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Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning
Meeting the Universe Halfway is an ambitious book with far-reaching implications for numerous fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In this volume, Karen Barad, theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, elaborates her theory of agential realism. Offering an account of the world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social realms, agential realism is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics. The starting point for Barad’s analysis is the philosophical framework of quantum physicist Niels Bohr. Barad extends and partially revises Bohr’s philosophical views in light of current scholarship in physics, science studies, and the philosophy of science as well as feminist, poststructuralist, and other critical social theories. In the process, she significantly reworks understandings of space, time, matter, causality, agency, subjectivity, and objectivity. In an agential realist account, the world is made of entanglements of “social” and “natural” agencies, where the distinction between the two emerges out of specific intra-actions. Intra-activity is an inexhaustible dynamism that configures and reconfigures relations of space-time-matter. In explaining intra-activity, Barad reveals questions about how nature and culture interact and change over time to be fundamentally misguided. And she reframes understanding of the nature of scientific and political practices and their “interrelationship.” Thus she pays particular attention to the responsible practice of science, and she emphasizes changes in the understanding of political practices, critically reworking Judith Butler’s influential theory of performativity. Finally, Barad uses agential realism to produce a new interpretation of quantum physics, demonstrating that agential realism is more than a means of reflecting on science; it can be used to actually do science.
524 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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6477 people want to read
About the author
Karen Barad
19 books145 followersKaren Michelle Barad (born 29 April 1956), is an American feminist theorist, known particularly for their theory of Agential Realism. They are currently Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They are the author of Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Their 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 their doctorate in theoretical physics at Stony Brook University. Their dissertation presented computational methods for quantifying properties of quarks, and other fermions, and in the framework of lattice gauge theory.
(from Wikipedia)
Barad earned their doctorate in theoretical physics at Stony Brook University. Their dissertation presented computational methods for quantifying properties of quarks, and other fermions, and in the framework of lattice gauge theory.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews
September 20, 2015
3.5 stars. I really wanted to love this book, as someone with a background and aspiration in physics, philosophy, and moral cosmologies. But it did not quite live up to my expectations. Barad gets points (enough to bump her up .5 from 3 stars) for engaging seriously and passionately with quantum physics, ethics, and philosophy in (close to) equal measure, in particular with her premise of the fascinating Heisenberg/Bohr correspondence and much later in the book with her 100-odd page chapter (chp 7) on various classic quantum physics experiments, tested and theorized, reframing them to prove her ideas about entanglement and agential realism. We need more scholarship like this, or at least in this vein, which does not shy away from breaking disciplinary boundaries. Her arguments about entanglement ("we are all connected," though a bit more complex than that) is not wholly original, but her attempts to demonstrate its truth through thorough, step-by-step analyses of classic physics experiments does feel new and laudable. Similarly, I found her extension from Bohr's notion of "phenomena," of intra-actions being the ontological reality, rather than there existing some pre-existing reality, thought-provoking and nuanced. Her methodological approach to "diffraction" (rather than reflection) was also appreciated (as was her intellectually entertaining and lengthy Acknowledgements section). There's also a fascinating, 2 or 3-page section toward the end of the book about the wholeness of the universe that was a highlight of the book.
That said, while at first I dove into this as a fascinating and dense work that would reveal its intricate parts as the pages flew by -- I was really enjoying it for the first 100-150 pages -- it eventually began to feel more and more diffuse. Or perhaps vacuous. Barad explicitly states that diffraction is the nature of her methodological approach, but, while some scholars do a wonderful job of writing similarly with many nuances, puzzles, and intellectual meanderings along the way (I think of Talal Asad or Gil Anidjar), it is very hard for me to appreciate Barad on that level. She repeats herself frequently to the point where her agential realist vocabulary, which once felt new and promising and exciting, begins to feel tiresome and empty, words only, jargon. She keeps pushing important questions to later chapters - especially chapter 7, whose detail (and lack of repetition) I regard as one of the most worthwhile pieces of the book - and while there is payoff (sometimes), it is increasingly frustrating as a reader as the pages drag on. If it is diffractive methodology, it's across the infinite and headache-inspiring space between parallel mirrors, the stuff of Borges, perhaps, but not this.
More deeply, I took great issue with her attempt to 1) "prove" an ontology, and, as well, to then, 2) based on this ontology, "prove" an ethics. To address each:
1) Drawing from Bohr, Barad argues that reality is the stuff of intra-actions, meetings between mutually constituting bodies in a non-causal world, rather than some external, preexisting thing to be observed, represented, or cleanly reflected. The argument is interesting and her use of quantum physics to try to prove it more so, but the question lingers: How does one prove an ontology? Her argument assumes prima facie that ontology, epistemology, and semantics are entangled, constituting one another... Which leaves this lingering question uncomfortably evaded. On the other hand, if it is true that there is no preexisting reality, then how can we definitively prove such a thing when such reality is, in its prima facie assumptions, at best only partially accessible to empirical methods of evidence because of the separateness/preexistence that defines it? Thus is the unresolvable dilemma of ontology (at least for a logician...Al-Ghazali would refer to "dhawq," fruitional experience, as a realm of knowledge above rationality). Barad's description of agential realism is interesting but, like those it argues against, it remains an idea. True, she contends that ideas are ultimately "marks on bodies," -- but I would say that that description in itself is also an idea; how would we even know what these marks were if we are all entangled?...I understand her desire to complicate the picture, but here I feel that we reach the problem of being left "without definition," so to speak, and while I don't appreciate critiques that dismiss arguments as "not useful" or "not provable," I think in this case the character and force of Barad's argument itself becomes weak and unnecessarily ambiguous. It fails to recognize that, in an important sense beyond the academic jibber jabber of empirical/nonempirical intellectual persuasions, everything is epistemic. She might view this as too humancentric a perspective...but, by definition, aren't all perspectives we know humancentric because we, as humans, are the perceivers? Even if we recognize nonhuman entities as shaping our "humaness", that recognition is, perhaps, a human one. If there is a way out of this problem, I'm not sure an appeal to science and evidence, as Barad does in chapter 7 especially, is effective (again, see Al-Ghazali); in fact, this use of evidence seems to contradict her other challenges to empiricism in the first place.
2) If we even assume that Barad's agential realist ontology is correct, how does this lead to an idea of ethics, to being morally responsible to everything, to the world which consitutes "us" and vice versa, in her ontology? We can outline it thus: A[ontology of agential realism/entanglement/intra-actions] --thus--> B[every thing, small or big, alive or dead, sentient or not, creates the world; crudely, "we are all connected"] --thus--> C[We are each ethically responsible to what happens in the world]. My issue is the significant logical jump between B and C. Just because we are all connected, and therefore contribute to effects and causes creating, say, an economic disaster on the other side of the world, does not mean we have a moral or ethical responsibility to that phenomenon. Perhaps we can say, "Screw them!" (Accepting Barad's ontology, this might be more properly stated: "Screw us/me!") Why not, right, if we don't have an explicitly described logical connection between B and C. Barad eventually addresses this point within a 3 or 4 page section toward the very end of her book, arguing that entanglement *is* ethical responsibility, that ethical responsibility is implied by the very existence of our intra-actions. She's resolving one of the great classic philosophical debates, the Is/Ought question, by saying is=ought. I happen to agree with her conclusion. But her methods are not particularly convincing nor deeply interrogated, and I felt shortchanged. To me this is a central part of her work -- its implications for ethics -- but its most important logical leap comes far too late and far too briefly. It's a missing link tied with loose string.
Overall, it is easy to dismiss Barad as spewing academic gibberish, especially for a physicist. And it is easy for someone in softer sciences to get lost in her detailed physics. But I think such dismissals would do an injustice to the creativity and passion of her efforts, and to such audiences' own specialized fields. It is worth taking Barad seriously. Despite my frustrations and disagreements, I think the length of this review indicates how much it stimulated me intellectually, which should count for something.
That said, while at first I dove into this as a fascinating and dense work that would reveal its intricate parts as the pages flew by -- I was really enjoying it for the first 100-150 pages -- it eventually began to feel more and more diffuse. Or perhaps vacuous. Barad explicitly states that diffraction is the nature of her methodological approach, but, while some scholars do a wonderful job of writing similarly with many nuances, puzzles, and intellectual meanderings along the way (I think of Talal Asad or Gil Anidjar), it is very hard for me to appreciate Barad on that level. She repeats herself frequently to the point where her agential realist vocabulary, which once felt new and promising and exciting, begins to feel tiresome and empty, words only, jargon. She keeps pushing important questions to later chapters - especially chapter 7, whose detail (and lack of repetition) I regard as one of the most worthwhile pieces of the book - and while there is payoff (sometimes), it is increasingly frustrating as a reader as the pages drag on. If it is diffractive methodology, it's across the infinite and headache-inspiring space between parallel mirrors, the stuff of Borges, perhaps, but not this.
More deeply, I took great issue with her attempt to 1) "prove" an ontology, and, as well, to then, 2) based on this ontology, "prove" an ethics. To address each:
1) Drawing from Bohr, Barad argues that reality is the stuff of intra-actions, meetings between mutually constituting bodies in a non-causal world, rather than some external, preexisting thing to be observed, represented, or cleanly reflected. The argument is interesting and her use of quantum physics to try to prove it more so, but the question lingers: How does one prove an ontology? Her argument assumes prima facie that ontology, epistemology, and semantics are entangled, constituting one another... Which leaves this lingering question uncomfortably evaded. On the other hand, if it is true that there is no preexisting reality, then how can we definitively prove such a thing when such reality is, in its prima facie assumptions, at best only partially accessible to empirical methods of evidence because of the separateness/preexistence that defines it? Thus is the unresolvable dilemma of ontology (at least for a logician...Al-Ghazali would refer to "dhawq," fruitional experience, as a realm of knowledge above rationality). Barad's description of agential realism is interesting but, like those it argues against, it remains an idea. True, she contends that ideas are ultimately "marks on bodies," -- but I would say that that description in itself is also an idea; how would we even know what these marks were if we are all entangled?...I understand her desire to complicate the picture, but here I feel that we reach the problem of being left "without definition," so to speak, and while I don't appreciate critiques that dismiss arguments as "not useful" or "not provable," I think in this case the character and force of Barad's argument itself becomes weak and unnecessarily ambiguous. It fails to recognize that, in an important sense beyond the academic jibber jabber of empirical/nonempirical intellectual persuasions, everything is epistemic. She might view this as too humancentric a perspective...but, by definition, aren't all perspectives we know humancentric because we, as humans, are the perceivers? Even if we recognize nonhuman entities as shaping our "humaness", that recognition is, perhaps, a human one. If there is a way out of this problem, I'm not sure an appeal to science and evidence, as Barad does in chapter 7 especially, is effective (again, see Al-Ghazali); in fact, this use of evidence seems to contradict her other challenges to empiricism in the first place.
2) If we even assume that Barad's agential realist ontology is correct, how does this lead to an idea of ethics, to being morally responsible to everything, to the world which consitutes "us" and vice versa, in her ontology? We can outline it thus: A[ontology of agential realism/entanglement/intra-actions] --thus--> B[every thing, small or big, alive or dead, sentient or not, creates the world; crudely, "we are all connected"] --thus--> C[We are each ethically responsible to what happens in the world]. My issue is the significant logical jump between B and C. Just because we are all connected, and therefore contribute to effects and causes creating, say, an economic disaster on the other side of the world, does not mean we have a moral or ethical responsibility to that phenomenon. Perhaps we can say, "Screw them!" (Accepting Barad's ontology, this might be more properly stated: "Screw us/me!") Why not, right, if we don't have an explicitly described logical connection between B and C. Barad eventually addresses this point within a 3 or 4 page section toward the very end of her book, arguing that entanglement *is* ethical responsibility, that ethical responsibility is implied by the very existence of our intra-actions. She's resolving one of the great classic philosophical debates, the Is/Ought question, by saying is=ought. I happen to agree with her conclusion. But her methods are not particularly convincing nor deeply interrogated, and I felt shortchanged. To me this is a central part of her work -- its implications for ethics -- but its most important logical leap comes far too late and far too briefly. It's a missing link tied with loose string.
Overall, it is easy to dismiss Barad as spewing academic gibberish, especially for a physicist. And it is easy for someone in softer sciences to get lost in her detailed physics. But I think such dismissals would do an injustice to the creativity and passion of her efforts, and to such audiences' own specialized fields. It is worth taking Barad seriously. Despite my frustrations and disagreements, I think the length of this review indicates how much it stimulated me intellectually, which should count for something.
April 16, 2010
This is one of the greatest philosophical books I have ever read. Karen Barad draws on figures such as Judith Bulter, Donna Haraway, and Michel Foucault to investigate the ontological implications of the insights in quantum physics of Niels Bohr. She argues for a completely new way of looking at the world, which she calls "agential realism," where the relationship preexists and constitutes the relata. Subject and object (or rather, the "agencies of observation" and the "object of observation") are not independently existing individuals, but exists on in their "intra-action." Barad criticizes the metaphysics of individualism, which is responsible for problematic representationalist and humanist presuppositions, while reconceptualizing notions such as causality, agency, objectivity, and responsibility.
The most fascinating aspect of the book is its emphasis on ethics. Although "ethics" is mentioned only a few times in the whole book, a major goal of the book is to rework responsibility and obligation (which can no longer involve a relation to a radically exteriorized "other"). Her ontology makes ethics a pervasive aspect of life. Indeed, she characterizes her work as a form of ethico-onto-epistem-ology, claiming that the three cannot be disentangled.
This book deals extensively with difficult issues in quantum physics, especially on the difference and incompatibility between (and the ontological implications of) Bohr's complementarity and Heisenberg's uncertainty. The most interesting part for me, someone with little physics background, was the discussion of the quantum eraser experiment, which is truly mind-blowing.
The most fascinating aspect of the book is its emphasis on ethics. Although "ethics" is mentioned only a few times in the whole book, a major goal of the book is to rework responsibility and obligation (which can no longer involve a relation to a radically exteriorized "other"). Her ontology makes ethics a pervasive aspect of life. Indeed, she characterizes her work as a form of ethico-onto-epistem-ology, claiming that the three cannot be disentangled.
This book deals extensively with difficult issues in quantum physics, especially on the difference and incompatibility between (and the ontological implications of) Bohr's complementarity and Heisenberg's uncertainty. The most interesting part for me, someone with little physics background, was the discussion of the quantum eraser experiment, which is truly mind-blowing.
April 22, 2009
This was definitely one of the best books on my feminist theory reading list. Barad's attention to detail is convincing and her conclusions are compelling and fascinating. Plus, despite being about quantum physics, this is one of the clearest works of feminist theory I've read lately.
October 13, 2017
Philosophy. Science studies. Feminist theory. Race theory. Postcolonial theory. Post-Marxist theory. Poststructuralist theory. And Quantum mechanics. Ugh.
Probably the most gruelling book I have ever read on the topics. You'll need a tremendously tough mind and exceedingly tender heart to read it--and finish it.
Probably the most gruelling book I have ever read on the topics. You'll need a tremendously tough mind and exceedingly tender heart to read it--and finish it.
June 25, 2017
The quantum physics are not the reason making this a difficult read, it is solely due to the absence of coherent arguments with no development of her "exclusive" hypothesis revoling around Agential Realism.
She was able to get this literary entity past editorial staff - which deserves kudos...
However, this book merely comprises of fashionable concoctions of feminist jargon that miraculously crop up with her main buzzword Agential Realism so often and so iteratively as a deux ex machina - getting past a paragraph is painful, let alone the scientific relevance is questionable or maybe just non-existent.
I sincerely apologise to her fans, but as a scientist I couldn't let this early career trauma sit with me silently any longer.
She was able to get this literary entity past editorial staff - which deserves kudos...
However, this book merely comprises of fashionable concoctions of feminist jargon that miraculously crop up with her main buzzword Agential Realism so often and so iteratively as a deux ex machina - getting past a paragraph is painful, let alone the scientific relevance is questionable or maybe just non-existent.
I sincerely apologise to her fans, but as a scientist I couldn't let this early career trauma sit with me silently any longer.
July 12, 2023
alright i give up after 200 pages. i can deal with a lot of postmodern nonsense. i love a lot of postmodern nonsense! but "Meeting the Universe Halfway" was too much postmodern nonsense. first, i don't think the book is constructed very well. the author constantly repeats themself, reiterating points from a few pages ago, and sometimes seemingly lifting entire paragraphs from previous chapters. paradoxically, the author constantly delays their actual interesting conclusions. so many times in the first half the author builds up to some interesting point just to leave you with "but we'll see a further discussion of that in chapter 7" (actually it's always chapter 7, everything interesting is in chapter 7).
as an, if not connoisseur, at least enjoyer of postmodern nonsense, "Meeting the Universe Halfway" is painful. it makes the worst kind of postmodern ontological claims: nothing is itself, everything is everything else rolled together, there is no reality beyond "intra-active agential realist becomings through which matter comes to matter." i just can't take it man. barad's arguments keep circling around their theory of agential realism, but they never actually land, they never really take you to a useful place. every time you're about to get somewhere useful, the argument circles back to repeating the same essentially platitudes about itself. it's "agential realism" all the way down. i'm sorry, but sentences just read like random recombinations of any of these words: matter, mattering, agential realism, intra-activity, phenomena, cut, apparatus. entire chapters just feel like reassortments of these words with different verbs and syntax gluing them together. i get the appeal of high theory and all, but even the highest theory feels somewhat, somehow grounded in something.
i think i can get my frustration across best with an analogy. "Meeting the Universe Halfway" feels like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces fit nicely together, and you see how they lead into one another. but when you put the picture together, you have a hard time making it out, and after putting the picture together you're like wait, fuck, i was meant to be doing a crossword this whole time.
i'm so sorry to be a hater. barad seems like a genuinely great thinker and scientist. the descriptions of experiments are pretty brilliant in here. they are a wonderful science communicator. but if i'm meeting the book on it's philosophical terms, i just can't do it, man.
as an, if not connoisseur, at least enjoyer of postmodern nonsense, "Meeting the Universe Halfway" is painful. it makes the worst kind of postmodern ontological claims: nothing is itself, everything is everything else rolled together, there is no reality beyond "intra-active agential realist becomings through which matter comes to matter." i just can't take it man. barad's arguments keep circling around their theory of agential realism, but they never actually land, they never really take you to a useful place. every time you're about to get somewhere useful, the argument circles back to repeating the same essentially platitudes about itself. it's "agential realism" all the way down. i'm sorry, but sentences just read like random recombinations of any of these words: matter, mattering, agential realism, intra-activity, phenomena, cut, apparatus. entire chapters just feel like reassortments of these words with different verbs and syntax gluing them together. i get the appeal of high theory and all, but even the highest theory feels somewhat, somehow grounded in something.
i think i can get my frustration across best with an analogy. "Meeting the Universe Halfway" feels like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces fit nicely together, and you see how they lead into one another. but when you put the picture together, you have a hard time making it out, and after putting the picture together you're like wait, fuck, i was meant to be doing a crossword this whole time.
i'm so sorry to be a hater. barad seems like a genuinely great thinker and scientist. the descriptions of experiments are pretty brilliant in here. they are a wonderful science communicator. but if i'm meeting the book on it's philosophical terms, i just can't do it, man.
August 14, 2021
2021 Review
This is my second time reading this book. It continues to impress me.
Our experience of the world is always given to us through our senses and through technology and symbols. In an attempt to understand what we experience, we can draw any number of conclusions. Barad offers us a new way to grasp the agency relationship often assumed by traditional philosophers and scientists to be of a certain type. There are additional ways of looking at this critique, but really, Barad notes through the agential cut that differing amounts of "causation" can be attributed to the object, or subject or environment in question. When we consider the whole interaction as a whole what really counts are "intra-actions" that are not-causation links, but rather the resultant entanglement of all the agency relationships that have participated in the intra-action.
In this way, Barad always speaks from a position of immanence because it's not readily decidable where to place the boundaries. Should they lie closer to the object, or should they be a property determined as "given" from some idealized image of that object? In this way she notes a proto-intra-action within both Bohr's work on complementarism and Butler's work on performativity. Both understand that the result/sign is the product of the entire system, including the "apparatus of measurement"'s physicality and the framework which delivers the result. Neither is neutral, and so present a realism. If we accept the result as real, then we impose a realism on the result, one which assumes the agential cuts that are assumed to be actual, and thus, part of the background.
In part, this is the insight of postmodernism on modernism, that there is no such thing as neutral, and thus no metanarrative, or at least a pregiven agential arrangement.
This is still quite a brilliant book.
----
2014 Review
Barad presents an account of reality she calls agential realism. While intuitively we understand this in pop explanations as "point of view" she radicalizes this account by extending it into the formal fields of post-structural philosophy and quantum physics.
Taking the writings of the great physicist Neil Bohr, Barad dehumanizes his writing by removing what Meillasoux calls "Ptolomey's Revenge" in which the sciences (and philosophy) take the human account of things to be the end point of justification. In other words, we take our familiar human account as the basis for determining what is out there. This repetition of a human account out there forms the discursive struggle between wave-particle accounts in quantum mechanics. Barad is very quick to emphasize that discursive practice isn't a linguistic concept, a concept in words but rather material process that determines what is to be measured and how to measure it. In her words, the agential cut has to do with distinguishing between the material affects of the apparatus of measurement in creating phenomenon.
She doesn't take phenomenon to be as opposed to noumenon in the Kantian sense but opposed to objects in the subject-object distinction. While she puts scare quotes around "subject" and "object" distinction, these scare quotes are meant to present such terms in their generic specificity rather than their philosophical baggage. Objects don't exist out there. Rather than material construction determining how something exists directly, Barad's take is that discursive practice formulates an apparatus that entangles materiality to determine what exists "out there". While science is suspect to conception (theories), Barad want show that what's at stake in agential realism is that our conception of the entire situation doesn't simply highlight the terms of the concept but it also highlights the condition upon which we presume truth to be available.
While she makes the easy connection between material process and Judith Butler's performativity theories, she avoids the distinction that such agential realism requires a human consciousness to perceive such distinctions. A human consciousness can provide an apparatus of measurement but the larger reality as a whole (including consciousness) provides conditions for knowing itself. The impossibility of being able to objectively account for everything is the problem that in the universe one part of it needs to be "lost" (or in Zizek's terms, less than nothing) for the other part of the universe to be analyzed.
This is in many accounts a difficult book to read, but Barad walks us through the tricky lines of thought. She doesn't adhere to an (inter)subjective account of reality but rather mentions that the marks of an apparatus of measurement makes on existing bodies serves as the objective mark, one that is often itself registered in terms of the agencies of observation. In this way, agential realism is a way of noting how the universe meets itself half way, to constantly create the conditions for which unit-hood is registered and made distinct through its own materially discursive interactions.
Thus Barad outlines an approach that is sure to provide a new framework for understanding why the experience of reality is different for so many, as our material practice is the conceptual condition by which discursive practices actualize... not as representations of a transcendentalism but through the conditions of materiality itself, entangled within itself. (As Deleuze would say, differentiation isn't what happens to cytoplasm, rather cytoplasm contains all the differentials which create a given differentiation of a baby as a complete whole.)
There is so much more I can add, but I think this sums up what the book does and is about, enough for anyone who wants to read about this kind of stuff to pick it up.
This is my second time reading this book. It continues to impress me.
Our experience of the world is always given to us through our senses and through technology and symbols. In an attempt to understand what we experience, we can draw any number of conclusions. Barad offers us a new way to grasp the agency relationship often assumed by traditional philosophers and scientists to be of a certain type. There are additional ways of looking at this critique, but really, Barad notes through the agential cut that differing amounts of "causation" can be attributed to the object, or subject or environment in question. When we consider the whole interaction as a whole what really counts are "intra-actions" that are not-causation links, but rather the resultant entanglement of all the agency relationships that have participated in the intra-action.
In this way, Barad always speaks from a position of immanence because it's not readily decidable where to place the boundaries. Should they lie closer to the object, or should they be a property determined as "given" from some idealized image of that object? In this way she notes a proto-intra-action within both Bohr's work on complementarism and Butler's work on performativity. Both understand that the result/sign is the product of the entire system, including the "apparatus of measurement"'s physicality and the framework which delivers the result. Neither is neutral, and so present a realism. If we accept the result as real, then we impose a realism on the result, one which assumes the agential cuts that are assumed to be actual, and thus, part of the background.
In part, this is the insight of postmodernism on modernism, that there is no such thing as neutral, and thus no metanarrative, or at least a pregiven agential arrangement.
This is still quite a brilliant book.
----
2014 Review
Barad presents an account of reality she calls agential realism. While intuitively we understand this in pop explanations as "point of view" she radicalizes this account by extending it into the formal fields of post-structural philosophy and quantum physics.
Taking the writings of the great physicist Neil Bohr, Barad dehumanizes his writing by removing what Meillasoux calls "Ptolomey's Revenge" in which the sciences (and philosophy) take the human account of things to be the end point of justification. In other words, we take our familiar human account as the basis for determining what is out there. This repetition of a human account out there forms the discursive struggle between wave-particle accounts in quantum mechanics. Barad is very quick to emphasize that discursive practice isn't a linguistic concept, a concept in words but rather material process that determines what is to be measured and how to measure it. In her words, the agential cut has to do with distinguishing between the material affects of the apparatus of measurement in creating phenomenon.
She doesn't take phenomenon to be as opposed to noumenon in the Kantian sense but opposed to objects in the subject-object distinction. While she puts scare quotes around "subject" and "object" distinction, these scare quotes are meant to present such terms in their generic specificity rather than their philosophical baggage. Objects don't exist out there. Rather than material construction determining how something exists directly, Barad's take is that discursive practice formulates an apparatus that entangles materiality to determine what exists "out there". While science is suspect to conception (theories), Barad want show that what's at stake in agential realism is that our conception of the entire situation doesn't simply highlight the terms of the concept but it also highlights the condition upon which we presume truth to be available.
While she makes the easy connection between material process and Judith Butler's performativity theories, she avoids the distinction that such agential realism requires a human consciousness to perceive such distinctions. A human consciousness can provide an apparatus of measurement but the larger reality as a whole (including consciousness) provides conditions for knowing itself. The impossibility of being able to objectively account for everything is the problem that in the universe one part of it needs to be "lost" (or in Zizek's terms, less than nothing) for the other part of the universe to be analyzed.
This is in many accounts a difficult book to read, but Barad walks us through the tricky lines of thought. She doesn't adhere to an (inter)subjective account of reality but rather mentions that the marks of an apparatus of measurement makes on existing bodies serves as the objective mark, one that is often itself registered in terms of the agencies of observation. In this way, agential realism is a way of noting how the universe meets itself half way, to constantly create the conditions for which unit-hood is registered and made distinct through its own materially discursive interactions.
Thus Barad outlines an approach that is sure to provide a new framework for understanding why the experience of reality is different for so many, as our material practice is the conceptual condition by which discursive practices actualize... not as representations of a transcendentalism but through the conditions of materiality itself, entangled within itself. (As Deleuze would say, differentiation isn't what happens to cytoplasm, rather cytoplasm contains all the differentials which create a given differentiation of a baby as a complete whole.)
There is so much more I can add, but I think this sums up what the book does and is about, enough for anyone who wants to read about this kind of stuff to pick it up.
February 28, 2020
Karen Barad effortlessly discloses some of the complex concepts in quantum physics in a way that makes it easy for outsiders to follow. She reimagines our ideas about agengy and subject-object relations, and advocates an entangled world view. Inspiring book and definitely accessible for people like me without a decent background in science.
"Meeting each moment, being alive to the possibilities of becoming, is an ethical call, an invitation that is written into the very matter of all being and becoming. We need to meet the universe halfway, to take responsibility for the role that we play in the world's differential becoming." (last sentence)
"Meeting each moment, being alive to the possibilities of becoming, is an ethical call, an invitation that is written into the very matter of all being and becoming. We need to meet the universe halfway, to take responsibility for the role that we play in the world's differential becoming." (last sentence)
April 28, 2017
It's hard to overestimate the tremble of excitement that attended the publication of Karen Barad's Meeting The Universe Halfway when it first came out nearly ten years ago. Here was the work of a physicist-cum-philosopher conversant in the 'high-theory' of post-structuralism no less than the intricacies of quantum theory, a writer of exceptional clarity at home in the fields of feminist theory no less than the philosophy and practice of science. A work, moreover, that promised to rethink and reconceptualize our ideas of "space, time, matter, dynamics, agency, structure, subjectivity, objectivity, knowing, intentionality, discursivity, performativity, entanglement and ethical engagement."
A big list! And one, happily, taken up with the relish and results equal to its ambition. Drawing its inspiration from the 'philosophy-physics' of Niels Bohr (Einstein's contemporary and sometime theoretical rival), Barad here works to elaborate upon just the kind of world implied by the startling discoveries of quantum theory, all the while being attendant to some of the deepest, most pressing puzzles of modern metaphysics. Hewing closely to a kind of 'process' view of reality, Barad's self-termed 'agential realism' aims to displace the primacy of determinate 'things' all the better to consider how things become determinate in first place.
Thus, employing the famous 'double slit experiment' as her exemplar - in which light appears as either a wave or a particle depending on the 'observer' - Barad pitches herself against the prevailing readings according to which the status of light is simply unknowable or 'indeterminate' until measured (recall Schrodinger's unfortunate cat, both/neither dead and/nor alive until observed). Following Bohr, Barad argues that the situation is in fact far more interesting and far more complex than one can imagine: rather than a deficiency in knowledge, at stake is in fact the very 'being' of light itself, insofar as the very idea of 'determination' only makes sense in the context of an experimental apparatus that would give determinate values meaning in the first place.
That is, at issue is the entire experimental situation as an 'entangled phenomenon' (light + measurement apparatus + experimental context), which alone gives meaning to the very idea of determination. Hence the book's tagline: on the entanglement of matter and meaning. Eschewing the so-called 'spectator theory of observation' in which human agents stand apart from the universe they observe, Barad thus takes great pains to read humans 'back in' to the universe, placing the focus on the very materiality of the scientific process itself, one as much a part of the universe it measures as everything else (note too that not 'minds', but rather material apparatuses and physical arrangements are what count as 'agents of observation' here, foreclosing any simple charge of idealism).
The devil's in the details of course, and Barad is nothing if not stickler for the Satanic in this regard. The crowning jewel of the book, chapter 7, runs at over a hundred pages and delves head-first into some of the most fascinating discussions of quantum experiments this side of the philosophical literature. Ever wanted to know about the Stern-Gerlach apparatus, or the details of quantum eraser experiments? This here's the book for you (and even if you don't, you ought to!). While I've papered over some of the more 'philosophical' considerations in this review, rest assured that if you like your Foucault, your Butler, your (Donna) Haraway, or your (Ian) Hacking, there's plenty of that in here too. And yes, the book is long, and repetitious at times, but it's a small price of admission to pay for so wonderful an intervention of ideas.
A big list! And one, happily, taken up with the relish and results equal to its ambition. Drawing its inspiration from the 'philosophy-physics' of Niels Bohr (Einstein's contemporary and sometime theoretical rival), Barad here works to elaborate upon just the kind of world implied by the startling discoveries of quantum theory, all the while being attendant to some of the deepest, most pressing puzzles of modern metaphysics. Hewing closely to a kind of 'process' view of reality, Barad's self-termed 'agential realism' aims to displace the primacy of determinate 'things' all the better to consider how things become determinate in first place.
Thus, employing the famous 'double slit experiment' as her exemplar - in which light appears as either a wave or a particle depending on the 'observer' - Barad pitches herself against the prevailing readings according to which the status of light is simply unknowable or 'indeterminate' until measured (recall Schrodinger's unfortunate cat, both/neither dead and/nor alive until observed). Following Bohr, Barad argues that the situation is in fact far more interesting and far more complex than one can imagine: rather than a deficiency in knowledge, at stake is in fact the very 'being' of light itself, insofar as the very idea of 'determination' only makes sense in the context of an experimental apparatus that would give determinate values meaning in the first place.
That is, at issue is the entire experimental situation as an 'entangled phenomenon' (light + measurement apparatus + experimental context), which alone gives meaning to the very idea of determination. Hence the book's tagline: on the entanglement of matter and meaning. Eschewing the so-called 'spectator theory of observation' in which human agents stand apart from the universe they observe, Barad thus takes great pains to read humans 'back in' to the universe, placing the focus on the very materiality of the scientific process itself, one as much a part of the universe it measures as everything else (note too that not 'minds', but rather material apparatuses and physical arrangements are what count as 'agents of observation' here, foreclosing any simple charge of idealism).
The devil's in the details of course, and Barad is nothing if not stickler for the Satanic in this regard. The crowning jewel of the book, chapter 7, runs at over a hundred pages and delves head-first into some of the most fascinating discussions of quantum experiments this side of the philosophical literature. Ever wanted to know about the Stern-Gerlach apparatus, or the details of quantum eraser experiments? This here's the book for you (and even if you don't, you ought to!). While I've papered over some of the more 'philosophical' considerations in this review, rest assured that if you like your Foucault, your Butler, your (Donna) Haraway, or your (Ian) Hacking, there's plenty of that in here too. And yes, the book is long, and repetitious at times, but it's a small price of admission to pay for so wonderful an intervention of ideas.
January 1, 2020
Quantum Physics is a strangely intimidating topic, even though it just makes a whole lot of sense once you dig into it. In this publication, Karen Barad presents a worldview that has far-reaching implications for the way we humans should interact and treat our environment.
Barad is a professor of feminist studies using this chunk of a book to explain her interpretation of Niels Bohr's thought experiments. Niels Bohr was both a physicist as well as a philosopher and made foundational contributions to the way we understand quantum physics today. Drawing from his thought experiments, Barad introduces the concept of agential realism, which challenges the way we humans perceive and interact with our environment.
According to Bohr and Barad, there is no objectivity, but no proper subjectivity either. Subject and object don't exist as such, but can only interact as part of what she calls intra-action, as in from within. Borders and separations we perceive aren't really there.
"When is a broken-off limb only a piece of the environment, and when it is an offspring? At what point does the disconnected limb belong to the environment rather than the brittlestar?"
The implication of this is that everything is connected. We humans can't separate ourselves from our environment, as we are our environment. As a result, we should be questioning our ethics, as the otherness we perceive needs to be understood as something way more familiar.
"Meeting each moment, being alive to the possibilities of becoming, is an ethical call, an invitation that is written into the very matter of all being and becoming. We need to meet the universe halfway, to take responsibility for the role that we play in the world's differential becoming."
The book also discusses some fields of research in quantum physics that lay the foundations for the ideas presented here. Experiments like the quantum eraser experiment are explained in detail and Barad also talks about the partly contradicting theories of Einstein and Bohr. It's interesting how many questions are still left unanswered.
One major flaw is how repetitive the book is. It's understandable, as I assume the chapters are supposed to make sense and get published individually as well, but if you read this thing front to back you're gonna have to get prepared to read very similar passages over and over and over again. On the other hand repetition helps remembering things, I guess! And remember I will.
Barad is a professor of feminist studies using this chunk of a book to explain her interpretation of Niels Bohr's thought experiments. Niels Bohr was both a physicist as well as a philosopher and made foundational contributions to the way we understand quantum physics today. Drawing from his thought experiments, Barad introduces the concept of agential realism, which challenges the way we humans perceive and interact with our environment.
According to Bohr and Barad, there is no objectivity, but no proper subjectivity either. Subject and object don't exist as such, but can only interact as part of what she calls intra-action, as in from within. Borders and separations we perceive aren't really there.
"When is a broken-off limb only a piece of the environment, and when it is an offspring? At what point does the disconnected limb belong to the environment rather than the brittlestar?"
The implication of this is that everything is connected. We humans can't separate ourselves from our environment, as we are our environment. As a result, we should be questioning our ethics, as the otherness we perceive needs to be understood as something way more familiar.
"Meeting each moment, being alive to the possibilities of becoming, is an ethical call, an invitation that is written into the very matter of all being and becoming. We need to meet the universe halfway, to take responsibility for the role that we play in the world's differential becoming."
The book also discusses some fields of research in quantum physics that lay the foundations for the ideas presented here. Experiments like the quantum eraser experiment are explained in detail and Barad also talks about the partly contradicting theories of Einstein and Bohr. It's interesting how many questions are still left unanswered.
One major flaw is how repetitive the book is. It's understandable, as I assume the chapters are supposed to make sense and get published individually as well, but if you read this thing front to back you're gonna have to get prepared to read very similar passages over and over and over again. On the other hand repetition helps remembering things, I guess! And remember I will.
February 4, 2021
Brilliant thinking but my word is she difficult to follow sometimes. Call me old fashioned but I feel that sentences should be shorter than 1/2 of a page and chapters shouldn't be 100 pages long. Her ideas are complex conceptually, but her writing added a layer of unnecessary challenge at times. 5/5 for content, 3/5 for writing.
November 6, 2021
A very brief summary might be matter matters. I first read Karen Barad’s book Meeting the Universe Halfway about two years ago, and go back quite often -- for clarification, examples, resources. My most immediate overall response is, and remains, gratitude: This book makes a convincing case that contemporary research in particle physics is perfectly relevant to research in cultural studies, e.g. philosophy, language studies, visual studies, in fact to any sort of research with a claim to address reality. It’s a very careful and caring warning about the limits of human perception, a reminder of how much of what we ordinarily call reality is projected--by us. As well as a sobering insight, however, it is also a thrilling opening on to a reality that is far larger and longer, more complex and astonishing than anything any of us can legitimately claim to know.
Barad builds out from the philosophyphysics of Neils Bohr, the Danish physicist widely credited with having developed the main principles of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. She merged the two words “philosophy” and “physics” into one, contending that Bohr did not separate them, and going on to imply that we shouldn’t either. One of Bohr’s firm beliefs arguably lies at the heart of the matter, namely that we -- scientists, observers, curious people -- are a part of whatever reality we may study. From the basis Bohr provides, she builds, absorbing much, expanding occasionally, objecting rarely.
To the extent there is a story being told in this book, it begins with the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics, which in turn is often dated to 1927, the date of the Fifth Solvay Conference. Entitled “Electrons and Photons,” the conference drew 19 of the most prominent physicists in the world together: Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein were the informal spokesmen for two differing views of how to interpret troubling but unavoidable conflict in recent experimental evidence: light could apparently be either a wave or a particle, depending on how it was measured. The discussion involved Heisenberg’s theory of uncertainty, Bohr’s understanding of complementarity, the nature of the physical evidence under consideration, and the role of the scientist, the experimental apparatus, the expectations and assumptions that govern the structure of experiments, the status experimental results and the vast implications for our understanding of reality.
Although the “Copenhagen Interpretation” is often taken to be a common understanding among physicists, Barad denies that there ever was any single interpretation or any durable agreement about it. The open issues ordinarily do not impede continuing research in physics, but they matter in ways that may have far more immediate implications for our interactions with our environment, our apparatuses, and with one another: she goes on to examine which open questions have been experimentally resolved, but more broadly what questions arise when we accept the findings of the Solvay conference, namely that is ultimately impossibility for a researcher to truly withdraw from either the tools or the object of his or her work.
Barad sometimes draws things as familiar and ordinary as sentence structure into the discussion. In particular, she examines the way subjects and objects in speech fix our thinking. English, along with many, many other languages, builds and maintains assumptions about one thing acting on another, as in “I set the clock”. Exactly this relationship has long structured the relationship between scientist and nature as well, or more generally, or observer and that-which-is-being observed, a relationship of distance, detachment. To suppose that an observer can’t be neatly or thoroughly detached from whatever she or he is observing, to expect the stars to have an effect on their observers, is to change many things. A tidy reversal of sentence structure would be provocative and not necessarily wrong: The clock sets me, the stars amaze the stargazers. But it still has one entity doing something to another. In ancient Greek, there was a way of getting around it, something like “There is a setting between me and the clock,” or “amazement exists between stars and stargazers”.
It is, finally, a book about reality, a respectful reminder that human beings, with all our absolutely astonishing capacities, remain participants a reality we know only very partially but that figures in everything, from the most distant galaxies to our own bodies. We have never and can never dominate it. We can know better if we’re willing and able to meet it halfway.
Barad builds out from the philosophyphysics of Neils Bohr, the Danish physicist widely credited with having developed the main principles of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. She merged the two words “philosophy” and “physics” into one, contending that Bohr did not separate them, and going on to imply that we shouldn’t either. One of Bohr’s firm beliefs arguably lies at the heart of the matter, namely that we -- scientists, observers, curious people -- are a part of whatever reality we may study. From the basis Bohr provides, she builds, absorbing much, expanding occasionally, objecting rarely.
To the extent there is a story being told in this book, it begins with the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics, which in turn is often dated to 1927, the date of the Fifth Solvay Conference. Entitled “Electrons and Photons,” the conference drew 19 of the most prominent physicists in the world together: Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein were the informal spokesmen for two differing views of how to interpret troubling but unavoidable conflict in recent experimental evidence: light could apparently be either a wave or a particle, depending on how it was measured. The discussion involved Heisenberg’s theory of uncertainty, Bohr’s understanding of complementarity, the nature of the physical evidence under consideration, and the role of the scientist, the experimental apparatus, the expectations and assumptions that govern the structure of experiments, the status experimental results and the vast implications for our understanding of reality.
Although the “Copenhagen Interpretation” is often taken to be a common understanding among physicists, Barad denies that there ever was any single interpretation or any durable agreement about it. The open issues ordinarily do not impede continuing research in physics, but they matter in ways that may have far more immediate implications for our interactions with our environment, our apparatuses, and with one another: she goes on to examine which open questions have been experimentally resolved, but more broadly what questions arise when we accept the findings of the Solvay conference, namely that is ultimately impossibility for a researcher to truly withdraw from either the tools or the object of his or her work.
Barad sometimes draws things as familiar and ordinary as sentence structure into the discussion. In particular, she examines the way subjects and objects in speech fix our thinking. English, along with many, many other languages, builds and maintains assumptions about one thing acting on another, as in “I set the clock”. Exactly this relationship has long structured the relationship between scientist and nature as well, or more generally, or observer and that-which-is-being observed, a relationship of distance, detachment. To suppose that an observer can’t be neatly or thoroughly detached from whatever she or he is observing, to expect the stars to have an effect on their observers, is to change many things. A tidy reversal of sentence structure would be provocative and not necessarily wrong: The clock sets me, the stars amaze the stargazers. But it still has one entity doing something to another. In ancient Greek, there was a way of getting around it, something like “There is a setting between me and the clock,” or “amazement exists between stars and stargazers”.
It is, finally, a book about reality, a respectful reminder that human beings, with all our absolutely astonishing capacities, remain participants a reality we know only very partially but that figures in everything, from the most distant galaxies to our own bodies. We have never and can never dominate it. We can know better if we’re willing and able to meet it halfway.
July 18, 2013
One of the most important books of the 21st century. Known as a competent feminist critical theorist she is also an excellent quantum physicist. She reforms Bohr then offers a posthuman performativity that diffractively interferes with quantum mechanics yielding far-reaching impacts upon poststructuralism and a profoundly authentic new materialism. I highly recommend this book.
If you love math and aren't afraid of following her formalisms you'll be amply rewarded with a new understanding of Bohr, the so-called Copenhagen interpretation, EPR which-path thought experiment, Heisenberg's Epistemic Uncertainty Equation/Principle, Bohr's Ontic Indeterminacy Equation/Principle and diffraction interferometry.
Hint: turns out Heisenberg's and Bohr's Equations are the same equation!!!
This will then open what Barad dubs agential realism through intra-active/tion diffractive thinking.
Wild ride -- but awesome ride.
I learned a deep and abiding respect and embrace of Neils Bohr reading this book. And I now have a workable compatibility between special and general relativity theories and quantum mechanics. I'm serious. This is huge.
If you love math and aren't afraid of following her formalisms you'll be amply rewarded with a new understanding of Bohr, the so-called Copenhagen interpretation, EPR which-path thought experiment, Heisenberg's Epistemic Uncertainty Equation/Principle, Bohr's Ontic Indeterminacy Equation/Principle and diffraction interferometry.
Hint: turns out Heisenberg's and Bohr's Equations are the same equation!!!
This will then open what Barad dubs agential realism through intra-active/tion diffractive thinking.
Wild ride -- but awesome ride.
I learned a deep and abiding respect and embrace of Neils Bohr reading this book. And I now have a workable compatibility between special and general relativity theories and quantum mechanics. I'm serious. This is huge.
July 6, 2015
I'm not a scholarly reader and this book's language is making for a very tough and slow read. Those are two facts about my experience, I think they may be related - but can't say for sure. I really do want to read this book since I've heard so much praise for it, but it's turning into a major chore. I have no doubts that the author has a brilliant mind, but I don't find her style very inviting; in fact I'd go far as to say that this has replaced "Principles of Color Technology" as the hardest-to-read-but-probably-worth-reading book on my virtual shelf. What I dislike about the writing style are the incredibly long and complex sentences with an overabundance of compound words. I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time trying to keep track of her sentence fragments and trying to guess or look up what the next niche adjective truly means. Also, given the fundamental nature of the author's arguments, she shies away from using analogies which, though understandable, removes a useful tool from an author's utility belt. Anyhow, I'll update the review if I manage to trudge through this text and live to tell of it.
November 21, 2022
Comps reading. Sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes interesting, sometimes fairly divergent from my own political and theoretical commitments. If someone asked me to explain what Barad was trying to say in this book, I honestly don’t think I could. That is a problem, though overall, I thought this was still a fairly enjoyable book to read. And Barad's re-reading of Bohr's work was really fascinating and they did some interesting ontological and metaphysical elaborations of Bohr's specific strain of realism.
I first read some chapters from this book in a Marxist reading group maybe a year ago, and most people in the group were very critical of this text. I very recently read a critique of Barad and new materialism more broadly in the same reading group. We read a text by Stuart Newman, a cell biologist and anatomy professor at New York Medical College, who wrote a critique of new materialism in the journal Marxism and Sciences. His main critique is summarized fairly well in the last two paragraphs of the paper:
“With their attempted erasure of Marxism, the new materialists are inevitably taking political sides, promoting quietism on one hand, but on the other valorizing the spontaneity of the market in capitalist economies. These systems are fertile ground for such New Materialism-friendly enterprises as Transhumanism, which is striving to create “better people” by endowing the assemblages it identifies with natural humans with additional, beneficial actants (Rikowski 2003; Newman 2010). However, as stated by the philosopher Glenn Rikowski, “Post/transhuman theorists who terrorise today’s humanity with prognoses of genetically designed bodies, microchips in the brain and the rest typically lack an explanatory dynamic which underpins such developments and projections” (Rikowski 2003, 140).
Humans have unquestionably wreaked destruction on the planet in the past and continue to in the present. Their ability to do so has been enabled by varieties of anthropocentrism that have denied the agency of nonhuman organisms and, often as not, categories of humans. These ideologies have gone hand-in-glove with economic systems with clear beneficiaries and victims, whose fates have depended on their roles in the respective social structures. Against this, the new materialist philosophers seem to suggest that their flattened pan-agentialism will address (insofar as they discuss them) the ongoing disasters of climate, war, and inequalities of wealth and personal autonomy in a way disconnected from the perennial class divi- sions problematized by historical materialism, and the understanding of the development of human consciousness for which dialectical science is an ongoing project.”
I don’t think people like Barad are as antagonistic towards Marxists as some of them seem to believe, though I understand why they are critical of new materialism generally. Most of the time Barad mentions Marxism it is rendered awkwardly as (post-)Marxism.
Likely the most interesting stuff in this book was Barad’s description of Leela Fernades’s work on Calcutta jute mill workers which as a section opens with this E.P. Thompson quote:
“Class is not this or that part of the machine, but the way the machine works . . . the friction of interests-the movement itself, the heat, the thundering noise.... class itself is not a thing, it is a happening.”
It is clear why Barad liked this quote by E.P. Thompson and Newman goes into this anti-essentialist emphasis in post-structuralist thought which was a useful move as applied to gender, but had severe limitations when elaborated in other contexts.
Another key section which was an important part that I had to work through when writing a review of Andrea Ballestero’s book A Future History of Water was this section where Barad traces a genealogical lineage from Lefebvre through to David Harvey, Donna Haraway, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, into her own work:
“Cultural geographers have contested this view of space as a neutral back drop against which events unfold. A paradigmatic shift occurred with Henri Lefebvre's insistence that space is not a given, but rather that space and society are mutually constituted and that space is an agent of change, that is, it plays an active role in the unfolding of events. Building on David Harvey's theory of geographical historical materialism, Donna Haraway argues that not only class but other material-social practices, such as racialization and gendered sexualization, need to be understood as constituting "bodies-in the-making and contingent spatiotemporalities" (Haraway 1997, 294). By way of example, Haraway offers the following observation concerning the role that the container model of spatialization plays in the fetishization of gene maps in molecular biology practices:
"Spatialization as a never-ending, power-laced process engaged by a motley array of beings can be fetishized as a series of maps whose grids nontropically locate naturally bounded bodies (land, people, resources-and inside "absolute" dimensions such as space and time. The maps are fetishes in so far as they enable a specific kind of mistake that turns process into nontropic, real, literal things inside containers." (1997, 136)
Haraway's critique of models of spatialization that reify complex practices and make them into things inside containers captures some of the key elements of the kinds of shifts in refiguring space, time, and matter that I am interested in exploring here, including the dynamic and contingent materialization of space, time, and bodies; the incorporation of material-social factors (including gender, race, sexuality, religion, and nationality, as well as class) but also technoscientific and natural factors in processes of materialization (where the constitution of the "natural" and the "social" is part of what is at issue and at stake); the iterative (re)materialization of the relations of production; and the agential possibilities and responsibilities for recon figuring the material relations of the world. I offer a systematic development and further elaboration of these and related ideas. I consider how agential realism can contribute to a new materialist understanding of power and its effects on the production of bodies, identities, and subjectivities. Central to my analysis is the agential realist understanding of matter as a dynamic and shifting entanglement of relations, rather than a property of things. I develop and explore these ideas in relation to the political theorist Leela Fernandes's ethnographic study of the materialization of the relations of production, where questions of political economy and cultural identity formation are both at work on the shop floor.
Following Ruth Wilson Gilmore's suggestion that we replace the politics of location with a politics of possibilities (Gilmore 1999), in this chapter I aim to dislocate the container model of space, the spatialization of time, and the reification of matter by reconceptualizing the notions of space, time, and matter using an alternative framework that shakes loose the foundational character of notions such as location and opens up a space of agency in which the dynamic intra-play of indeterminacy and determinacy reconfigures the possibilities and impossibilities of the world's becoming such that indeterminacies, contingencies, and ambiguities coexist with causality.”
This reification that Barad discusses, to me, is simply an elaboration of Marx’s theorizations on commodity fetishism, which Haraway extended into genomic mapping and Barad extended into scientific apparatuses more generally. The Marxist critiques of the ontological turn however are largely focused on flat ontology which allegedly de-emphasizes the primacy of the means of production in the fashioning of social order. I am not quite sure that is what flat ontology is arguing, but I don’t understand the contours of the debate fully, so I’m not sure. My understanding of flat ontology’s eschewal of hierarchies has more to do with ‘being’ than it has to do with causal contributions. I am really struggling to work out these arguments at the moment because this is the theme of the panel I’m in the process of writing a paper on this week, and this recent engagement with Stuart Newman’s paper has really put into question my own theoretical approaches.
I first read some chapters from this book in a Marxist reading group maybe a year ago, and most people in the group were very critical of this text. I very recently read a critique of Barad and new materialism more broadly in the same reading group. We read a text by Stuart Newman, a cell biologist and anatomy professor at New York Medical College, who wrote a critique of new materialism in the journal Marxism and Sciences. His main critique is summarized fairly well in the last two paragraphs of the paper:
“With their attempted erasure of Marxism, the new materialists are inevitably taking political sides, promoting quietism on one hand, but on the other valorizing the spontaneity of the market in capitalist economies. These systems are fertile ground for such New Materialism-friendly enterprises as Transhumanism, which is striving to create “better people” by endowing the assemblages it identifies with natural humans with additional, beneficial actants (Rikowski 2003; Newman 2010). However, as stated by the philosopher Glenn Rikowski, “Post/transhuman theorists who terrorise today’s humanity with prognoses of genetically designed bodies, microchips in the brain and the rest typically lack an explanatory dynamic which underpins such developments and projections” (Rikowski 2003, 140).
Humans have unquestionably wreaked destruction on the planet in the past and continue to in the present. Their ability to do so has been enabled by varieties of anthropocentrism that have denied the agency of nonhuman organisms and, often as not, categories of humans. These ideologies have gone hand-in-glove with economic systems with clear beneficiaries and victims, whose fates have depended on their roles in the respective social structures. Against this, the new materialist philosophers seem to suggest that their flattened pan-agentialism will address (insofar as they discuss them) the ongoing disasters of climate, war, and inequalities of wealth and personal autonomy in a way disconnected from the perennial class divi- sions problematized by historical materialism, and the understanding of the development of human consciousness for which dialectical science is an ongoing project.”
I don’t think people like Barad are as antagonistic towards Marxists as some of them seem to believe, though I understand why they are critical of new materialism generally. Most of the time Barad mentions Marxism it is rendered awkwardly as (post-)Marxism.
Likely the most interesting stuff in this book was Barad’s description of Leela Fernades’s work on Calcutta jute mill workers which as a section opens with this E.P. Thompson quote:
“Class is not this or that part of the machine, but the way the machine works . . . the friction of interests-the movement itself, the heat, the thundering noise.... class itself is not a thing, it is a happening.”
It is clear why Barad liked this quote by E.P. Thompson and Newman goes into this anti-essentialist emphasis in post-structuralist thought which was a useful move as applied to gender, but had severe limitations when elaborated in other contexts.
Another key section which was an important part that I had to work through when writing a review of Andrea Ballestero’s book A Future History of Water was this section where Barad traces a genealogical lineage from Lefebvre through to David Harvey, Donna Haraway, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, into her own work:
“Cultural geographers have contested this view of space as a neutral back drop against which events unfold. A paradigmatic shift occurred with Henri Lefebvre's insistence that space is not a given, but rather that space and society are mutually constituted and that space is an agent of change, that is, it plays an active role in the unfolding of events. Building on David Harvey's theory of geographical historical materialism, Donna Haraway argues that not only class but other material-social practices, such as racialization and gendered sexualization, need to be understood as constituting "bodies-in the-making and contingent spatiotemporalities" (Haraway 1997, 294). By way of example, Haraway offers the following observation concerning the role that the container model of spatialization plays in the fetishization of gene maps in molecular biology practices:
"Spatialization as a never-ending, power-laced process engaged by a motley array of beings can be fetishized as a series of maps whose grids nontropically locate naturally bounded bodies (land, people, resources-and inside "absolute" dimensions such as space and time. The maps are fetishes in so far as they enable a specific kind of mistake that turns process into nontropic, real, literal things inside containers." (1997, 136)
Haraway's critique of models of spatialization that reify complex practices and make them into things inside containers captures some of the key elements of the kinds of shifts in refiguring space, time, and matter that I am interested in exploring here, including the dynamic and contingent materialization of space, time, and bodies; the incorporation of material-social factors (including gender, race, sexuality, religion, and nationality, as well as class) but also technoscientific and natural factors in processes of materialization (where the constitution of the "natural" and the "social" is part of what is at issue and at stake); the iterative (re)materialization of the relations of production; and the agential possibilities and responsibilities for recon figuring the material relations of the world. I offer a systematic development and further elaboration of these and related ideas. I consider how agential realism can contribute to a new materialist understanding of power and its effects on the production of bodies, identities, and subjectivities. Central to my analysis is the agential realist understanding of matter as a dynamic and shifting entanglement of relations, rather than a property of things. I develop and explore these ideas in relation to the political theorist Leela Fernandes's ethnographic study of the materialization of the relations of production, where questions of political economy and cultural identity formation are both at work on the shop floor.
Following Ruth Wilson Gilmore's suggestion that we replace the politics of location with a politics of possibilities (Gilmore 1999), in this chapter I aim to dislocate the container model of space, the spatialization of time, and the reification of matter by reconceptualizing the notions of space, time, and matter using an alternative framework that shakes loose the foundational character of notions such as location and opens up a space of agency in which the dynamic intra-play of indeterminacy and determinacy reconfigures the possibilities and impossibilities of the world's becoming such that indeterminacies, contingencies, and ambiguities coexist with causality.”
This reification that Barad discusses, to me, is simply an elaboration of Marx’s theorizations on commodity fetishism, which Haraway extended into genomic mapping and Barad extended into scientific apparatuses more generally. The Marxist critiques of the ontological turn however are largely focused on flat ontology which allegedly de-emphasizes the primacy of the means of production in the fashioning of social order. I am not quite sure that is what flat ontology is arguing, but I don’t understand the contours of the debate fully, so I’m not sure. My understanding of flat ontology’s eschewal of hierarchies has more to do with ‘being’ than it has to do with causal contributions. I am really struggling to work out these arguments at the moment because this is the theme of the panel I’m in the process of writing a paper on this week, and this recent engagement with Stuart Newman’s paper has really put into question my own theoretical approaches.
November 6, 2023
What can I say about this monster of a book that will fit into a short review? Not much, but I’ll try.
(Tips for finishing the book below)
This book challenges the entire epistemological framework with which we think. It explains the history and workings of quantum mechanics and uses it to build this framework.
And the book succeeds! The philosophy of agential realism is really interesting and offers us much to think about in an age where humans affect the world almost as much as the word does itself. (Even though we are a part of the world, which is a part of the philosophy)
Baard takes the partial framework left by Bohr, contrasts it with that of Heisenberg and Einstein to display its characteristics and then build on it. As well as separating it from its humanist origins.
There is only one thing that I would complain about, which is that it is very difficult to get through. The words used are long and complicated, the sentences even more so, resulting in pages which sometimes take 5 minutes to get through. That is not to say it isn’t clear though. I found Barad’s explanations and references very understandable, often more so than the original texts they reference.
The main problem I had reading the book were the long chapters, where halfway you forget what the chapter was supposed to argue in the first place.
My tips would be, to mark the overview of the book in the beginning and return to it every now and then. Every time you start a new chapter, just look in there to see what your about to read.
You can also look at the conclusion or summary at the end of the chapter before reading it, so you know what to expect.
For the long and complicated words, I have nothing. Just accept that you won’t be able to pronounce them in your head and continue.
(Tips for finishing the book below)
This book challenges the entire epistemological framework with which we think. It explains the history and workings of quantum mechanics and uses it to build this framework.
And the book succeeds! The philosophy of agential realism is really interesting and offers us much to think about in an age where humans affect the world almost as much as the word does itself. (Even though we are a part of the world, which is a part of the philosophy)
Baard takes the partial framework left by Bohr, contrasts it with that of Heisenberg and Einstein to display its characteristics and then build on it. As well as separating it from its humanist origins.
There is only one thing that I would complain about, which is that it is very difficult to get through. The words used are long and complicated, the sentences even more so, resulting in pages which sometimes take 5 minutes to get through. That is not to say it isn’t clear though. I found Barad’s explanations and references very understandable, often more so than the original texts they reference.
The main problem I had reading the book were the long chapters, where halfway you forget what the chapter was supposed to argue in the first place.
My tips would be, to mark the overview of the book in the beginning and return to it every now and then. Every time you start a new chapter, just look in there to see what your about to read.
You can also look at the conclusion or summary at the end of the chapter before reading it, so you know what to expect.
For the long and complicated words, I have nothing. Just accept that you won’t be able to pronounce them in your head and continue.
June 28, 2021
i find the concept of agential realism fascinating and barad's ideas are ones that i've drawn upon most consistently this year in school. but the reason i think i love this book so much is because i read it at the exact right time, when i needed something to see work that collapsed the boundaries between disciplines and space and self and unravelled this whole idea that the world is classified into neat little boxes. that everything is a confusing entangled non-hierarchical mess observable only through cuts that are necessarily reductive is (though basic ig) the cornerstone of a lot i think/read/write about now, a realisation (among many others) for which i am grateful to her for
February 19, 2023
A beautiful book for:
1. making you think about physics and philosophy (metaphysics)
2. very clearly and engagingly written
3. Restores a sense of wonder and hope.
It's not a super easy read but it is very clear and self explanatory and you can move through it slowly. I highly recommend it. It's given me a new way to look at ethico-onto-epistemology (or whatever order I should have said that in)
1. making you think about physics and philosophy (metaphysics)
2. very clearly and engagingly written
3. Restores a sense of wonder and hope.
It's not a super easy read but it is very clear and self explanatory and you can move through it slowly. I highly recommend it. It's given me a new way to look at ethico-onto-epistemology (or whatever order I should have said that in)
didn-t-finish
June 28, 2023I tried so hard, and got so far. But in the end, it doesn't even matter.
I'm really excited about the ideas Barad is engaging with in this book. But the stilted, jargony writing wore me down. I finally gave up in chapter 7 when she tried to make me do math.
I'm really excited about the ideas Barad is engaging with in this book. But the stilted, jargony writing wore me down. I finally gave up in chapter 7 when she tried to make me do math.
April 10, 2023
Aaaargh I can't believe I have finished this book, I have been reading it for MONTHS. At first I was very excited, then I was sort of annoyed by Barad's anxious micromanagement of my reading (there's a bit where her editors obviously BEGGED her to give a sort of good-parts-version/guide to readers to help us not get overwhelmed by the science part and she keeps saying "But really you have to just read THE WHOLE THING, IN ORDER", which, I am a writer too! I get it! But I am also a reader, and a 546pp book about quantum erasers and brittlestars and optical theory is A LOT), as well as by her incessant repetition - I would find myself starting to write out a quote and discover that she'd said the same thing before. In exactly the same words. Twice. So did it really need to be 546pp, hmmm?
I mean, maybe it did! This is difficult terrain, and to some extent just dwelling in the new ideas and letting the repetitions gradually reprogram my thinking was a better way of coming to an understanding of "agential realism" than trying to nut it out in a linearly cognitive way. By the end I was excited and moved again - but hoo boy, there was some slow going in the middle there, where it felt like I wasn't getting anywhere because the bits I understood just kept showing up over and over again, in a sea of very detailed accounts of physics experiments which I could mostly follow? (I wanted to be a quantum physicist when I was a teenager, so I have an affective investment in this stuff already if not a very detailed understanding, though I did read A Brief History of Time and I did at least start Godel, Escher, Bach.) But then all of a sudden she would just insouciantly throw in Planck's constant and the notion of "discontinuity" which seems SUPER IMPORTANT TO HER WHOLE THINKING, like FOUNDATIONAL to her argument, but she just mostly took for granted that I knew about this, and then moved on, whereas there are pages and pages and chapters and chapters on the difference between complementarity and uncertainty.
Anyway, I still don't get Planck's constant. My friend Jason explained it to me, but then I forgot it again, so unfortunately it is now filed in my mind as "the thing that makes the maths work".
So the book! Exciting! It's a sort of Quantum Derrida - getting into the materiality of semiosis, thinking through the ontological & epistemological consequences of the lack of a position of exteriority from which to observe reality.
Barad is a physicist, and is arguing mainly with other theoretical physicists and philosophers/historians/sociologists of science about the nature of realism and the ways in which we (including scientists) have to rethink our understanding of reality in the light of quantum physics. But I find her ideas really resonant for me as a literary theorist and cultural-studies academic, who's also spent a long time trying to find an adequate way to understand the relationship between "matter and meaning" (to quote Barad's subtitle), and who is interested in the "unstable ontology" of texts (that's Wai Chee Dimock's phrase) - the way they have a porous and changeable boundary, in that what is "in" a text changes according to when and how the text is read, and what "other" associations, literacies, knowledges and meanings are brought to the text. (That's even if you concede the existence of a stable text - a particular set of words in a particular order - in the first place, which already isn't the case, partly because it brackets off the materiality of the text and the embodiment of the reader - illustrations, typefaces, page breaks, white space, paper or digital or audio or vellum - and partly because texts are always the outcome, not the basis, of editorial decisions.)
So the two strands of this book that are most interesting to me are the strand about interpretation and knowledge, and the strand about materiality and semiosis. Which are interconnected, because how could they not be?
Here's a tentative attempt to put into words what I got from this book, in a sort of "if you can explain / teach it, you understand it" way.
On interpretation and knowledge: knowing is a material practice in the world. There isn't a given distinction between a separate, bounded, "observer" and an "object" that's being observed (just as, or perhaps because, there isn't an outside to the universe). Instead, the "knower" and the "known" encounter one another within a particular context or apparatus which itself is manifold and multilevelled: multiple histories, forces, and entities participate in shaping that place of encounter, in which knowledge is interactively made. (Barad says intra-actively, to make the point that there aren't separate entities inter-acting across a "between", but that both are interior to the encounter.) This has what Barad calls "ethico-ontico-epistemological" consequences (again, making the point that the ethical, the ontological, and the epistemological are all involved in relations, and that knowing and being and all other practices are relational, so we can't entirely separate out the ethical, the ontological, and the epistemological into separate domains) - and those consequences are that we shift from thinking about adequate representation of pre-existing "reality" that is not affected by our knowledge practices, and we start thinking about the ethics of our interventions and intra-actions. We are responsible not just for the "accuracy" of our representations, but for the whole apparatus of knowledge that we use - what it includes and enables us to measure, what it excludes (provisionally - that which is excluded still exists and has agency, and can come back. This reminds me very strongly of a passage in John Mowitt's Text about how we have to structure what we do so that it can be pirated by others, including those whose interests and literacies we have no way of knowing [yet]).
On materiality and semiosis: Barad doesn't address language/codes directly, but talks about "marks on bodies" in a way that recalls Derrida's expansion of writing into "all marks" (including the marking of the air by the soundwaves of spoken language, the marking of a path by a human or nonhuman foot). She also talks about the world articulating itself in a way that makes me want to reread the passages of Of Grammatology on "articulation" - I remember Derrida does something cool/interesting with that term, but not exactly what. Anyway, but for Barad intelligibility is part of the world making itself intelligible to another part. She doesn't draw a strong distinction between linguistic signs (where the sign is bound to the meaning by arbitrary conventions) and, I guess, indexical signs - where a photon passes through a slit in an apparatus, creating a mark that we can interpret as telling us something about the photon.* As far as I can see, there's only one moment in the book where she directly addresses language, with a quote from someone called Rouse saying that the signifier p-o-s-i-t-i-o-n is not "magically connected" to that attribute of a particle, it only becomes associated through repeated material and discursive practices that reliably associate that signifier with that signified. This... might be true? I'm not sure. I'm really drawn to the idea that language is not special, and that the interpretability of the world is not radically discontinuous from language as a thing, but I need to think about this more, I always worry I'm on shaky ground there or tipping into a sort of hippyish/Christianised "Book of Nature" model.
Barad also argues, following Nils Bohr (the whole book is an interpretation/expansion of Bohr's thought), that concepts are not purely metaphysical things, but exist only insofar as they are embodied in apparatuses, and this I think I broadly get (gender and race would be really obvious ones in the social sphere - there are particular social and institutional practices that "produce" gender and race as things that then appear to pre-exist the practices: Barad starts the book with a discussion of Judith Butler and her thinking is aligned with Butler as well as Haraway).
So, in conclusion, I think this is really interesting and true and useful - and I'm using some Baradian explanations and terminology in a piece I've just written for a co-edited book with Ellie Crookes on Medievalism and Reception, because they seemed like the most economical way of getting at the ideas I wanted to get across. But insofar as Barad's ideas are useful to me, they do overlap with/align with a lot of other authors using different theoretical paradigms - Felski's Actor/Network Theory, Derrida (as I've said), and the Australian Reception School (I don't know if that's a thing, though - but John Frow and Tony Bennett in particular, talking about the way in which the text does not come to us in an unmediated way but is co-constituted by the frames and apparatuses through which we encounter it), so I remain stuck in an ongoing problem for myself: how to navigate all these different vocabularies and frameworks for what ultimately seems to me to be the same thing without designating one of them as the master-framework**? And do I really need to drag everyone through quantum physics to return back to the idea of the text as an object with an unstable ontology? And is that all I'm doing?
*Maybe it is electrons not photons? don't @ me
**This is the only real stumbling block for me with Rita Felski's work, her hewing to a Latourian vocabulary and theoretical framework, because... I don't know that I want to say that AN-T is the only/best way to think about these things? But then I gotta use words when I talk to you, so why not use the best ones to hand, with an understanding that they're contingent?
I mean, maybe it did! This is difficult terrain, and to some extent just dwelling in the new ideas and letting the repetitions gradually reprogram my thinking was a better way of coming to an understanding of "agential realism" than trying to nut it out in a linearly cognitive way. By the end I was excited and moved again - but hoo boy, there was some slow going in the middle there, where it felt like I wasn't getting anywhere because the bits I understood just kept showing up over and over again, in a sea of very detailed accounts of physics experiments which I could mostly follow? (I wanted to be a quantum physicist when I was a teenager, so I have an affective investment in this stuff already if not a very detailed understanding, though I did read A Brief History of Time and I did at least start Godel, Escher, Bach.) But then all of a sudden she would just insouciantly throw in Planck's constant and the notion of "discontinuity" which seems SUPER IMPORTANT TO HER WHOLE THINKING, like FOUNDATIONAL to her argument, but she just mostly took for granted that I knew about this, and then moved on, whereas there are pages and pages and chapters and chapters on the difference between complementarity and uncertainty.
Anyway, I still don't get Planck's constant. My friend Jason explained it to me, but then I forgot it again, so unfortunately it is now filed in my mind as "the thing that makes the maths work".
So the book! Exciting! It's a sort of Quantum Derrida - getting into the materiality of semiosis, thinking through the ontological & epistemological consequences of the lack of a position of exteriority from which to observe reality.
Barad is a physicist, and is arguing mainly with other theoretical physicists and philosophers/historians/sociologists of science about the nature of realism and the ways in which we (including scientists) have to rethink our understanding of reality in the light of quantum physics. But I find her ideas really resonant for me as a literary theorist and cultural-studies academic, who's also spent a long time trying to find an adequate way to understand the relationship between "matter and meaning" (to quote Barad's subtitle), and who is interested in the "unstable ontology" of texts (that's Wai Chee Dimock's phrase) - the way they have a porous and changeable boundary, in that what is "in" a text changes according to when and how the text is read, and what "other" associations, literacies, knowledges and meanings are brought to the text. (That's even if you concede the existence of a stable text - a particular set of words in a particular order - in the first place, which already isn't the case, partly because it brackets off the materiality of the text and the embodiment of the reader - illustrations, typefaces, page breaks, white space, paper or digital or audio or vellum - and partly because texts are always the outcome, not the basis, of editorial decisions.)
So the two strands of this book that are most interesting to me are the strand about interpretation and knowledge, and the strand about materiality and semiosis. Which are interconnected, because how could they not be?
Here's a tentative attempt to put into words what I got from this book, in a sort of "if you can explain / teach it, you understand it" way.
On interpretation and knowledge: knowing is a material practice in the world. There isn't a given distinction between a separate, bounded, "observer" and an "object" that's being observed (just as, or perhaps because, there isn't an outside to the universe). Instead, the "knower" and the "known" encounter one another within a particular context or apparatus which itself is manifold and multilevelled: multiple histories, forces, and entities participate in shaping that place of encounter, in which knowledge is interactively made. (Barad says intra-actively, to make the point that there aren't separate entities inter-acting across a "between", but that both are interior to the encounter.) This has what Barad calls "ethico-ontico-epistemological" consequences (again, making the point that the ethical, the ontological, and the epistemological are all involved in relations, and that knowing and being and all other practices are relational, so we can't entirely separate out the ethical, the ontological, and the epistemological into separate domains) - and those consequences are that we shift from thinking about adequate representation of pre-existing "reality" that is not affected by our knowledge practices, and we start thinking about the ethics of our interventions and intra-actions. We are responsible not just for the "accuracy" of our representations, but for the whole apparatus of knowledge that we use - what it includes and enables us to measure, what it excludes (provisionally - that which is excluded still exists and has agency, and can come back. This reminds me very strongly of a passage in John Mowitt's Text about how we have to structure what we do so that it can be pirated by others, including those whose interests and literacies we have no way of knowing [yet]).
On materiality and semiosis: Barad doesn't address language/codes directly, but talks about "marks on bodies" in a way that recalls Derrida's expansion of writing into "all marks" (including the marking of the air by the soundwaves of spoken language, the marking of a path by a human or nonhuman foot). She also talks about the world articulating itself in a way that makes me want to reread the passages of Of Grammatology on "articulation" - I remember Derrida does something cool/interesting with that term, but not exactly what. Anyway, but for Barad intelligibility is part of the world making itself intelligible to another part. She doesn't draw a strong distinction between linguistic signs (where the sign is bound to the meaning by arbitrary conventions) and, I guess, indexical signs - where a photon passes through a slit in an apparatus, creating a mark that we can interpret as telling us something about the photon.* As far as I can see, there's only one moment in the book where she directly addresses language, with a quote from someone called Rouse saying that the signifier p-o-s-i-t-i-o-n is not "magically connected" to that attribute of a particle, it only becomes associated through repeated material and discursive practices that reliably associate that signifier with that signified. This... might be true? I'm not sure. I'm really drawn to the idea that language is not special, and that the interpretability of the world is not radically discontinuous from language as a thing, but I need to think about this more, I always worry I'm on shaky ground there or tipping into a sort of hippyish/Christianised "Book of Nature" model.
Barad also argues, following Nils Bohr (the whole book is an interpretation/expansion of Bohr's thought), that concepts are not purely metaphysical things, but exist only insofar as they are embodied in apparatuses, and this I think I broadly get (gender and race would be really obvious ones in the social sphere - there are particular social and institutional practices that "produce" gender and race as things that then appear to pre-exist the practices: Barad starts the book with a discussion of Judith Butler and her thinking is aligned with Butler as well as Haraway).
So, in conclusion, I think this is really interesting and true and useful - and I'm using some Baradian explanations and terminology in a piece I've just written for a co-edited book with Ellie Crookes on Medievalism and Reception, because they seemed like the most economical way of getting at the ideas I wanted to get across. But insofar as Barad's ideas are useful to me, they do overlap with/align with a lot of other authors using different theoretical paradigms - Felski's Actor/Network Theory, Derrida (as I've said), and the Australian Reception School (I don't know if that's a thing, though - but John Frow and Tony Bennett in particular, talking about the way in which the text does not come to us in an unmediated way but is co-constituted by the frames and apparatuses through which we encounter it), so I remain stuck in an ongoing problem for myself: how to navigate all these different vocabularies and frameworks for what ultimately seems to me to be the same thing without designating one of them as the master-framework**? And do I really need to drag everyone through quantum physics to return back to the idea of the text as an object with an unstable ontology? And is that all I'm doing?
*Maybe it is electrons not photons? don't @ me
**This is the only real stumbling block for me with Rita Felski's work, her hewing to a Latourian vocabulary and theoretical framework, because... I don't know that I want to say that AN-T is the only/best way to think about these things? But then I gotta use words when I talk to you, so why not use the best ones to hand, with an understanding that they're contingent?
December 26, 2022
General impressions
Certainly one of the most challenging books I’ve read. That’s probably because it’s simultaneously a book about the fundamentals of (quantum) physics and philosophy and social science. In it, Barad put forward her model of “agential realism”, a way of seeing and studying the world that does not see separate objects interacting with each other, but rather “intra-acting” material-discursive agencies. If this seems complicated it’s because it pretty much is – doing social science or physics isn’t meant to be easy, she argues, but should be hard, sweaty work (hinting at Latour’s ANT-method). She doesn’t shy away from using very precise but also incredibly dense language either. At various points I couldn’t help but feel put-off by what felt like extremely abstruse definitions for things, or self-indulgent tangents on obscure interpretations. I’m sure a better physicist, philosopher, or social scientist would get more out of this work than I did, but even so, this is an undeniably impressive achievement. Yes, most pages are riddled with jargon, but by the end of the book I somehow didn’t notice that anymore. By the end of the book, I did feel like I learned something (read: many things), and as much as Barad’s agential realism theory is probably too sticky to apply in every situation moving forward, I certainly feel like I can see and study the world with a different perspective. That, more than anything, might be the biggest testament to this book’s success that I can give.
Chunk Notes To Refer Back To When I Need Them
Intro
In her Introduction Barad wants to understand the epistemological and ontological issues that quantum physics forces us to confront, like what it means to be objective, what the nature of measurement is, or the meaning of “making”(24). She says she wants to employ a “diffractive” method (25) in her study, reading insights from different social and scientific theories through each other. The ambition in this is evident, as she explicitly explains that her model of "agential realism" - her core theoretical framework – applies equally to the realm of physics as it does to the realm of social science ("new interpretation of quantum physics" (36), which initially I thought was pretty nuts). The “diffractive” in that methodology is inspired by the likes of Donna Haraway, who argue that we need to diffract rather than “reflect” in social science methodology (29 – there is a nice but slightly misleading table visualising this on pp. 89-90). A term that frequently reappears is "intra-action", which is Barad’s alternative to the common notion of interaction, which necessarily implies two separate entities bridging some kind of divide to affect one another (33). Instead, most of the phenomena she talks about in her book involve actions of matter/beings that cannot be “objectively” (in the traditional, Einsteinian sense of the word) be distinguished. These concepts of “diffraction”, “infra-action”, and “objectivity” reappear frequently throughout the book.
Chapter 1
Here Barad deals with different theories of the nature of nature (ontologies). She refers for example to Ian Hacking’s Representing and Intervening, in which he famously proclaimed that it’s not enough to just witness/“peer” at something to believe its existence, but you have to be able to intervene in/“interfere” with it. I like that she says she doesn't want to romanticise quantum physics, nor pretend that Bohr was a closet feminist by using his critique, and yet makes a very well-grounded reading of Bohr’s philosophy of physics.
Chapter 2
Here Barad explains how to develop a method (of critique) that responsibly explores entanglements and the differences they make (74). She spends a surprising amount of time talking about diffraction as a physical phenomenon, compared to the time she spends explaining how diffraction can be used in the social sciences. There are some interesting passages on the history of visual analogies for knowledge, and how commonplace they are. The previously mentioned table of diffractive vs reflective methodology (89-90) is both enlightening and very frustrating, I think because it takes the implication of binary relationships in “reflection” as a phenomenon (e.g. two rays and a mirror that separates them) and just applies it to everything, including nature-culture, social-natural, epistemological-ontological, etc. This didn’t seem particularly fair.
Chapter 3
Here Barad puts forward her reading of Bohr's philosophy of quantum physics. I found Bohr's conclusion that "bodies that define the experimental conditions" (the material apparatus, but also humans) interesting, as Barad explains that this means bodies are the start and end points of objective scientific practice (120). Bohr’s distinction between phenomena and objects is also a nice way of approaching the wave-particle duality of light: if they are considered phenomena then there’s no reason both can’t be found in the same object, hence, "a phenomenon is a specific intra-action of an 'object' and the 'measuring agencies'" (128). This is not a constructivist reading, because apparatuses are material things, and phenomena are real entities (129).
Chapter 4
This chapter includes a (to my eyes) brutal criticism of linguistic and cultural turns, on the basis that they all ignore the importance of matter (132). Barad's intervention is to emphasise the notion of performativity (intra-acting with things) rather than representationalism (words and symbols meaning things by themselves). This is quite clear and convincing (although I’m not sure if her definition of “apparatus” (142) can get any more obnoxious! That might be me though). Apparatuses are in Barad’s words the material conditions of possibility and impossibility (148). Her definition of “matter” (151) is perhaps even more obnoxious. I wonder whether it’s just my unfamiliarity with academic-philosophical language that makes me think that though. It could be that this reflex is caused by a kind of Occam's Razor instinct: surely a less complicated and abstruse definition for something so fundamental and mundane can be found? To her credit though, I do like the style of how Barad is introducing her little bits of the definition, frequently returning to her existing definition and adding little bits of information once we get them. I suppose I’m a little annoyed at how open-ended the definition is.
Chapter 5
Here Barad notes that physical and conceptual constraints of apparatuses are co-constitutive (196) - an apparatus with fixed parts necessarily excludes momentum form having meaning during the experiment, for example. She criticises Foucault's and Butler's theories for not being precise about how matter becomes matter, or rather, the nature of the relationship between discursive practices and material phenomena. In her model of agential realism, humans are also phenomena, and material-discursive apparatuses that intra-act.
Chapter 6
Took very few notes here. Barad mainly talks about Leela Fernandes' study of Indian jute mill workers and the perspectives of intersectionality/scale/apparatuses at play. This is by far the most “social science” chapter of the book.
Chapter 7
I hate to say this, but this Chapter was definitely the most readable and clearly explained. It’s also 100 pages. To say that the flow of the book as a whole is unusual is an understatement; the previous Chapter was only about 20 pages. But this one is more about concepts in quantum physics, and since Barad does not assume much existing knowledge, she is kind of forced to slow down and explain complicated concepts in understandable terms. The problems and thought experiments are nicely introduced, and it’s very impressive how much she manages to extract from them. Concepts like the distinction between Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Bohr’s indeterminacy principle are made very clear (the first says measurement makes a disturbance which "collapses" the wave function, the second says that the very possibility for determining the properties of an object relies on the nature of the experimental arrangement - 302). Her argument that objectivity means being accountable and responsible to what is real (340), and that knowing is a material practice (342), are both very intuitively explained.
Chapter 8
This final chapter looks more towards the present (2000s) and the future. Barad begins with the famous IBM logo in atoms, then talks about the discovery that “brittlestars” are brainless beings whose entire bodies function as “eyes”/visualising systems. Her discussion of biomimicry as a sci-tech philosophy, as well as the future of quantum computing is quite sharp. Obviously, the latter has only become more prominent. But the notion of biomimicry feels like it gets less attention: that might be because it has become ingrained by now though. The titular phrase "meeting the universe halfway" is dropped in the final sentence of the book! It means taking more responsibility for things we might ordinarily consider separate from us. A lovely ending.
Certainly one of the most challenging books I’ve read. That’s probably because it’s simultaneously a book about the fundamentals of (quantum) physics and philosophy and social science. In it, Barad put forward her model of “agential realism”, a way of seeing and studying the world that does not see separate objects interacting with each other, but rather “intra-acting” material-discursive agencies. If this seems complicated it’s because it pretty much is – doing social science or physics isn’t meant to be easy, she argues, but should be hard, sweaty work (hinting at Latour’s ANT-method). She doesn’t shy away from using very precise but also incredibly dense language either. At various points I couldn’t help but feel put-off by what felt like extremely abstruse definitions for things, or self-indulgent tangents on obscure interpretations. I’m sure a better physicist, philosopher, or social scientist would get more out of this work than I did, but even so, this is an undeniably impressive achievement. Yes, most pages are riddled with jargon, but by the end of the book I somehow didn’t notice that anymore. By the end of the book, I did feel like I learned something (read: many things), and as much as Barad’s agential realism theory is probably too sticky to apply in every situation moving forward, I certainly feel like I can see and study the world with a different perspective. That, more than anything, might be the biggest testament to this book’s success that I can give.
Chunk Notes To Refer Back To When I Need Them
Intro
In her Introduction Barad wants to understand the epistemological and ontological issues that quantum physics forces us to confront, like what it means to be objective, what the nature of measurement is, or the meaning of “making”(24). She says she wants to employ a “diffractive” method (25) in her study, reading insights from different social and scientific theories through each other. The ambition in this is evident, as she explicitly explains that her model of "agential realism" - her core theoretical framework – applies equally to the realm of physics as it does to the realm of social science ("new interpretation of quantum physics" (36), which initially I thought was pretty nuts). The “diffractive” in that methodology is inspired by the likes of Donna Haraway, who argue that we need to diffract rather than “reflect” in social science methodology (29 – there is a nice but slightly misleading table visualising this on pp. 89-90). A term that frequently reappears is "intra-action", which is Barad’s alternative to the common notion of interaction, which necessarily implies two separate entities bridging some kind of divide to affect one another (33). Instead, most of the phenomena she talks about in her book involve actions of matter/beings that cannot be “objectively” (in the traditional, Einsteinian sense of the word) be distinguished. These concepts of “diffraction”, “infra-action”, and “objectivity” reappear frequently throughout the book.
Chapter 1
Here Barad deals with different theories of the nature of nature (ontologies). She refers for example to Ian Hacking’s Representing and Intervening, in which he famously proclaimed that it’s not enough to just witness/“peer” at something to believe its existence, but you have to be able to intervene in/“interfere” with it. I like that she says she doesn't want to romanticise quantum physics, nor pretend that Bohr was a closet feminist by using his critique, and yet makes a very well-grounded reading of Bohr’s philosophy of physics.
Chapter 2
Here Barad explains how to develop a method (of critique) that responsibly explores entanglements and the differences they make (74). She spends a surprising amount of time talking about diffraction as a physical phenomenon, compared to the time she spends explaining how diffraction can be used in the social sciences. There are some interesting passages on the history of visual analogies for knowledge, and how commonplace they are. The previously mentioned table of diffractive vs reflective methodology (89-90) is both enlightening and very frustrating, I think because it takes the implication of binary relationships in “reflection” as a phenomenon (e.g. two rays and a mirror that separates them) and just applies it to everything, including nature-culture, social-natural, epistemological-ontological, etc. This didn’t seem particularly fair.
Chapter 3
Here Barad puts forward her reading of Bohr's philosophy of quantum physics. I found Bohr's conclusion that "bodies that define the experimental conditions" (the material apparatus, but also humans) interesting, as Barad explains that this means bodies are the start and end points of objective scientific practice (120). Bohr’s distinction between phenomena and objects is also a nice way of approaching the wave-particle duality of light: if they are considered phenomena then there’s no reason both can’t be found in the same object, hence, "a phenomenon is a specific intra-action of an 'object' and the 'measuring agencies'" (128). This is not a constructivist reading, because apparatuses are material things, and phenomena are real entities (129).
Chapter 4
This chapter includes a (to my eyes) brutal criticism of linguistic and cultural turns, on the basis that they all ignore the importance of matter (132). Barad's intervention is to emphasise the notion of performativity (intra-acting with things) rather than representationalism (words and symbols meaning things by themselves). This is quite clear and convincing (although I’m not sure if her definition of “apparatus” (142) can get any more obnoxious! That might be me though). Apparatuses are in Barad’s words the material conditions of possibility and impossibility (148). Her definition of “matter” (151) is perhaps even more obnoxious. I wonder whether it’s just my unfamiliarity with academic-philosophical language that makes me think that though. It could be that this reflex is caused by a kind of Occam's Razor instinct: surely a less complicated and abstruse definition for something so fundamental and mundane can be found? To her credit though, I do like the style of how Barad is introducing her little bits of the definition, frequently returning to her existing definition and adding little bits of information once we get them. I suppose I’m a little annoyed at how open-ended the definition is.
Chapter 5
Here Barad notes that physical and conceptual constraints of apparatuses are co-constitutive (196) - an apparatus with fixed parts necessarily excludes momentum form having meaning during the experiment, for example. She criticises Foucault's and Butler's theories for not being precise about how matter becomes matter, or rather, the nature of the relationship between discursive practices and material phenomena. In her model of agential realism, humans are also phenomena, and material-discursive apparatuses that intra-act.
Chapter 6
Took very few notes here. Barad mainly talks about Leela Fernandes' study of Indian jute mill workers and the perspectives of intersectionality/scale/apparatuses at play. This is by far the most “social science” chapter of the book.
Chapter 7
I hate to say this, but this Chapter was definitely the most readable and clearly explained. It’s also 100 pages. To say that the flow of the book as a whole is unusual is an understatement; the previous Chapter was only about 20 pages. But this one is more about concepts in quantum physics, and since Barad does not assume much existing knowledge, she is kind of forced to slow down and explain complicated concepts in understandable terms. The problems and thought experiments are nicely introduced, and it’s very impressive how much she manages to extract from them. Concepts like the distinction between Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Bohr’s indeterminacy principle are made very clear (the first says measurement makes a disturbance which "collapses" the wave function, the second says that the very possibility for determining the properties of an object relies on the nature of the experimental arrangement - 302). Her argument that objectivity means being accountable and responsible to what is real (340), and that knowing is a material practice (342), are both very intuitively explained.
Chapter 8
This final chapter looks more towards the present (2000s) and the future. Barad begins with the famous IBM logo in atoms, then talks about the discovery that “brittlestars” are brainless beings whose entire bodies function as “eyes”/visualising systems. Her discussion of biomimicry as a sci-tech philosophy, as well as the future of quantum computing is quite sharp. Obviously, the latter has only become more prominent. But the notion of biomimicry feels like it gets less attention: that might be because it has become ingrained by now though. The titular phrase "meeting the universe halfway" is dropped in the final sentence of the book! It means taking more responsibility for things we might ordinarily consider separate from us. A lovely ending.
June 11, 2025
What an exhausting read. Incredibly ambitious, but also very flawed. While Barad manages to successfully dethrone the Newtonian worldview (no mean feat), I think she fails to climb up from the micro to the macro. Still, her execution is successful and ambitious enough that I'm willing to give her enormous credit in spite of that.
On balance, I think I prefer Donna Haraway.
On balance, I think I prefer Donna Haraway.
August 1, 2023
If you're frustrated with postmodern thought's focus on the social, this is the book for you. Not only does Barad bring the material back into the conversation, they deconstruct the material/discursive binary entirely, coining the phrase "material-discursive." Their expansion of "diffraction" to include the social has also been incredibly influential on me, and I find a lot of commonality with the themes of mystic experience (in fact, my own mystic experience spoke to it before I even had the concept). Along with metamodernism, this is the direction of current philosophy. As far as I can see, anyway.
March 12, 2015
I did not actually finish this book, but I read about 200 pages of it and that felt like enough to justify rating it. Barad is really good and very exciting (diffractive reading! I am so here for that!), but this book is WAYYY long and so ambitious it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. It's like, a 500+ page reimagining of every major concept in western philosophy, as articulated through the lens of quantum physics. Yes. Because why not. I feel like this is what Liz Cullingford would (somewhat disparagingly) describe as a "Theory of Everything" book.
March 26, 2016
Bringing together ontology, epstemology, and ethics, Barad starts with quantum physics and reaches for ways for us to consider our responsibility in "intra-actions" with others (and their coincident response-ability with "us"). Barad has to be included in any discussion of posthumanist / new materialist / feminist critical theory (and should be a part of responsible, reflective science (studies)).
December 25, 2010
Feminist quantum physics. Kinda went over my head along with Haraway's book "Modest Witness" but made a lot more sense when our professor clarified it in my feminist theory class. Basically deconstructs assumptions in quantum physics that dilineates matter/meaning, subject/object, etc.
September 16, 2016
This is a life-changing book. I'll never again perceive anything the way I did before reading Barad.
March 15, 2025
A Book That Redefines Reality: How Meeting the Universe Halfway Changed My Perspective
5-Stars by Rebecca Raffle
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Karen Barad’s “Meeting the Universe Halfway” is the kind of book that forces you to reconsider everything you think you know about reality, identity, and even the way we exist in the world. It’s dense, ambitious, and at times, intellectually demanding.
But, once you start seeing the world through Barad’s lens, you can’t unsee it.
At its core, this book is about entanglement. Not just in physics but in every aspect of life. Barad, a physicist and philosopher, takes the quantum mechanics concept of entanglement (where particles remain connected even when separated by vast distances) and expands it into a revolutionary way of understanding relationships, identity, and existence itself.
What This Book Taught Me About Reality 😍
One of Barad’s key arguments is “agential realism.” Which, in simple terms, means nothing exists independently. Instead, everything comes into being through interactions. She challenges the idea that we are separate individuals observing the world from a distance. Instead, we are part of the world, shaping and being shaped by it in real time.
This idea struck me on a deeply personal level. A year after losing my mother, I found myself searching for the meaning of absence. What happens when the person we love most passes on, from a quantum physics perspective?
Barad’s concept of intra-action is the idea that entities don’t exist first and then interact, but rather come into being through their interactions. Reading this, I started thinking about loss in a different way.
“Individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating.”
This meant that my mother isn’t just gone; our relationship still exists, not as a past event, but as an ongoing, dynamic presence in my life. Her absence isn’t a void. It’s a transformation of our connection, still unfolding in ways I might not fully understand.
Why This Book Stands Out 🔥
✔️ It Connects Quantum Physics to Everyday Life – Barad’s ideas might come from physics, but they extend into philosophy, identity, and even grief.
✔️ It Challenges the Way We See Ourselves – This book forces you to question the idea of the “self” as separate from the world.
✔️ It’s a New Way to Understand Relationships and Memory – Our connections don’t end; they evolve.
Who Should Read This?
✔️ Anyone Who Loves Books That Push Intellectual Boundaries – If you enjoyed The Order of Time or The Gene, you’ll appreciate the depth of thought here.
✔️ Those Looking for a Philosophical Approach to Grief and Change – This book helped me see absence as transformation, not erasure.
✔️ Readers Who Want Science That Reads Like Poetry – Barad’s writing is complex but beautifully constructed, making physics feel deeply human.
Final Thoughts 🔥
Meeting the Universe Halfway isn’t an easy read, but it’s one of the most rewarding books I’ve ever picked up.
It changed how I think about existence, grief, and the invisible ways we remain connected to each other and the world. This is the kind of book that doesn’t just teach you something new. It fundamentally alters how you see reality.
📚 Enjoy my reviews? Let’s connect!
📖 Read more in-depth reviews & essays on Medium: medium.com/@RebeccaRaffle
📷 Follow my Instagram @RebeccaRaffle for book updates & foodie adventures: https://www.instagram.com/rebeccaraffle
🌍 Explore more on my website: https://www.rebeccaraffle.com
5-Stars by Rebecca Raffle
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Karen Barad’s “Meeting the Universe Halfway” is the kind of book that forces you to reconsider everything you think you know about reality, identity, and even the way we exist in the world. It’s dense, ambitious, and at times, intellectually demanding.
But, once you start seeing the world through Barad’s lens, you can’t unsee it.
At its core, this book is about entanglement. Not just in physics but in every aspect of life. Barad, a physicist and philosopher, takes the quantum mechanics concept of entanglement (where particles remain connected even when separated by vast distances) and expands it into a revolutionary way of understanding relationships, identity, and existence itself.
What This Book Taught Me About Reality 😍
One of Barad’s key arguments is “agential realism.” Which, in simple terms, means nothing exists independently. Instead, everything comes into being through interactions. She challenges the idea that we are separate individuals observing the world from a distance. Instead, we are part of the world, shaping and being shaped by it in real time.
This idea struck me on a deeply personal level. A year after losing my mother, I found myself searching for the meaning of absence. What happens when the person we love most passes on, from a quantum physics perspective?
Barad’s concept of intra-action is the idea that entities don’t exist first and then interact, but rather come into being through their interactions. Reading this, I started thinking about loss in a different way.
“Individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating.”
This meant that my mother isn’t just gone; our relationship still exists, not as a past event, but as an ongoing, dynamic presence in my life. Her absence isn’t a void. It’s a transformation of our connection, still unfolding in ways I might not fully understand.
Why This Book Stands Out 🔥
✔️ It Connects Quantum Physics to Everyday Life – Barad’s ideas might come from physics, but they extend into philosophy, identity, and even grief.
✔️ It Challenges the Way We See Ourselves – This book forces you to question the idea of the “self” as separate from the world.
✔️ It’s a New Way to Understand Relationships and Memory – Our connections don’t end; they evolve.
Who Should Read This?
✔️ Anyone Who Loves Books That Push Intellectual Boundaries – If you enjoyed The Order of Time or The Gene, you’ll appreciate the depth of thought here.
✔️ Those Looking for a Philosophical Approach to Grief and Change – This book helped me see absence as transformation, not erasure.
✔️ Readers Who Want Science That Reads Like Poetry – Barad’s writing is complex but beautifully constructed, making physics feel deeply human.
Final Thoughts 🔥
Meeting the Universe Halfway isn’t an easy read, but it’s one of the most rewarding books I’ve ever picked up.
It changed how I think about existence, grief, and the invisible ways we remain connected to each other and the world. This is the kind of book that doesn’t just teach you something new. It fundamentally alters how you see reality.
📚 Enjoy my reviews? Let’s connect!
📖 Read more in-depth reviews & essays on Medium: medium.com/@RebeccaRaffle
📷 Follow my Instagram @RebeccaRaffle for book updates & foodie adventures: https://www.instagram.com/rebeccaraffle
🌍 Explore more on my website: https://www.rebeccaraffle.com
April 27, 2025
Compulsory reread for a thing. 2 stars because it is just bad, and not outright harmful.
I respect the effort and the thought behind making this a thing, but this is just bad philosophy, if it is philosophy at all. Repeating the same five words in a different order throughout the entire book is not an argument, nor is it deep or insightful. What this means in practice is that many observations here are quite, to be respectful, banal, but they only appear not be because of the language they are couched in. Moreover, the tirades (which are extremely narcissistic by the way - just putting it out there that most of the most important figures in the history philosophy did not need to repeat every few sentences how their approach revolutionizes basically every existing domain - and off-putting) against existing theories are not only unsubstantiated, but just plain wrong, given how many of them say basically the same thing, just without the quantum blahblah (using this as a Lacanian term here). Oh, and the allergy towards the concept of mediation on display is just ridiculous, given that a) the concept of mediation could easily work in tandem with Barad's thinking, if she just did not understand it in such a basic way (or rather: what way? given that she never explains her understanding of this concept nor puts forward an actual critique of it); b) Barad never problematizes nor investigates the ground of her own position - maybe there's some mediation there, huh?
There is some good stuff here regarding science studies maybe, but every step beyond that domain is just making it increasingly worse. And yes, this is full of vitriol, but everything new materialism adjacent makes me feel this way, and I'm glad this era is basically behind us.
I respect the effort and the thought behind making this a thing, but this is just bad philosophy, if it is philosophy at all. Repeating the same five words in a different order throughout the entire book is not an argument, nor is it deep or insightful. What this means in practice is that many observations here are quite, to be respectful, banal, but they only appear not be because of the language they are couched in. Moreover, the tirades (which are extremely narcissistic by the way - just putting it out there that most of the most important figures in the history philosophy did not need to repeat every few sentences how their approach revolutionizes basically every existing domain - and off-putting) against existing theories are not only unsubstantiated, but just plain wrong, given how many of them say basically the same thing, just without the quantum blahblah (using this as a Lacanian term here). Oh, and the allergy towards the concept of mediation on display is just ridiculous, given that a) the concept of mediation could easily work in tandem with Barad's thinking, if she just did not understand it in such a basic way (or rather: what way? given that she never explains her understanding of this concept nor puts forward an actual critique of it); b) Barad never problematizes nor investigates the ground of her own position - maybe there's some mediation there, huh?
There is some good stuff here regarding science studies maybe, but every step beyond that domain is just making it increasingly worse. And yes, this is full of vitriol, but everything new materialism adjacent makes me feel this way, and I'm glad this era is basically behind us.
December 26, 2023
4.5 stars. Easily one of the most challenging books I’ve read (mainly due to my lack of knowledge in theoretical physics). Nevertheless, glad to have stuck it out till the end of the book.
“Do I dare disturb the universe?" What can such a question mean? Shall we stand outside the universe and just let it "run"? […] Can we assume the position of the perfect modest witness and merely observe the universe without disturbing it? […]
What fantasy of distance is this? What notion of responsibility is pre sumed? "Do I dare disturb the universe?" is not a meaningful question, let alone a starting point for ethical considerations. Disturbance is not the issue, and "dare" is a perverse provocation. There is no such exterior posi tion where the contemplation of this possibility makes any sense. We are of the universe-there is no inside, no outside. There is only intra-acting from within and as part ofthe world in its becoming. […]
Meeting each moment, being alive to the possibilities of becoming, is an ethical call, an invitation that is written into the very matter of all being and becoming. We need to meet the universe halfWay, to take responsibility for the role that we play in the world's differential becoming.”
“Do I dare disturb the universe?" What can such a question mean? Shall we stand outside the universe and just let it "run"? […] Can we assume the position of the perfect modest witness and merely observe the universe without disturbing it? […]
What fantasy of distance is this? What notion of responsibility is pre sumed? "Do I dare disturb the universe?" is not a meaningful question, let alone a starting point for ethical considerations. Disturbance is not the issue, and "dare" is a perverse provocation. There is no such exterior posi tion where the contemplation of this possibility makes any sense. We are of the universe-there is no inside, no outside. There is only intra-acting from within and as part ofthe world in its becoming. […]
Meeting each moment, being alive to the possibilities of becoming, is an ethical call, an invitation that is written into the very matter of all being and becoming. We need to meet the universe halfWay, to take responsibility for the role that we play in the world's differential becoming.”
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