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Subjectivity, Body, and Ethics in Barad's Materialism

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Subjectivity, Body, and Ethics in Barad's Materialism 55 Different Kinds of Matter(s) – Subjectivity, Body, and Ethics in Barad’s Materialism BY RENÉ ROSFORT Once upon a time Karen Barad’s agential realism in the fine month of May, many years ago, offers an original view on nature. a princess – and not just any ordinary prin- This view is based on an “ethico-on - cess but a remarkably intelligent philoso - to-epistem-ology” in which ethics, pher-princess – sent a letter to a man re- nowned for his profound metaphysical in - ontology, and epistemology are not sight asking a question that still puzzles separate levels of investigation. The philosophers today, more than three cen - consequence of this conflated metho- turies later: how is our conscious, rational dological approach is a theory that – mind related to the non-conscious matter of our body? When the prominent man at despite its many merits – disregards first provides a rather paltry answer about crucial aspects of human nature the naturally experienced union of mind (subjectivity and body) and neglects and body, the princess promptly comments: the concrete problems of ethics. “I admit that it would be easier for me to concede matter and extension to the soul than to concede the capacity to move a body and to be moved by it to an immaterial thing” (Shapiro 2007: 68 [72]). The year is 1643, and the correspondents are Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618- 1680) and René Descartes (1596-1650). 56 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012 This discussion of the abstruse interaction misconstrued in Barad’s work. I conclude of the matterless mind and the mindless with a brief consideration of some ethical body marks the beginning of a seven-year issues in contemporary gender studies that long correspondence about central philo - may help us to see both the merits and lim - sophical issues covering metaphysics, math - its of Barad’s work. ematics, ethics, and politics. Obviously, within the restricted limits of Besides wanting to draw attention to this brief article I shall not be able to pay Elisabeth’s penetrating observations, de - due respect to the breathtaking scope of plorably all too often forgotten, I begin Barad’s knowledge or the details of her with her question to Descartes because in analyses; neither do I possess the training what follows I want to use some of her ob - or ability to comment on her interpretation servations to articulate some of my con - of quantum physics. I shall, as mentioned, cerns regarding Karen Barad’s material merely concentrate on what I consider to metaphysics. Elisabeth was among the first be serious problems in her conflated philosophers in the dawn of the Western methodological approach to (post)human scientific revolution to explicate the prob - nature. lem of how to account for a rational mind in a strictly physical nature, and her acuity is confirmed by the fact that her questions THE PENDULUM SWING are very much alive at the theoretical core OF ANTAGONISM AND of contemporary philosophy. I shall look at BARAD ’S MATERIALISM three interconnected issues that remain if A brief look at the development of two ma - not neglected then at least unattended to in jor, and highly conflicting, currents in our Barad’s ambitious project, namely, subjec - attempt to understand human nature may tivity, body, and ethics. These have been, provide an explanatory background against and still are, crucial issues for feminist which we can better assess Barad’s material - thinking, as well as for philosophy in gener - ist theory. al. I shall argue that the problems involved The twentieth century can be read as the in each of these issues point to serious flaws scientific century par excellence . In the first in Barad’s ambition to completely revise decades of the young century, physics and the traditional ontological and epistemo - mathematics made extraordinary advances logical framework for thinking about physi - (mathematical set theory, general relativity, cal nature and the existence of human be - quantum physics); in the period from the ings in nature. As a consequence of these 1930s to 1950s the newly developed mole - flaws, I shall venture the conclusion that cular biology joined forces with genetics despite the obvious merits of Barad’s work, and changed our view of human develop - contemporary feminist theorists need to ment. In July 1969 the first human foot - employ her ideas with caution, if we are to print made the moon familiar. The 1970s avoid losing sight of disturbingly concrete and 1980s abounded with dazzling com - ethical problems that are still in need of puter calculations and surprising, some - careful analysis. times quite fanciful, evolutionary syntheses My argument is developed in four steps. purporting to explain human behaviour First, I very briefly introduce Barad’s theo - (first under the name of sociobiology, then ry and its place in the development of con - as evolutionary psychology). The closing temporary feminism. In the following two decade experienced colourful insight into sections, I shall look more carefully at the the living brain by the combined efforts of issues of subjectivity and the human body, the emerging computer sciences and neu - arguing that they are neglected or at least roscience, and finally the turbulent century DIFFERENT KINDS OF MATTER(S) 57 was crowned by the first draft of the much and men, discrete and immutable differ - advertised mapping of the human genome ences of sexuality, gender dispositions, in - on June 26, 2000. On the other hand, un - telligence and other human features. At the derneath this amazing and seemingly un - opposite end, we find the suspicious legend flagging scientific progress suspicious voices bashers who vehemently contest such talk began to grow louder. The horrible appli - about universal “nature” and about natural, cations of scientific knowledge experienced essential features or immutable differences, in the first half of the century (enhanced and instead focus on the plasticity of hu - weaponry, eugenics, allegedly ‘scientific’ man characteristics in the form of cultural race theories and gender ideologies, and relativity, performative enactments, discur - the nuclear bomb) led many intellectuals to sive flexibility, and the inscrutable power of question the nature, scope, and limits of language. I use the figure of a swinging the natural sciences and the unfathomable pendulum to illustrate this antagonism be - technological advances. This general suspi - cause – as anyone who has ever observed an cion crystallized in many theoretical forms old clock or a metronome knows – a pen - that are not easily disentangled from one dulum swing only admits movement to ex - another (critical theory, second wave femi - treme positions; an equilibrated middle po - nism, post-colonial studies, deconstruction, sition is only possible once the pendulum postmodernism, science studies, and many has come to a standstill – the clock’s mea - more). Whereas the scientific enthusiasts surement of time ends, the tone dies away. believe in the now rather precarious legend The rhythm of antagonism, particularly evi - of a steady, unwaveringly objective disclo - dent in (but by no means limited to) femi - sure of essential features of human nature, nist studies, is nourished by extreme posi - the suspicious “legend bashers” (Kitcher tions, that is, nature or nurture, biology or 1993) emphasize the petrifying and oppres - culture, immutability or change. sive ideology involved in such a legend- It is against this tense background that based view of scientific progress. In fact, the extraordinary appeal of Karen Barad’s the suspicious took the idea of a universal thinking becomes understandable. She does human nature to be an artificial construct not accept the traditional antagonisms or concocted by overheated propagandists fractured oppositions of the past. Instead who were stubbornly blind to the complex - she proposes “a sense of connectivity ity of language, insensitive to the signifi - through the traces of variously entangled cance of culture, and either hopelessly naive threads and of the (re)workings of mutual or malignantly deaf to the voices of those constitution and unending iterative recon - who suffer under the economically devised figurings” (Barad 2010: 245). 1 She is an schemes of biopolitics. This fight over what exquisitely well-cultured theoretical physi - it is to be human was simmering through - cist who writes with the beautiful ease of a out a major part of the century, came into skilled novelist in combination with the un - full blossom in the last quarter, and is still compromising verve of a pragmatic scien - with us today. tist, and is thus able to conjure up tasty en - One way to illustrate the tense dynamics tanglements of quantum physics, theatre, of this general antagonism is the literally poems, philosophy, politics, and feminism. extreme movement of a pendulum. At the Her knowledge appears boundless, and the one end of the pendulum swing, we find limits of her explanatory scope can only be the scientific enthusiasts advocating a uni - probed by the heights of her vertiginous versal or essentialist conception of human aim, namely, to introduce nothing less than nature with a focus on innate, and basically a “lively new ontology”, in which: unalterable, differences between women 58 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012 [T]he world’s radical aliveness comes to light ism”, which, among other things, is “a in an entirely nontraditional way that reworks posthumanist account of performativity the nature of both relationality and aliveness that challenges the positioning of materiali - (vitality, dynamism, agency). This shift in on - ty as either a given or a mere effect of hu - tology also entails a reconceptualization of man agency. On an agential realist account, other core philosophical concepts such as materiality is an active factor in processes of space, time, matter, dynamics, agency, struc - materialization”; or in the straightforward ture, subjectivity, objectivity, knowing, inten - manner characteristic of her style, “matter tionality, discursivity, performativity, entan - is not a fixed essence; rather, matter is sub - glement, and ethical engagement (33).
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