EAN: 9780822339175

MEETING THE UNIVERSE HALFWAY - KAREN BARAD KART...

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.

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