonant strands of new materialist cultural inquiry and their uptake with critical elements of Karen Barad’s agential realism within the framework of how a diffractive methodology performs as response-able critical practice, underscoring how this provocative ethics of engagement animates the encounters with Barad’s work delivered herein. http://www.rhizomes.net/issue30/intro.html
Quantum Possibilities: The Work of Karen Barad
1] In the past decade, Karen Barad's oeuvre, especially the voluminous Meeting the Universe Halfway , has attracted increasingly great attention in feminist philosophy, cultural studies and feminist science studies.
Barad, Bohr, and quantum mechanics
Synthese
The last decade has seen an increasing number of references to quantum mechanics in the humanities and social sciences. This development has in particular been driven by Karen Barad’s agential realism: a theoretical framework that, based on Niels Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, aims to inform social theorizing. In dealing with notions such as agency, power, and embodiment as well as the relation between the material and the discursive level, the influence of agential realism in fields such as feminist science studies and posthumanism has been profound. However, no one has hitherto paused to assess agential realism’s proclaimed quantum mechanical origin including its relation to the writings of Niels Bohr. This is the task taken up here. We find that many of the implications that agential realism allegedly derives from a Bohrian interpretation of quantum mechanics dissent from Bohr’s own views and are in conflict with those of other interpretations of quantum mechanics. A...
Introduction: The Possibilities of Feminist Quantum Thinking
Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 2016
In the past decade, Karen Barad's oeuvre, especially the voluminous Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007), has attracted increasingly great attention in feminist philosophy, cultural studies and feminist science studies. Alongside scholars like Elizabeth Wilson and Vicki Kirby (see Kirby and Wilson), she has spearheaded the recent feminist exploration of complex scientific issues, and presented new less categorical ways of thinking ontology and epistemology (or indeed onto-epistemology as she refers to it) as a result. Many of the terms introduced and developed by Barad, such as 'intra-action', 'diffraction' and 'agential realism' have shifted the standard metrics of knowledge production and her theories have inspired animated discussion in emerging critical strands as varied as the new materialism in feminism, object oriented ontology, post-and transhumanism, speculative realism, environmental and digital humanities, among others. In a critical climate that is becoming increasingly 'Baradian', this special issue on the 'Quantum Possibilities' of Barad's work does not merely aim to reflect the engagements currently being made within these fields, but extends Barad's ethos of continually rethinking our critical concepts and methodologies "without taking these distinctions to be foundational or holding them in place" (Barad, "Nature's Queer Performativity" 124). Creating 'diffractive', or new 'quantum level' means of reflecting on, and engaging with Barad's work, the essays collected here stake out a new set of directions for their wide array of disciplinary identities. [2] Speaking of 'quantum' possibilities and engagement in a humanities or social science context is, of course, not uncomplicated. In recent years, the term has become somewhat clichéd, appearing in references to social policy and international relations, as well as in discussions of science fiction and popular culture. Few of these allusions to a 'quantum' state of affairs have much in common with the actual theories behind quantum mechanics in physics. The term has acquired a life of its own, often denoting something unarguably exciting, but rationally incomprehensible. As James Der Derian puts it: " [a]ll things quantum come with caveats. Like 'atomic', the word 'quantum' has acquired a mystique attended as much by buzz as by comprehension" ('Project Q'). Der Derian wants to dispel all such mythical qualities, and engage with quantum mechanics in a more theoretically informed manner. He organises annual symposia and in-depth communication between social scientists and quantum physicists through his well-funded Project Q. Instead of producing 'mystique', he does, however, give rise to idolatry. There is an extent to which quantum reality is presented as a model or form for the social sciences to follow; "an incentive to go to the edge and beyond our disciplinary siloes" (Der Derian, 'Project Q'). [1]
The Possibilities of Feminist Quantum Thinking
1] In the past decade, Karen Barad's oeuvre, especially the voluminous Meeting the Universe Halfway , has attracted increasingly great attention in feminist philosophy, cultural studies and feminist science studies.
Entanglements of matter and meaning: The importance of the philosophy of Karen Barad for environmental education, 2020
The rich and innovative ideas of quantum physicist and feminist theorist Karen Barad have much to offer environmental educators in terms of practical theories for teaching and learning. This article shares insights gained from a facilitated conversation at the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE) Conference Research Symposium, and offers an introduction to Barad's theories for environmental educators. At this time of challenging planetary imperatives, environmental education is increasingly called upon to contribute to students' understanding of connectedness, and Barad's theory of agential realism provides a way to think about, articulate and engage with connectedness as inherent within the world rather than something we need to create. By considering entanglement as a fundamental state, we understand that separateness is not the original state of being. This shift in perspective supports a subtle yet powerful approach to knowledge , communication and collaboration, understanding difference as integral within the world's entangled becoming. The convened conversation sought to explore Barad's thinking by defining and discussing the concepts of agential realism, intra-action, material-discursivity, phenomena and diffraction. Barad's ideas were used to collectively explore what it means to be intraconnected and entangled in today's world, and specifically how these concepts and experiences relate to our work and lives as environmental educators and researchers. As environmental educators and researchers, it is clear that our work is urgent and compelling. We know why we continue to question, reframe, teach, guide and act: our very lives and the existence of our earth ecosystems depend on this work. However, how to do it is much more complex. 'Creating Capacity for Change' was the theme of the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE) Conference and Research Symposium, which gave us an opportunity to explore the how through the work of quantum physicist and feminist theorist Karen Barad, who states, 'We are not outside observers of the world. Neither are we simply located at particular places in the world; rather, we are part of the world in its ongoing intra-activity' (Barad, 2007, p. 184). Intra-action expresses interior relationality that is always already occurring, in contrast to interaction, which describes the relationship between separate entities. In pursuit of the how, and while becoming more and more entangled in these ideas through our various strands of research, work and life, we offered to convene a conversation at the AAEE Conference Research Symposium. Our goal was to expand the conversations of our Barad study group through a collective exploration of Barad's understanding that we are 'part of the world' (Barad, 2007, p. 184), as expressed through the theory of agential realism and how it has the
Quantum Physics and/as Philosophy: Immanence, Diffraction, and the Ethics of Mattering
Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge (Quantum Possibilities: The Work of Karen Barad), 2016
Karen Barad's work distinguishes itself as a diffraction pattern of quantum physics, feminist/queer thought and/as philosophy. In order to gauge the ethico-onto-epistemological impact that the shift toward 'quantum' has on theorizations of what we call 'world' and 'Being'—those 'big' philosophical questions—it helps to relate her thought to other philosophical endeavors that also work on this foundational level. In this contribution I propose to read Barad's quantum ontology alongside Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's urgent quest of immanence. It is this concern for immanence, according to their final collaboration What is Philosophy?, which still has to be seen as "the burning issue of all philosophy".