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What's the Matter with Discourse?

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What's the Matter with Discourse? What’s the Matter with Discourse? An alternative reading of Karen Barad’s philosophy Ingrid Andersson Department of Education Master Thesis 30 hp Education Master’s Programme in Education (180-300 hp) Spring 2016 Supervisor: Klas Roth Examiner: Gunnar Karlsson What’s the matter with discourse? An alternative reading of Karen Barad’s philosophy Ingrid Andersson Abstract The theoretical movement known under the heading of posthumanism has entered the academic field. Posthumanisms most prominent feature is to retrieve the concept of matter into the analytical framework. Matter is understood to be under-theorized within the social sciences as a result of the permeative focus upon language and discourse. A prevailing understanding of posthumanism that has been used within educational science and philosophy thus consists of moving the searchlight from language/discourse onto matter. Notably, these scholars are turning to the philosopher Karen Barad in order to spell out their posthumanistic implications. The aim of the thesis is to give an account of the philosophy of Karen Barad in contrast to other prevailing renderings of her. The analysis is carried out using a contrastive methodological approach. In this study I demonstrate how my reading of Barad differs from the scholarly readings that I choose to engage with. The results show that with an alternative conceptual understanding of Barad’s posthumanistic theory the analysis is being steered towards the entanglement of matter and discourse rather than towards the materialistic components of a posed problem. In addition, the results also show how a focus on the ontological underpinnings of Barad’s theoretical framework can give crucial contributions when it comes to understanding the generative conditions of science and knowledge-making. Keywords Karen Barad Posthumanism Material-discursive Intra-action Entanglements Onto-epistemology Philosophy of Education Pedagogy Theory of Science Department of Education Master Thesis 30 hp Education Master’s Programme in Education (180-300 hp) Spring 2016 Supervisor: Klas Roth Examiner: Gunnar Karlsson 3 Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………6 Background..........................................................................................................................................8 Literature review.....................................................................................................................................................10 Posthumanism in alignment with technology................................................................................10 The Subject.....................................................................................................................................12 New Materialism............................................................................................................................13 In a Swedish pedagogical context..................................................................................................15 Summary and Reflections...............................................................................................................17 Theoretical Framing and Methodological Design………………………………………………….19 Aim and Research Questions..............................................................................................................21 Introducing Karen Barad's Philosophy.............................................................................................22 Cutting Through Different Disciplinary Realms............................................................................22 Heisenberg versus Bohr.................................................................................................................24 A Closer Look at Bohr...................................................................................................................26 Piezoelectric Crystal and the Making of a Baby............................................................................29 Barad and Performativity..............................................................................................................31 Agency...........................................................................................................................................33 Quantum Entanglements................................................................................................................35 Schrödinger’s Cat and the Measurement Problem........................................................................36 In Contrast to Other Readings.......................................................................................................40 Entangled Readings.......................................................................................................................40 Critical Voices................................................................................................................................41 Matter Understood as a Category.................................................................................................43 In a Swedish Pedagogical Context.................................................................................................45 Subjects and Material Artefacts.....................................................................................................45 4 Diffraction and Intra-action Applied.............................................................................................49 Discussion.............................................................................................................................................54 Aim of the Study……………………………………………………………………………………………….54 Baradian Posthumanism as a Theory of Science…………………………………………………………55 Theoretical Contributions………………………………………………………...........………………………….59 References.............................................................................................................................................60 5 Introduction Language has been granted too much power. The linguistic turn, the semiotic turn, the interpretive turn, the cultural turn: it seems that at every turn lately every “thing”―even materiality―is turned into a matter of language or some other form of cultural representation. The ubiquitous puns on “matter” do not, alas, mark a rethinking of the key concepts (materiality and signification) and the relationship between them. Rather, they seem to be symptomatic of the extent to which matters of “fact” (so to speak) have been replaced with matters of signification (no scare quotes here). Language matters. Discourse matters. Culture matters. There is an important sense in which the only thing that doesn't seem to matter anymore is matter. (Barad 2007, p. 132) This is a quote from the philosopher Karen Barad that has spawned a great deal of discussion not to say controversy. Is it matter as “things” and “stuff” that the quotation is designed to achieve, or matter as “meaning”, or perhaps both? Is it plausible to claim, as do Barad above, that matter does not matter anymore? As I see it, the only way to go about finding out what a material theory of the kind above amounts to is to answer my posed questions, as trivial as they at first glance may seem. The triviality of the questions does have a tendency to disappear into thin air once we start to retrieve the answers. As Lucas D. Introna puts it: “Now, most people would agree that artefacts or technology does things—a kettle boils water, a hammer drives in a nail, a computer sends an e-mail, etc. Thus, it would not be too controversial to claim that the idea that artefacts have, or embody, some level of agency—even if it is very limited or derived in some way—is generally accepted. What is disputed is the nature and origin of that agency.” (D. Introna 2007, p. 2). The citation is in accordance with the agenda for this thesis in more than one way: first, it acknowledges the fact that agency can be granted to artefacts in a trivial way, so trivial, in fact, that we can discard it in less than no time. Second, it points to where the problem of agency actually resides; it is the “nature” and “origin” of materialistic agency that is being disputed, not the fact that some artefacts work as mediators in some contexts. Already have we stumbled upon sentences that need further scrutiny in order to properly be settled; can agency reside anywhere? Is agency something other than intentionality? How can we differentiate between the two? And so on. This thesis seeks to close read the philosophy of Karen Barad through the lens of qualitative content analysis. My content analysis is paired with a close contrastive reading of the interpretations of Barad that I address in this thesis. The contrast reading of interpretations of Barad shows that they all unite in their respective take on the notion of ʻmatterʼ (especially) which accords with the predominant reception of her. I embark on this mission in order to give an account of my alternative reading of Barad’s theoretical implications. When I first came across the work of the physicist and philosopher Karen Barad, I admit, I was a devoted butlerian. Thus, I struggled to comprehend Barad’s concept of materiality and especially her 6 conceptual entangling of matter and discourse. This move of Barad becomes apparent in her criticism towards the poststructural reasoning of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. Matter and discourse is sort of the same thing according to Barad at the same time as her most salient
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