80 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012 Challenging Mainstream Metaphysics

– Barad’s Agential Realism and Feminist Philosophy of Religion

BY MATZ HAMMARSTRÖM

Karen Barad’s agential realism is And we are nature. a fundamental challenge to the We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature. Nature weeping. mainstream masculine metaphysics Nature speaking of nature to nature. The red- of separateness, and clears the way winged blackbird flies in us. for a relational understanding of Susan Griffin 1 reality, being and becoming. Through its fusing together of ethics, The aim of this paper is twofold: To pre - ontology and epistemology it can also sent Karen Barad’s agential realism as a contribute to a further development challenge to mainstream masculine meta - physics, and to demonstrate the relevance of feminist philosophy of religion. of Barad’s thinking for feminist philosophy of religion. During the last century, metaphysics has been severely criticized, and often declared dead. But whether we like it or not, we cannot escape metaphysics – acknowledged or unacknowledged, a metaphysics, i.e., a basic understanding of what is real, how re - ality is structured and constructed, is always there, forming the ways in which we under - stand and deal with reality, be it in everyday life or in science. The choice is not between CHALLENGING MAINSTREAM METAPHYSICS 81 saying yes or no to metaphysics, but choos - separate entities, discrete individuals with ing which metaphysics to accept. 2 intrinsic properties. This individualist as - The article outlines the impact of Karen sumption, that has far-reaching conse - Barad’s thinking on our understanding of quences and permeates not only philosoph - reality, being and becoming, and demon - ical discourse but also “our social institu - strates the relevance of her agential realism tions, our lives, and our senses of our - for feminist philosophy of religion. Barad’s selves” (Scheman 1983: 226), is part of the agential realism is presented as the corner - mainstream metaphysics of separateness. stone for a relational metaphysics, challeng - Karen Barad rejects the whole idea of “in - ing the mainstream masculine metaphysics dividually determinate entities with inher - of separateness, characterized by individual - ent properties”, as “the hallmark of atom - ism, representationalism, and dualism, with istic metaphysics” (Barad 2003: 812), and its genderized binary oppositions between claims that the “thingification”, i.e., our mind – body; culture – nature; reason – seeing and speaking of ‘entities’, ‘things’ passion; transcendent – immanent; sacred – and ‘relata’ instead of relations, distorts our profane, etc. understanding of the world and ourselves I also claim that Barad’s agential realism and of how we are related. As opposed to is a fruitful perspective for an alternative the atomistic metaphysics of separateness, understanding of religion, and an impor - Barad’s agential realism offers a relationalist tant and solid theoretical perspective for metaphysics, according to which the onto - the further development of feminist philos - logical primary is not pre-existing, ontolog - ophy of religion. I substantiate this claim ically separate things or objects but agen - through a discussion of central aspects of tially produced phenomena . Barad’s use of the feminist philosophies of religion of the term phenomena has its origin in Niels Pamela Sue Anderson and Grace M. Bohr’s philosophy-physics, where it de - Jantzen, authors of the first two mono - notes the intra-active relation between an graphs on the subject. 3 Anderson discusses observed object and the agencies of obser - and refigures some key concepts for under - vation. 5 There is, according to Bohr, no standing religion and doing philosophy of given pre-existing cut between the object religion in ways not (or at least less) limited of observation and the agencies of observa - by patriarchal preconceptions, and I will tion, but a cut is enacted in a specific con - deal with three of these concepts: “rational - text as part of the experimental set-up, the ity”, “feminist standpoint epistemology” apparatus. and “strong objectivity”, and show how Through a reading together of Bohr’s they connect to and can benefit from and Foucault’s understanding of the appa - Barad’s thinking. In this context I will also ratus, Barad is able to let the concept bene - discuss the main idea in Grace Jantzen’s fe- fit from Foucault’s rich sociological inter - minist philosophy of religion, as revealed pretation and thereby supersede Bohr’s sta - by her book title Becoming Divine, linking tic laboratory style understanding, without it to the strong ethical dimension of loosing sight of the material aspects of the Barad’s agential realism. 4 apparatus. 6 In Barad’s usage, the apparatus - es are not “static arrangements in the world, but rather […] dynamic (re)config - THE RELATIONALIST CHALLENGE – urings of the world” (Barad 2003: 816), BARAD ’S AGENTIAL REALISM and thereby both parts of phenomena, and A central trait of Western philosophy and phenomena themselves. Bohr’s solution to worldview is the habit, with roots in Plato the quandery of the wave-particle-duality of and Aristotle, to view beings or things as light was the insight that the expressions 82 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012

“wave” and “particle” did not describe an ... relations are not secondarily derived from intrinsic light-property, but the result of independently existing relata; rather, the mu - different specific intra-actions. Thus, the tual ontological dependence of relata – the objective referent is not a separate pre-exist - relation – is the ontological primitive […] re - ing object with certain inherent properties lata only exist within phenomena as a result or qualities (there simply is no such thing), of specific intra-actions (i.e., there are no in - but the phenomenon , of which the apparatus dependent relata, only relata-within-relations) is an inextricable part. In Barad’s words: (Barad 2007: 429, n14).

The two different apparatuses effect different To my mind Barad is right in holding that cuts, that is, draw different distinctions delin - eating the ‘measured object’ from the ‘mea - [t]he notion of intra-action (in contrast to suring instrument’. In other words, they dif - the usual ‘interaction,’ which presumes the fer in their local material resolutions of the prior existence of independent entities or re - inherent ontological indeterminacy. There is lata) represents a profound conceptual shift no conflict because the two different results (Barad 2007: 139). mark different intra-actions (Barad 2003: 816, n 21). Instead of separately pre-existing “things”, there for us to interact with, Barad gives an Although Barad writes about “measure - account of a relational “production of mate - ments”, her agential realism is applicable al - rial bodies”, through “agential intra-acting” so outside the scientific laboratory. As Jo - (Barad 2003: 814). Instead of a separately seph Rouse has remarked: “Any causal int - existing object of knowledge, detected and ra-action is implicitly a measurement in Ba - measured as to its inherent properties by a rad’s sense” (Rouse 2004: 158, n8), which singular neatly demarcated individual sub - means that her theorizing about relations, ject, we get a phenomenon understood as relata and phenomena has relevance also “the inseparability of ‘observed object’ and for extra-scientific intra-activity. ‘the agencies of observation’” (ibid.). Since A consequence of agential realism’s rela - the ontological primitive for Barad is the tional ontology is that it is the phenome - (relational) phenomenon, and “relata only non and not some independent, separate exist within phenomena as a result of speci- object that is “the primary ontological fic intra-actions” (815, n 20), relata are not unit” (Barad 2007: 139). It is important to ontologically separate individuals pre-exist - notice, however, that to Barad ing interaction, but rather agentially separa - ble dividuals emerging through intra-ac - ... phenomena do not merely mark the episte - tions. 7 According to the prevalent meta - mological inseparability of observer and ob - physics of separateness, the ontological sep - served, or the results of measurements; arateness of observer and observed, of rather, phenomena are the ontological insepa - knower and known, is the very condition rability/ entanglement of intra-acting ‘agen - for objectivity. From this perspective it cies’. That is, phenomena are ontologically seems obvious that the possibility for objec - primitive relations – relations without pre-ex - tivity is lost if the separateness is denied. But isting relata (ibid.) . while objectivity according to a metaphysics of separateness demands ontological sepa - According to the pervasive individualism rateness between the subject and object of and atomism of mainstream masculine me- knowledge, objectivity according to a rela - taphysics, relata are, as an obvious matter of tional metaphysics is secured through agen - fact, seen as prior to relations, but to Barad tial separability, that is the possibility to sep - CHALLENGING MAINSTREAM METAPHYSICS 83 arate the object from the agencies of obser - Through this presentation of some key per - vation as related parts of the phenomenon, spectives of Barad’s agential realism, an al - produced or materialized by the apparatus. ternative to the mainstream masculine For Barad it is phenomena “produced metaphysics of separateness has crystallized: through specific causal intra-actions involv - A metaphysics of relatedness, characterized ing multiple apparatuses of bodily produc - by an intra-active relationalism, viewing tion”, that constitutes reality, i.e., “[r]eality things as things-in-phenomena and our - is composed not of things-in-themselves or selves as being in direct engagement with things-behind-phenomena but of things-in- the world through our material-discursive phenomena” (2007: 140). 8 In a note Barad practices, intra-actively producing both makes clear that she uses the term phenom - subject and object, responsible for our int - enon in another way than the phenomenol - ra-acting within and as parts of the world, ogists and Kant, stating that for the apparatuses and phenomena we let constitute reality. Now let us move on to ... it makes no sense to talk about indepen - show some aspects of the potential of dently existing things as somehow behind or Barad’s thinking through applying it to as the causes of phenomena. In a sense, there feminist philosophy of religion. are no noumena, only phenomena (Barad 2007: 429, n18). FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION This amounts to a rejection of yet another BENEFITING FROM BARAD aspect of the metaphysics of separateness: In A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, Pame- representationalism, that is the idea that the la Sue Anderson uses and refigures some world I perceive and live in is not the real key concepts for understanding religion world, but an appearance of the Real, and doing philosophy of religion in ways posited as in some way behind or beyond not (or at least less) limited by patriarchal the perceived world. Intertwined with this preconceptions. In the following I will deal ontological stance is an epistemology ac - with three of these concepts: “rationality”, cording to which an idea is true in so far as “feminist standpoint epistemology” and it corresponds to, that is adequately repre - “strong objectivity”, and show how they sents the really Real, or the world as it is in- connect to and can benefit from Barad’s itself. Thus, there is held to be a split be - thinking. In this context I will also discuss tween things-in-themselves and our repre - the main idea in Grace M. Jantzen’s femi - sentations of them, and language is seen as nist philosophy of religion, expressed by having a mediating function between us her Irigarayan book title Becoming Divine , and the world. Through its and its strong affinity with the ethical di - mension of Barad’s agential realism. performative understanding of discursive practices [agential realism] challenges the rep - resentationalist belief in the power of words REFIGURING RATIONALITY to represent preexisting things. Unlike repre - In discussing rationality, Anderson is very sentationalism, which positions us above or careful in her critizism of the concept, so as outside the world we allegedly merely reflect not to render feminist philosophy of reli - on, a performative account insists on under - gion vulnerable to accusations of irrational - standing thinking, observing, and theorizing ity – the central topic of her book is, after as practices of engagement with, and as part all, “the rationality of religious belief” (An - of, the world in which we have our being derson 1998: 31). What she wants to do is (Barad 2007: 133). to “expose the inadequacy and weakness of 84 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012 rational justifications of religious belief, es - ogy of Barad’s agential realism offers, pro - pecially those of the dominant empirical re - viding both an alternative way to under - alist forms of theism” (ibid). 9 stand reality, and to understand our under - A key question when discussing rational - standing of it and our participation in its ity is, of course, whose rationality? And An - becoming. Barad’s account of the entangle - derson (under)states that “[r]ationality has ment of being and knowing in the produc - come to seem inadequate insofar as it has tion of phenomena through intra-active re - been equated with masculinity and the lationality is an important tool for refigur - male subject” (ibid). For Anderson the way ing rationality, and stresses the agential- to a refigured rationality, delivered from its constructive aspect of the world’s “world - masculine bias, goes through a shift of fo - ing”. 10 In opposition to the concept of cus from the justification of belief to the “discovery” which manifests the idea of construction of belief – a change that not pre-existing passive entities or objects just only affects religious belief but also knowl - laying there ready to be detected by a sepa - edge at large, since knowledge, as a conse - rate volitionally interacting individual sub - quence of the mainstream masculine meta - ject, Barad’s concept of agential intra-active physics, is equated with justified true belief production manifests the idea of an inter - – where what is considered as “justified” dependent entanglement where the rela - are beliefs bolstered by a masculine biased tional process, involving the multilayered reason. apparatus, is the primary in and through In maintaining the rationality of religious which phenomena emerge as articulations belief, while criticizing an empiricist under - of the world. Justification is also something standing of this rationality, Anderson asks: quite different in an agential realist per - “Whose reason gives justification or war - spective. As phenomena are produced, so rant to Christian realist forms of theism?” justification is produced, and it is not a And her answer is, not surprisingly, that the once and for all thing, but an ongoing owner of this reason is “the white Euro - process – truth happens. pean man” (ibid: 36). Thus, in its alleged default position reason is ethnocentric and androcentric, manifesting, once again, the FEMINIST STANDPOINT EPISTEMOLOGY mainstream masculine metaphysics, that AND STRONG OBJECTIVITY too long has been allowed to truncate, de - Barad is stressing the firm opposition to preciate and make inaccessible considerable epistemological relativism shown by promi - parts of human experiential potential. nent feminist science studies scholars as Anderson states that “the epistemologi - Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding, who cal framework by which one’s beliefs are have developed and represent “nonrelativist constructed makes all the difference”, and antirealist positions” (Barad 2007: 44). she declares that “a feminist philosophy of Barad shares their nonrelativist perspective, religion has a crucial role to play in trans - but prefers to characterize her position as a forming the overall framework of belief in brand of realism. 11 contemporary philosophy of religion” – a Nor Anderson wants to go down the rel - contemporary framework she describes as ativist road, and that is one of the reasons “biased according to sex/gender, race, eth - she finds strong objectivity and feminist nicity, and class” (33). But a transformation standpoint epistemology attractive. In her of the epistemological framework needs to account of feminist standpoint epistemolo - be linked to and supported by an alterna - gy’s understanding of the subject, Ander - tive metaphysical or ontological outlook, son points out that as embodied the subject and this is exactly what the ontoepistemol - always is visible and located, and in these CHALLENGING MAINSTREAM METAPHYSICS 85 aspects “not fundamentally different from linked to mainstream masculine meta - the objects of their knowledge” (Anderson physics it is not enough “to welcome fe - 1998: 86). Here Anderson quotes Hard - males, slaves, children, animals, and other ing, saying that “the same kinds of social dispossessed Others […] into the fold of forces that shape objects of knowledge also knowers but to better account for the on - shape (but do not determine) knowers and tology of knowing” (Barad 2007: 378). their (epistemological) projects” (ibid). The latter, however, is, in Barad’s perspec - Thus, “subjects are not isolated individuals tive, not achieved through a more adequate but communities of knowers”, and as and democratic mediation, but through “agents of knowledge”, the subjects are doing away with the whole idea of media - “multiple, heterogeneous, and contradicto - tion, replacing it with an understanding of ry or incoherent” (ibid.). Anderson’s per - us as being in direct engagement in and spective rests on the interactive model with the world through our intra-active where there is an unambiguous line of de - material-discursive practices. marcation between subject and object, al - though they are both embodied and more complex than in the mainstream masculine AN ONTOEPISTEMOLOGICAL model. In my opinion this is one of the PHILOSPOPHY OF RELIGION crucial points where Anderson’s position A paradigmatic difference between Ander - could benefit from Barad’s agential realism, son and Barad lies in Anderson’s accep - with its rich concept of the apparatus, and tance of the idea of an “ontological separa - her analysis of the intra-active production tion of consciousness and its world” (An - of subject and object. derson 1998: 89), and the understanding The alleged objectivity based on the of language as having “a mediating func - mainstream masculine metaphysics of sepa - tion” (151). Using Barad’s agential realism, rateness is considered by Anderson (as well with its intra-active understanding of being as Barad) to be a weak objectivity, since it and becoming, and its stress on us being conceals its biases and masquerades as neu - parts of the world we observe (“nature see - tral. Once the possibility of neutrality is de - ing nature”, as Griffin puts it in my open - bunked and the genderized rationality be - ing quote), Anderson would not need to hind the objectivist idea is exposed as dis - bridge any ontological separation, because torting and narrowing our understanding there would no longer be any separation. of the world, one must seek objectivity Being of the world we are, in Barad’s view, elsewhere. Instead of seeing the social and agentially separable but not ontologically constructive aspects of knowledge-making separate from the world. as detrimental to objectivity, feminist stand - For Anderson “[t]he crucial difference point epistemology claims that it is the very between the traditional male theist or athe - social nature of knowledge that vouches for ist and the feminists philosopher […] is the a strong objectivity. An open and self-re - revised feminist concept of rationality” flexive social processing constitutes a force (Anderson 1998: 214); for Barad the key that generates the best possible beliefs. And question is the revised concept of reality . for Anderson the key point is “to construct Anderson’s Kantian reassertion that “ratio - less partial beliefs by thinking from the po - nality and reality do not correspond per - sition of marginalized others” (Anderson fectly due to the limitations of human rea - 1998: 81). In Barad’s agential realism, son” (215) displays an epistemological per - however, objectivity is turned into some - spective anchored in a metaphysics of sepa - thing more than merely a view from some - rateness, while Barad’s ontoepistemological where. 12 To challenge the epistemology stance opens up for an alternative relational 86 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012 understanding of reality, according to makes the relationalist perspective very in - which “our knowledge-making practices teresting for a feminist philosophy of reli - are social-material enactments that con - gion aiming at a transformation and revital - tribute to, and are part of, the phenomena ization of our understanding of the divine. we describe” (Barad 2007: 26). In our continuous intra-active participa - Anderson is successful in her task of dis - tion, through our material-discursive prac - playing the patriarchal bias in the philoso - tices, in the world’s becoming, there are phy of religion as well as in religious, espe - vast opportunities for renewing the reli - cially Christian religious thinking. It seems gious symbolic and thereby open up for to me, however, that she does not heed new ways of experiencing and understand - Haraway’s warning not to settle for a “ma - ing the divine. noeuvre within inherited Western analytic traditions, a manoeuvre begun in dialectics, but stopping short of the needed revisions” DIVINE BEING AND THE APPARATUS (Haraway 1991: 198). OF RELIGIOUS PRODUCTION What is needed is not to make the medi - As presented above, one of the key con - um more adequate. Neither is it enough to cepts of Barad’s agential realism is the appa - refigure our understanding of the object(s) ratus, a concept Barad forges under inspira - of religious experience, but to actively re - tion mainly from Bohr, Foucault and Har - constitute these very objects. This calls for away, denoting the multi-layered material- a more radical approach than Anderson’s. discursive practices that are productive of At the end of her book she finds herself phenomena. Barad underlines, quoting “left with the query: To what sort of deity Haraway, that it is impossible to know be - is one rationally justified in giving devo - forehand what constitutes an apparatus, this tion? Or what sort of belief, if any, can be constructed concerning a personal deity?” ... cannot be known in advance of engaging (Anderson 1998: 228). In her concluding in the always messy projects of description, section she also asks: “Can belief in the ex - narration, intervention, inhabiting, convers - istence of a personal deity be rationally jus - ing, exchanging, and building. The point is tified for men and women?” (227). As I to get at how worlds are made and unmade, understand her, she means that the answer in order to participate in the processes, in or - depends on how we understand the word der to foster some forms of life and not oth - “exist”, but in my perspective the preoccu - ers (Haraway 1994: 63, quoted in Barad pation with the question of God’s exis - 2007: 449, n 11). tence, as well as the whole discussion of ra - tionally justified belief, is a symptom of the As agential parts of the world’s worlding masculine metaphysics of separateness. 13 we cannot but participate in this process, The main question for a relationalist phi - the question is how we do this, if we partic - losophy of religion is not if there is a God ipate in a responsible way or not. Barad in a mainstream metaphysical meaning, but states that: how we can understand the idea of God and God’s relationality. what we need is something like an ethico-on - If reality is no pre-existing, observer-in - to-epistem-ology – an appreciation of the inter - dependent reality “out there”, but consti - twining of ethics, knowing, and being – since tuted by phenomena in and through con - each intra-action matters, since the possibili - tinuously ongoing intra-action, then, there ties for what the world may become call out is no external observer-independent God, in the pause that precedes each breath before and thus no given divine gender. This a moment comes into being and the world is CHALLENGING MAINSTREAM METAPHYSICS 87 remade again, because the becoming of the ... a sensible transcendental that comes into world is a deeply ethical matter (Barad 2007: being through us, of which we would be the 185). mediators and bridges. Not only in mourning for the dead God of Nietzsche, not waiting One way to express the goal of such a re - passively for the god to come, but by conjur - sponsible mode of intra-acting as part of ing him up among us, within us, as resurrec - the world is to use Luce Irigaray’s concept tion and transfiguration of blood, of flesh, of “becoming divine”, from her article through a language and an ethics that is ours “Divine Women”, where she deals with (Irigaray 1993: 129, quoted in Jantzen 1999: God in a way that transcends the concept 253). of a “personal deity”: This active construction of an immanent [God] shows a way. It is the engine of a more transcendence can be viewed as a feminist perfect becoming. It is the vector, the bow - amendment of the apparatus of religious string, the horizon extended between the far - production, making possible alternative thest past and the farthest future, the most ways of experiencing and understanding passive and active – permanent and always in the divine. Because of its making it possible tension. God holds no obligation over our to overcome the separation of sacred and needs except to become. No task, no obliga - profane, of God and world, Jantzen sees tion burdens us except that one: become di - the idea of the sensible transcendental as a vine, become perfect. 14 “pantheistic projection of the female di - vine”, which “opens out what has hitherto This Irigarayan conception of God and the been seen as a set of polarities into a play of divine is used and advocated by Grace M. diversities”, thereby offering “new horizons Jantzen in Becoming Divine . Instead of for becoming which are rooted in gendered conceptualizing the divine as a being, as a embodiment” (Jantzen 1999: 272). disembodied “omni-everything Lord God” In Jantzen’s pantheist perspective the (Jantzen 1999: 275), Jantzen, under inspi - material and the divine are not separate but ration from Irigaray, conceptualizes it as a inextricably linked in a mutual process of goal, an ideal, as the “horizon for human being and becoming, in a way similar to becoming” (12f, 275 et passim). A crucial Barad’s material-discursive practices as parts aspect for Jantzen is that this human be - in and of the world’s intra-active becoming. coming divine is not an individual project As Barad rejects the idea of a world beyond but a “becoming divine for and with one the phenomenal world, Jantzen rejects the another” (99), with an explicit focus on life idea of “a locus of being and truth outside before , and not after death, one of the core the world, from which the world and all categories in her religious symbolic being that is in it is derivative”, an idea she holds natality, instead of the category commonly to be constitutive of “the western masculin - used to designate “Man’s” situation: mor - ist symbolic” (274). While Anderson focus - tality. 15 es on how the religious symbolic of the Jantzen is critical to the prevailing meta - west is suffering from a patriarchal bias, physics of separateness and expresses the Jantzen stresses how need for “a strategy that overcomes the se - ries of binaries” (270), and to overcome ... the masculinist symbolic of the west is un - the binaries transcendent – immanent, and dergirded by a concept of God as Divine Fa - sacred – profane, she makes use of another ther, a God who is also Word, and in his eter - Irigarayan concept, that of a sensible tran - nal disembodiment, omnipotence, and omni - scendental : science is the epitome of value (10). 16 88 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012

An acknowledgment of this mutual patriar - NOTES chal-theological lending of support makes 1. Susan Griffin, in Woman and Nature, The Roar - visible feminist philosophy of religion as a ing Inside Her , p 226. substantial factor for destabilizing the 2. In the call for papers for their seminal book Dis - covering reality – Feminst Perspectives on Epistemol - mainstream masculine metaphysics that not ogy, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Sci - only hampers philosophy of religion but al - enc e, Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka ex - so pervades our life as a whole. pressed the importance of giving attention “to the I this paper I have tried to show that underlying theories of knowledge and to the meta - Barad’s agential realism is a well thought physics which mirror and support patriarchal belief through and well argued prolific theoretical and practice” (Harding & Hintikka (eds.) 1983: foundation for a disruption of the main - ix). In her preface to the second edition, 2003, stream masculine metaphysics of separate - Harding points to the good and bad news that the texts and issues raised is still highly relevant, since, ness, and for the furtherance of feminist as she understates it, “mainstream epistemology, philosophy of religion. Pamela Sue Ander - metaphysics, methodology, and philosophy of sci - son’s refiguring of rationality, her critique ence, as practiced in the natural and social sciences of empirical realist theism, and her advoca - as well as in philosophy, have not yet fully adopted cy of standpoint epistemology and a revised feminist insights” (Harding & Hintikka (eds.) concept of objectivity, are all of the greatest 2003: xi). importance for a feminist philosophy of re - 3. In A Feminist Philosophy of Religion – The Ratio - nality and Myths of Religious Belief (1998), Pamela ligion. However, although necessary, her Sue Anderson focuses on the epistemological fra - epistemological stance is not sufficient for meworks of belief, and wants “to expose a scandal the needed transformation and revitaliza - of largely unacknowledged proportions in the cir - tion of philosophy of religion. Arguably, cular reasoning of patriarchal forms of theism” (49). notwithstanding its acute understanding of In Becoming Divine – Towards a Feminist Philosop - the dynamics of being and becoming, and hy of Religion (1999), Grace M. Jantzen critizises its fruitful focus on natality, neither Grace the preoccupation with the rational justification of beliefs within mainstream philosophy of religion, Jantzen’s ethical stance is sufficient in itself. and argues for a prioritization of the ethical over Feminist philosophy of religion could bene - the epistemological and ontological. fit substantially from Barad’s ethico-on - 4. Jantzen borrows the concept of “becoming di - toepistemological agential realism, amalga - vine” from Luce Irigaray (see Irigaray 1993: 68, mating a robust realist outlook with an ac - and Irigaray 1986: 9 (see note 14 below)). For knowledgment of our participation in the both Jantzen and Irigaray “becoming divine” world’s intra-active becoming, making means to become fully human. Jantzen claims that plain our responsibility for what forms of feminism usually ignores or downplays Irigaray’s insistence on the importance of the ideas of God life we foster – and for what kind of divinity and the divine for human fulfilment (Jantzen that comes to matter. The hope is for a phi - 1999: 7, n 1). losophy and a science rooted in an inclusive 5. For a more thorough presentation and discus - relationalist metaphysics, and for a feminist sion of Bohr’s concept of the phenomenon and its philosophy of religion in which “divine be - relevance for the philosophy of religion, see my ar - ing” is not understood as referring to a di - ticle “On Getting the Referent of Religious Expe - vine being seen as a separate pre-existing rience Right – Relationalism and Bohr’s Concept of ‘Phenomena’” 2011. being entity but rather as divine , a relational 6. On Foucault’s understanding of dispositif (appa - mode of responsible living as an intra-act - ratus), see Foucault 1977: ing part of the world’s ongoing becoming “What I’m trying to pick out with this term is, – a being that is also a doing. firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble con - sisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions–in short, the CHALLENGING MAINSTREAM METAPHYSICS 89 said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements 10. The term used in Barad 2010: 265. Originally of the apparatus. The apparatus itself is the system used by Heidegger as “die Welt weltet” (see Hei - of relations that can be established between these degger [1935], 2000, Introduction to Metaphysics ). elements” (194). 11. Perhaps the root to Barad’s choice to call her It is important to notice that Barad’s apparatuses approach agential realism can be found in Har - are agential and open-ended, and not like the stat - away’s statement: “The approach I am recom - ic and determining apparatuses of Louis Althusser mending is not a version of ‘realism’, which has (Barad 2007: 451, n 25). proved a rather poor way of engaging with the 7. The term “dividual” is not used by Barad, but I world’s active agency” (Haraway 1991: 199). find it adequate to express the non-dualist related - 12. Barad warns us not to “conflate [Haraway’s] ness at the root of her metaphysics. The term is notion of ‘situated’ with the specification of one’s borrowed from the American Anthropologist social location along a set of axes referencing one’s McKim Marriot, who uses it in his article “Hindu identity [–-] Situated knowledge is not merely transactions: diversity without dualism”, to de - about knowing or seeing from somewhere (as in scribe an alternative concept of personhood to be having a perspective) [–-] not solely an epistemo - found in South Asia: “persons […] are not logical matter […] but an ontological (ontoepiste - thought in South Asia to be ‘individual’, that is, mological) one” (Barad 2007: 471f, n 45). indivisible, bonded units, as they are in much of 13. I agree with Justus Buchler’s comment in Western social and psychological theory as well as Metaphysics of Natural Complexes : “[t]he question in common sense. Instead, it appears that persons whether God ‘exists’ or does not is a symptom of are generally thought by the South Asians to be deficiency in the categorical equipment of a meta - ‘dividual’ or divisible. To exist, dividual persons physics. The use of ‘exist’ in such a context tacitly absorb heterogenous material influences” (Marriot shapes a crude conception of the subject-matter 1976: 111). under debate […] The critical question must be, 8. The concept of “apparatuses of bodily produc - not whether God exists, nor whether there is an tion” has its origin in Donna Haraway’s “ Situated ‘entity’ which satisfies the scheme of traits by Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism which the concept of God is perpetuated, but in and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, where she what way a natural complex thus discriminated is presents it as “a category useful to a feminist theo - to be understood, analyzed, and experientially en - ry of situated knowledges” (Haraway 1991: 200). compassed; or, in what way it is to be further dis - Important to Barad is Haraway’s understanding criminated and found related” (Buchler 1990: 8). that the objects of knowledge are produced: “bod - 14. Luce Irigaray, “Divine Women,” trans. ies as objects of knowledge are material-semiotic Stephen Muecke (Sydney: Local Consumption generative nodes. Their boundaries materialize in Occasional Papers 8, 1986), p 9. Quote taken social interaction. Boundaries are drawn by map - from Kim, St. Ville & Simonaitis (ed.) 1993: 125f. ping practices; ‘objects’ do not pre-exist as such” 15. The idea of “natality” as central to the under - (ibid: 200f). The same understanding is expressed standing of our existence is inspired by Hannah in Barad’s view that there are no things-in-them - Arendt (see Jantzen 1999: 144). selves only things-in-phenomena, that is, produced 16. This demonstrates the validity of Jacques Der - by apparatuses, which are to be seen as part of the rida’s concept of phallogocentrism , used in his phenomena. Can we apply this thinking to reli - 1973 essay “La question du style” (in Nietzsche gion? Should we alongside apparatuses of bodily aujourd’hui? , Union générale d’éditions, Paris) , production, and for example apparatuses of literary where he combines the terms phallocentrism (de - production, also acknowledge apparatuses of “reli - noting the hierarchized patriarchal dualism) and gious production”, or apparatuses producing reli - logocentrism (which for Derrida not only denotes gious experiences? representationalism but also “the tendency […] to 9. A paradigmatic statement of the form of theism interpret the Word ( Logos ) in its full theological Anderson targets is Richard Swinburnes: “I take sense (‘In the beginning was the Word, and the the proposition ‘God exists’ (and the equivalent Word was God’)” (Burke 1994: 42)) to show that proposition ‘There is a God’) to be logically equi - the masculinist and the religious symbolic are un - valent to ‘there exists a person without a body derpinning and mutually supporting each other. (i.e., a spirit) who is eternal, is perfectly free, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and the creator of all things’” (Swinburne 1991: 8; quoted from Anderson 1998: 15). 90 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012

LITERATURE · Kim, Maggie C. W., St. Ville, Susan M. & Si - · Anderson, Pamela Sue (1998): A Feminist Philos - monaitis, Susan M. (eds.) (1993): Transfigurations ophy of Religion – The Rationality and Myths of – Theology and the French Feminists , Fortress Religious Belief . Blackwell, Oxford. Press, Minneapolis. · Barad, Karen (2003): Posthumanist Performativi - · Marriot, McKim (1976): Hindu transactions: di - ty: Toward an Understanding of How Matter versity without dualism, in: B. Kapferer (ed.): Comes to Matter, in: Signs: Journal of Women in Transaction and Meaning . ISHI Publications Culture and Society 2003/3. (ASA Essays in Anthropology 1), Philadelphia. · Barad, Karen (2007): Meeting the Universe · Rouse, Joseph (2004): Barad’s Feminist Natu - Halfway – Quantum Physics and the Entanglement ralsm, in: Hypatia 2004/19:1. of Matter and Meaning , Duke University Press, · Scheman, Naomi (1983): Individualism and the Durham. Objects of Psychology, in: Harding & Hintikka · Barad, Karen (2010): Quantum Entanglements (eds.): Discovery Reality . and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: · Swinburne, Richard (1991): The Coherence of Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Jus - Theism , Clarendon Press, Oxford. tice-to-Come, in: Derrida Today 2010/3:2. · Buchler, Justus (1990): Metaphysics of Natural Complexes , Second, Expanded Edition, State Uni - versity of New York Press. · Burke, Carolyn (1994): Irigaray Through the SUMMARY Looking Glass, in: Carolyn Burke, Naomin Schor Challenging Mainstream Metaphysics – & Margaret Whitford (eds.): Engaging with Iri - garay – Feminist Philosophy and Modern European Barad’s Agential Realism and Feminist Phi - Thought , Columbia University Press, New York. losophy of Religion · Foucault, Michel (1977): The Confession of the The article outlines the impact of Barad’s Flesh, in: Colin Gordon (ed.): Power/Knowledge thinking on our understanding of reality, be - Selected Interviews and Other Writings , 1980. ing and becoming at large, and demon - · Griffin, Susan (1980): Woman and Nature – The strates the relevance of her agential realism Roaring Inside Her , Harper & Row, New York. for feminist philosophy of religion. Barad’s · Hammarström, Matz (2011): On Getting the agential realism is presented as the corner - Referent of Religious Experience Right – Relatio - nalism and Bohr’s Concept of ‘Phenomena’, in: stone of a relationalist metaphysics, challeng - Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift , 2011/4. ing the mainstream masculine metaphysics of · Haraway, Donna J. (1991): Simians, Cyborgs, and separateness. Agential realism is also applied Women – The Reinvention of Nature , Free Associa - as a fruitful perspective for an alternative tion Books, London. understanding of religion, and as an impor - · Haraway, Donna J. (1994): A Game of Cat’s tant and solid theoretical perspective for the Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural further development of feminist philosophy of Studies, in: Configurations: A Journal of Literature and Science 1994/2:1. religion. The latter claim is substantiated · Harding, Sandra & Hintikka, Merrill (eds.) through a discussion of Pamela Sue Ander - (1983): Discovering Reality – Feminist Perspectives son’s and Grace Jantzen’s feminist philoso - on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Phi - phies of religion, showing how they can benefit losophy of Science , D. Reidel Publishing Company, from and find support in Barad’s ontoepiste - Dordrecht. mological metaphysics. · Irigaray, Luce (1993): An Ethics of Sexual Differ - ence , Athlone Press, London. Matz Hammarström, PhD student · Jantzen, Grace M. (1999): Becoming Divine – To - in the philosophy of religion wards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion , Indiana Centre for Theology and Religious Studies University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis. Lund University, Sweden