Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning

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In Meeting the Universe Halfway, Barad takes us carefully through the science, the science studies, and the critical theory that inform her arguments. One of the most impressive things about this book is her facility in each of these disciplinary modes of inquiry. She provides an excellent overview of science studies. . . . Barad writes . . . in a way that is accessible to the lay reader, but that nonetheless provides rigorous descriptions and illustrations. . . . Barad’s posthumanist performative ethics is among the most promising of posthuman philosophies for animal studies, one that promises to make the ‘post’ not just beyond humanism or the human-as-currently-conceived, but rather a ‘post’ to an anthropocentric world.” — Sherryl Vint, Science Fiction Studies 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. Bohr, Niels: 1963c ,The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, Vol. III: Essays 1958–1962 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. Woodbridge, Conn: Ox Bow Press. TSElosophers meeting 15.5.2020. Ekaterina Panina, Erkki Lassila, Kari Lukka, Milla Wirén, Morgan Shaw, Otto Rosendahl, Toni Ahlqvist Barad, K. (1996). Meeting the universe halfway: Realism and social constructivism without contradiction. In Feminism, science, and the philosophy of science (pp. 161-194). Summary A]n elegant mesh of detailed explanations of social theories, scientific concepts and new pathways of technological innovation; all explored and then rewoven to form the carefully constructed foundation for her theory of agential realism.” — Jennifer M. Wilson, Feminist Review Blog

Barad, K. (2012a). Nature’s queer performativity (the authorized version). Kvinder, Køn & Forskning/women, Gender and Research, 1–2, 25–53. Appendix C. Controversy concerning the Relationship between Bohr's Principle of Complementarity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle 402

Project MUSE Mission

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.”

Juelskjær, M., Plauborg, H., & Adrian, S. (2021). Dialogues on agential realism: Engaging in worldings through research practice. Routledge. 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: According to Barad’s philosophy, a phenomenon is an instance of a wholeness, which includes both an object and agencies of its observation. However, there is no agential reality without constructed boundaries. The definition of theoretical concepts happens within a given context, which is specified by constructed boundaries, necessary for developing meanings. In addition, the described human conceptual schema becomes itself a part of a phenomenon. Cushing, James T.: 1994. Quantum Mechanics: Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

In this Book

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." 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. Fine, Arthur: 1984, ‘The Natural Ontological Attitude’, in Scientific Realism, ed. by J. Leplin. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hooker, Clifford A.: 1972, ‘The Nature of Quantum Mechanical Reality’, in Paradigms and Paradoxes, ed. R. G. Colodny, Pittsburgh: U. of Pittsburgh Press.