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Challenging Mainstream Metaphysics 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
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