Response 4

Describe Barad's agential realism and its relation to the work of Foucault and Butler. How
does this compare to Winner's claim that artifacts have politics? Do these amount to the
same claims? (If not, what makes these claims different?)

In Meeting the Universe Halfway, Karen Barad proposes “an epistemological-ontological-ethical

framework” that “provides a posthumanist performative account of technoscientific practice and
other naturalcultural practices,” which she calls “agential realism” (32). Understanding the full
extent of what that means is no easy task; Barad’s theoretical (and methodological) framework
calls for the reconceptualization of a number of philosophical concepts regarding the
sociomaterial world. In this response, I will discuss the concepts that I find most provocative
and promising, given my intellectual and ethical commitments. I will also situate Barad’s
philosophy in relation to the work of Michel Foucault. Judith Butler, and Langdon Winner.
Barad’s philosophy extends and complements Foucault’s and Butler’s work, who have been
immensely influential to my intellectual trajectory thus far. However, Winner’s understanding of
the political nature of artefacts is ultimately incompatible with Barad’s ontological commitments,
despite their common ethical concerns.

An agential realist accounting

In Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) Barad identifies several tendencies within science
studies that she finds problematic, particularly when accounting for the material world. Barad is
not the first scholar to voice these concerns, but her doctoral training in theoretical particle
physics affords her a unique position to make such critiques. According to Barad, the existing
frameworks utilized in science studies are insufficient for understanding the relationship
between discursive practices and the material world. Therefore, she argues, we need to find
ways of analyzing the social and natural dimensions of phenomena without collapsing their
differences (25). Furthermore, she is dissatisfied with science studies’s emphasis on
constructivism and human/social factors, as well the privileging of epistemological questions
over ontological issues (41). Donna Haraway notes in “Situated Knowledges” that “feminists
have stakes in a successor science project that offers a more adequate, richer, better account
of a world” (187). In light of Barad’s work (which is heavily influenced by Haraway), it appears
that Barad’s overall goal with agential realism is, beyond reconciling the discursive with the
material, to provide a theoretical framework that can produce “better,” more accurate
descriptions of sociomaterial practices (science and otherwise), and, of the world in general
(Barad is unclear regarding the scope for which agential realism is intended to account).

Barad’s philosophy initially seems not too different from other work in feminist science studies,
in its posthumanist and new materialist understanding of the world. However, Barad departs
significantly from other science studies by finding inspiration for her philosophical framework in
scientific theory and practice. Analyzing the writings of physicist Niels Bohr, whose work in
quantum physics led him to question the ontological and epistemological assumptions of
classical physics (107). While the details of Bohr’s work is outside the scope of this essay, the
main conclusion she adapts from Bohr is that the primary ontological unit is not bounded,
independent objects but, instead, phenomena (139). These phenomena, which constitute
reality, are “the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting components” and are
“ontologically primitive relations,” that is, the components do not preexist phenomena -- their
properties, boundaries, and meaning are worked out in intra-actions (139). This ontological
shift, as Barad notes, has profound, far-reaching effects for our requires that we rethink “space,
time, matter, dynamics, agency, structure, subjectivity, objectivity, knowing, intentionality,
discursivity, performativity, entanglement, and ethical engagement" (33). In Meeting the
Universe Halfway, Barad works through the implications for many of these concepts. For the
purposes of this essay, however, I will discuss key aspects of agential realism that might
provide a better accounting of technoscientific practices. Other performative accounts of
science, like Actor Network Theory, are also based on a relational ontology and extend agential
capacity to non-humans; nevertheless, Actor Network approaches tend to fall short in
accounting for unequal power relations and exclusion. Constructivist approaches might better
account for power relations, but, as Barad notes, they tend to minimize or ignore the importance
of material, non-human components to the production of scientific knowledge (40).

Epistemology
Building off Neil Bohr’s insight that the indeterminacy of a measurement interaction made it
impossible to separate the “object of observation” from the “agencies of observation,” (108),
Barad concludes that epistemology is inseparable from ontology; that is, knowing is a part of
being (341). Science does not describe an ontologically separate world, but instead, the
process of knowledge production is itself an intra-action that implicates the observer and
observing equipment. “Making knowledge,” she concludes, “is not simply about making
facts but about making worlds, or rather, it is about making specific worldly
configurations—not in the sense of making them up ex nihilo, or out of language, beliefs,
or ideas, but in the sense of materially engaging as part of the world in giving it specific
material form” (91).

Ethics
Along with collapsing epistemology and ontology into scientific practice, Barad argues that these
practices inherently involve ethics. Since knowledge involves “world making,” that is, it
articulates specific outcomes of intra-actions in which boundaries between subjects and
properties emerge, Barad argues that we have a responsibility to remain accountable for the
role we play in determining what comes to matter and what is excluded. “Particular possibilities
for (intra-)acting exist at every moment,” she concludes, “ and these changing possibilities entail
an ethical obligation to intra-act responsibly in the world's becoming, to contest and rework what
matters and what is excluded from mattering” (180). Crucially, part of this ethical responsibility
is to understand that humans are not the privileged site of agency, but are only one part of a
larger material configuration that constitutes the world.

Discourse
Focuault
The Body and Materiality

The Politics of Artefacts

matter as a dynamic and shifting entanglement of relations, rather than as a property of things (35)

Reckoning

To that end, I will center my discussion on science and technology, for which, from my
perspective, agential realism can provide a more accurate and inclusive account.

Main concepts; epistemology - ontology - ethics

Donna J. Haraway, Chapter 9, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and
the Privilege of Partial Perspective" in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: the Reinvention of
Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 183-201.