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). stance in its intra-active becoming – not a thing but a doing, a congealing of agency” Barad’s work is dedicated to the develop - (183-84). ment of the new ontology, or rather an She draws the main support for her argu - “ethico-onto-epistem-ology”, in which ment from the enchanting subatomic world ethics, ontology, and epistemology are no of quantum physics, which leaves most longer separate fields of study (89-90, readers breathlessly behind in comprehen - 381). And although her theory is first and sion, but if one is to put a plump finger on foremost meant to be a contribution to her delicate theory in order to point out “science studies, feminist studies, and other her principal aim, I would say that it can be (inter)disciplinary studies” (25), Barad re - boiled down to the ambition of dissolving peatedly credits it as a panacea for all the solid differences and entrenched distinc - ailments caused by “idealist or magical” be - tions in order to enhance the “possibilities liefs in the “representationalist” dualism of of change” (35). biology and culture, subjectivity and objec - This is surely not a new ambition in fe- tivity, mind and body (e.g. 5, 23-5, 55, 70, minist thinking, and it is an attitude toward 93, 131, 183, 221-2, 317-8, 391-4). Con - which I am quite sympathetic. We do in - trary to the reflective method with which deed need to overcome stale prejudices, os - we have long tried to understand the world sified habits of thinking, and not least the and other people as discrete objects in op - harmful trajectory of ideological precon - position to ourselves as experiencing sub - ceptions about (human) nature. What is jects, Barad operates with a transdiscipli - new is Barads background as a physicist, nary diffractive methodology by means of and her methodological stance that can be which the reflective distance between the summed up in her own slogan “Language experienced object and the experiencing has been granted too much power” (132). subject is eliminated and object and subject Contrary to the concern with the subtleties become part of the same material enact - of language and the general suspicion ment. Once we learn to put aside our (all about science that characterized much fe- too) human tendency to consider ourselves minist thinking in the second half of the as individuals with our “own roster of non - twentieth century, Barad uses the most relational properties” who live in a world of profound – some would say, also the most interacting “individual entities with sepa - obscure – branch of the natural sciences, rately determinate properties” (55), we quantum physics, to establish a materialism shall be able to see only intra-acting, entan - that overcomes the opposition of nature gled material phenomena without fixed and culture at the heart of contemporary boundaries, structures or identities, which feminism. If we return to the metaphor of are ever changing, shifting, and re(con)fig - the pendulum swing of antagonism de - uring into new phenomena. Barad calls this scribed above, Barad’s material feminism entirely new view of nature “agential real - can be read as an ambitious attempt to en - DIFFERENT KINDS OF MATTER(S) 59 compass both extremes of the pendulum methodological conflation – various ques - swing, nature as well as culture, without tions about subjectivity, the body, and indi - forcing the pendulum to what she consid - viduality still matter to contemporary femi - ers to be the futile standstill of a reflective nism. I shall start with the complex episte - middle position. The diffractive entangle - mology involved in the subjective experi - ment of her lively quantum materialism en - ence of sadness. The next section will deal sures that everything is culture and every - with the consequences that this complexity thing is nature, and her posthumanist con - has for our study of the ontology of the hu - viction allows her to discard traditional man body. The last two sections then con - philosophical discussions about subjectivity, clude with some brief ethical considerations body, and individuality as unhappy by- of the importance of subjectivity and body products of an inadequate understanding of in relation to how feminism conceives the nature. Once we adopt her “ethico-onto- individual. epistem-ology”, we are finally enabled to understand – as she writes on the final page of her long book – that: THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SAD (NESS ) MATTERS A delicate tissue of ethicality runs through In the spring of 1645, Descartes was in - the marrow of being. There is no getting formed that Elisabeth had suffered from a away from ethics – mattering is an integral recurrent physical malaise, characterized by part of the ontology of the world in its dy - “a low-grade fever, accompanied by a dry namic presencing. Not even a moment exists cough”, which he perceptively diagnoses to on its own. “This” and “that,” “here” and be “sadness [ tristesse ]” (Shapiro 2007: 86 “now,” don’t preexist what happens but [95-6]). Elisabeth was well aware that her come alive with each meeting. The world and physical symptoms were caused by the its possibilities for becoming are remade with troubles of her mind. She had been cau - each moment. If we hold on to the belief that tious about admitting this to the doctors the world is made of individual entities, it is who examined her, and she confesses that hard to see how even our best, most well-in - ‘[e]ven if they had been smart enough to tentioned calculations for right action can suspect the part that my mind plays in the avoid tearing holes in the delicate tissue disorder of the body, I would not have the structure of entanglements that the lifeblood frankness to admit it to them at all” of the world runs through. Intra-acting re - (Shapiro 2007: 88 [98]). sponsibly as part of the world means taking Elisabeth’s disturbing sadness is interest - account of the entangled phenomena that are ing because it allows us to see why ethics, intrinsic to the world’s vitality and being re - ontology, and epistemology are not as easi - sponsive to the possibilities that might help ly conflated as is the case in Barad’s us and it flourish (396). “ethico-onto-epistem-ology”. Despite the fact that a metaphysical dual - In what follows, I will try to articulate ism of mind and body may be a thing of some of my concerns regarding this at - the past, and the embodied mind has be - tempt to conflate ethics, ontology, and come an almost undisputed philosophical epistemology. Different kinds of questions as well as scientific assumption, most peo - are at work in each of these fields of in - ple can recognize Elisabeth’s puzzlement quiry, and I shall use Princess Elisabeth’s concerning the relation of the mind and concerns about the fragile relation of the the body. Most of us readily accept that – mind and the body to articulate my main ontologically speaking – our mind is our point, namely, that – in spite of Barad’s brain. The problem is, though, that this 60 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012 ontological certainty does not help us to tures of what we call sadness that appear to cope with the phenomenological fact that be rooted in more or less universal biologi - we somehow feel that there is more to our cal functions, while there are other features mind than the grey matter of our brain. Al - which change from culture to culture, and though some biologically oriented psychia - again features which are different from per - trists might try to assure us that the devas - son to person. This complexity makes it tating sadness accompanying severe depres - necessary to operate with distinct explana - sion is the result of imbalances in the neu - tory layers when we approach such a fragile robiological underpinnings of our con - phenomenon as human sadness. Epistemo - scious mind, such explanations seem some - logical, ontological, and ethical investiga - how unsuitable for solving the experiential tions of sadness (and of most other human problem of sadness. I may accept that sad - emotions and thoughts) are separate mat - ness is caused by the biological functions of ters, and any attempt to conflate the vari - my brain, but this acceptance does not alter ous methodologies of such investigations the phenomenological fact that my most risks losing sight of what is really at stake – personal concerns (thoughts about the past namely, to understand and cope with sad - and the future, jealousy, low self-esteem, ness. If our epistemological approach to economical insecurity, and so on) are some - sadness (how do we experience sadness?) is how critical to the specific kind of sadness too intimately entangled with an ontologi - that I feel. cal (what is sadness?) and an ethical (how Thus, even though a neurobiological ex - should we behave when we are sad?), we planation of sadness may be ontologically very easily end up with an explanation that true, this does not help us very much when is both reductive (sadness is just a malfunc - it comes to the epistemological subtleties of tioning of your brain) and normatively bi - our subjective experience of sadness. In ased (the way you behave when you are sad fact, subjectivity makes ontology, that is, is inappropriate or simply wrong). the question of what is really real, highly Elisabeth’s reluctance about admitting to problematic. What is the accurate descrip - her doctors the role that her sad thoughts tion of sadness? Is it the careful description play in her bodily illness is an example of of complex neuromodulators (the break - delicate issues involved in explanations of down or reuptake inhibition of monoamine human problems. Every problem is always transmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, an entangled product of epistemology, on - histamine, etc.), or the just as careful de - tology, and ethics to begin with. The doc - scription of the experiential features of sad - tors’ understanding of Elisabeth’s illness, ness (weary thoughts, heavy body, irritable their diagnosis, and their advice were un - mood, lack of appetite, etc.)? This is still an doubtedly informed and shaped by their intensely debated question in psychiatry, seventeenth-century Western beliefs about which shows that the embodied mind re - physical nature, medical practice, the hu - mains just as much a problem as it is a fact. man body, the soul, and not least the inferi - Explanations of the mind and the brain are or nature of women. More than three hun - still two different enterprises. And this is dred years have passed, and doctors, scien - why subjectivity matters. I am sad and you tists, and politicians are still confronted are sad, and while we both know what the with entangled human problems that are all other means by sadness, our respective ex - too often investigated and handled in re - periences of sadness may be entirely differ - ductive and normatively biased ways that ent. do additional harm to – and sometimes The phenomenology of sadness is partic - even destroy – the suffering person in - ularly complex because there are some fea - volved. I would venture the claim that our DIFFERENT KINDS OF MATTER(S) 61 best chance of investigating and coping theless encourages us to take seriously “her with human problems is to disentangle the internalization of a kind of sexist attitude” different methodological layers at work in (Shapiro 1999: 511). Whether she is ironic our fragile conception of what it means to or not, Elisabeth’s comments reveal not be human. Barad’s recourse to the lively only the prejudices about the female mind “ethico-onto-epistem-ology” of quantum and body in the seventeenth century, but physics, and the conflated methodological also a problematic feature of bodily experi - approach of agential realism, points explic - ence that is still very much alive today. itly in the opposite direction. Her insis - Once again, despite Barad’s rather harsh tence on the inescapable entanglement of rejection of phenomena conceived as ob - phenomena engrained in the lively intra-ac - jects “in the Kantian or phenomenological tions of quantum physics might be a im - sense” (128), phenomenology can be help - pressive (meta)physical theory about mat - ful to articulate a basic problem of human ter, but it is no help against the more con - embodiment, particularly if we add a whiff crete and serious problems of Elisabeth – of what she rejects as the untenable “Kant - or those of any other human being, for that ian noumena-phenomena distinction” (33, matter. 128, 375). To further support this rather harsh Traditionally, phenomenology operates claim I suggest that we look at how the with a basic distinction in our understand - persistence of subjectivity complicates our ing of human embodiment: the subjective, conception of the human body – and of the unthematized, living body ( Leib ) and the problems involved in the matter of our objective, thematized body ( Körper ). This bodies. distinction is used as a way to articulate the complexity involved in the experience of the body as, on the one hand, the pre-re - THE AMBIVALENCE OF flective organ through which I interact with BODILY MATTER (S) the world, i.e., the body as mine, and the Later in the letter to Descartes, quoted at body as an object on a par with other ob - the beginning of the previous section, Eli- jects in the world, i.e., subjected to the sabeth expresses her gratitude to Descartes anonymous laws of physics and biology because he intends, as she writes, “to cure (Zahavi 1999: 91-109). In other words, my body with my soul” (Shapiro 2007: 89 my experience of my body is highly am - [99]). Some paragraphs earlier, though, she bivalent: it is mine in the most intimate had emphasized the difficulty of such a sense of the word, and still it is also the in - cognitive therapy – in particular in view of timidating object for alienating diseases and the fact that she is a woman: ultimately death. My body is in this sense both a phenomenon and a noumenon Know thus that I have a body imbued with a (here understood in the firm Kantian sense large part of the weaknesses of my sex [ des as that which lies beyond the reach of my faiblesses de mon sexe ], so that it is affected possible experience and thus my under - very easily by the afflictions of the soul and standing). has none of the strength to bring itself back This ambivalent character of human em - into line, as it is of a temperament subject to bodiment is once again an expression of the obstructions (Shapiro 2007: 88 [98]). abstruse relation between the mind and the body, and the ambivalence has important Although Lisa Shapiro, who has studied the consequences for how a person lives with correspondence carefully, detects a hint of her or his body. My body is an inescapable irony in Elisabeth’s statement, she never - part of who I am, but just as Elisabeth 62 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012

(ironically) complains about the gendered Descartes recommends the reading of the ‘weaknesses’ of her body, many people suf - Stoic philosopher Seneca, who taught that fer under the rather unexplainable, contin - all evils can be overcome and true happi - gent, and sometimes alienating character of ness be gained if only we follow the serene their particular bodies. This bodily unease path of rational thinking. We have already varies from rather superficial aesthetic con - seen that Elisabeth is quite sceptic about cerns over deeply frustrating feelings about such a cognitive therapy. And some months personal identity to terrible illnesses. Some later, in August 1645, when she has even - feel that they are too short, others that they tually read the recommended work by are too tall, some that their nose is too Seneca, she restates her scepticism: “I do prominent, others suffer under premature not yet know how to rid myself of the baldness, cystic acne, underdeveloped sexu - doubt that one can arrive at the true happi - al organs, overdeveloped ears, and so forth. ness [ la béatitude ] of which you speak Tragically, there are persons who are born without the assistance of that which does with a body that is genetically determined not depend absolutely on the will” to develop agonizing and terminal illnesses, (Shapiro 2007: 100 [114]). and no less painfully tragic is the fate of Barad’s theory of intra-active entangle - those innumerable children who are born ments is crowned with a sketch of “an in regions of the world where early malnu - ethics of mattering” (391-6) that reworks trition and environmental pollution are the central Lévinasian themes of the absolute order of the day and severely inhibit – and Other. She uses these themes to argue often irreversibly destroy – the develop - against the metaphysics of individualism ment of vital bodily organs. Why is this and for the idea that “[t]here are no singu - cruel contingency attached to our embod - lar causes. And there are no individual ied existence? No matter how hard we agents of change”, which means that think about our body, and often because it “[r]esponsibility entails an ongoing respon - is in grievous opposition to our best or siveness to the entanglements of self and most intimate intentions, the nature of the other” (394). Although I completely agree human body and the contingent place in with the last part, which I consider to be the world where this body was born remain the most admirable feature of Barad’s theo - noumena in the unmistakably Kantian ry, I remain very sceptic about the way she sense, that is, unfathomable questions. wants to arrive at this responsible entangle - I shall conclude with a brief considera - ment of self and other. Like Elisabeth, I am tion of a related bodily problem of rele - concerned with the significance of contin - vance to contemporary gender studies. It is gency. In spite of the alleged quantum an issue that involves epistemological, on - ‘fact’ that we are all (humans as well as oth - tological, and ethical considerations, but al - er than human) entangled by the “delicate so a highly delicate issue that necessitates a tissue of ethicality” that “runs through the methodological separation of these differ - marrow of being” (396), the subtle pro - ent considerations. foundness of this ‘fact’ of ethicality is not of much help when faced with the contin - gency often tragically at work in our em - (T HE ) I NDIVIDUAL MATTERS bodied existence. Why does all this matter to contemporary Ethics matters exactly because of the feminism, and to the use that it makes of contingency involved in our individuality. I Barad’s thinking? Once again we may take am who I am with all the particular and our lead from Princess Elisabeth. To cure contingent features of my individual nature. Elisabeth’s suffering body with her soul, I may want to be a different individual, but DIFFERENT KINDS OF MATTER(S) 63

I am to a large degree stuck with this spe - CONCLUSION cific kind of individuality (I was born in By way of conclusion, I will try to make my Denmark, I am a man, I embody certain reservations concerning the use of Barad’s physical characteristics, a particular tem - methodology in gender studies more con - perament and certain desires, feelings, be - crete by returning to the phenomenon of liefs, and ideas). And as Elisabeth writes, my sadness. Earlier I insisted upon the subjec - true happiness seems to be beyond the sway tive character of sadness, and on how the of my will, and deeply entangled with these subjectivity of sadness entails biological and contingent features of my individuality, and ethical implications, which risk subsiding with how my individual subjectivity is en - into the entangled background of Barad’s tangled with the individuality of the other account. To understand the phenomeno - person. In order to find an ethical path that logical, biological, and ethical dimensions secures the possibility of a more just and of the disruptive sadness provoked by one’s less tragic entanglement of individual per - sexuality or gender such as, for instance, sons, we need to acknowledge the ethical gender dysphoria, it is necessary, I would significance of irreplaceable persons with argue, that we examine those dimensions different characters, dreams, and desires separately. As central parts of the mental ill - who think and feel themselves as individu - ness diagnosed as gender identity disorders, als. Among the contingent, but also persis - these three dimensions of gender dysphoria tent, features of our individual subjectivity have been clinically described as ‘strong are our feelings of sexuality and gender. and persistent feelings of discomfort with I do not think that an ethics that wishes one’s assigned sex [phenomenological], the to deal with the concrete personal, societal, desire to possess the body of the other sex and political problems of our sexuality and [biological], and the desire to be regarded gender should work to dissolve individuali - by others as a member of the other sex ty into delicate quantum intra-actions at [ethical]’ (American Psychiatric Association “the marrow of being” or conflate nature 2000: 535). Although I am sceptical about and culture to enhance an amorphous pos - the scientific and ethical validity of psychi - sibility of change. On the contrary, a con - atric diagnoses concerning sexuality and crete ethics of gender should approach the gender, I do not think that we can ignore problems at the rough surface of the entan - these dimensions of the concrete despair gled existence of individual beings. To un - that many people feel about their sexuality derstand how to deal with problems of gen - and gender. The complexity of a person’s der and sexuality, this ethics starts from an suffering from gender dysphoria renders bi - investigation of why culture and nature im - ological taxonomies and societal concepts, pose different limits on our understanding norms, and conventions about sexuality and agency, why the relation of mind and and gender highly instable. I am a man body is so fragile, why subjectivity matters, who feels that I am a woman. Those feel - why our body matters, and finally why dis - ings are further complicated by the experi - agreements, prejudices, condemnations, ential fact that my gender and my sexuality and political distortions still debar the pos - sometimes come apart in the fragile texture sibility of responsible interaction and mutu - of my emotional life, and challenge biologi - al acceptance from the intra-acting entan - cal and societal paradigms of ‘normality’. glement of our hearts. In other words, a Biologically I am a heterosexual male who gender-sensitive ethics should be an ethics feels attracted to women, but personally I of disentanglement that works towards am a homosexual female who longs to be solving the problems involved in the entan - desired, recognized, and accepted as the glement of different matter(s). person that I am. My identity as an individ - 64 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 1-2 2012 ual person is what is at stake in my sexual ty. As such her work is an important contri - and gendered feelings. Despairing about bution to the growing awareness of the my gender includes, among other things, need to reconceptualize the conflictual re - ambivalent feelings about the concrete sub - lation of biology and culture in our con - jective, biological, and normative difficul - ception of human gender and sexuality. I ties that I experience in my possibility of remain sceptical, however, about the con - challenging my own and other people’s flation of ontology, epistemology, and conceptions of ‘normality’. An approach to ethics at the heart of her agential realism. the suffering involved in gender dysphoria The sheer scope of her “ethico-onto-epis - therefore needs to recognize that we are tem-ological” proposal, together with her dealing with an ambivalent, albeit painfully harsh dismissal of what she considers to be concrete, phenomenon with at least three anthropocentric prejudices of traditional distinct levels, each of which requires its philosophy, makes her project insensitive own methodological approach: the phe - both to valuable insights from the tradition nomenological structures of how gender that she seeks to overturn and to the con - and sexuality affect my experience of the crete ethical, ontological, and epistemolo- world, other people, and myself (e.g. gical problems of individual persons who Heinämaa 2003); the biological functions live with the (diffractive) effects of that tra - of sexuality and gender (e.g. Hines 2004); dition. Solid scientific theories (from natur - and the ethical aspect of being a gendered al science to cultural anthropology) are and sexual person (e.g. Irigaray 1984). On - rarely, if ever, wholesale rejections of what ly by such a disentangled approach can we went before; rather, they are the product of hope to shed light on the experiential am - patient endeavours to improve on what is bivalence of our gendered and sexual suf - right or beneficial and mend what is wrong ferings, understand the role biology plays or damaging in the tradition out of which in this ambivalence, and face the normative they grew. challenges involved in our work towards My initial concern that feminist theorists formulating an ethics that no longer ne - should be careful when adopting Barad’s glects the existential fragility of those who materialist account is therefore part of my are most in need of understanding and general worry regarding the scope and a- recognition. personal character of Barad’s approach. So Throughout this article I have insisted I believe that while contemporary feminism on the individual because I believe that the can only benefit from Barad’s attempt to concrete problems of the individual person rethink the antagonism between biology should always be at the centre of the varie - and culture, feminist theorists should nev - gated epistemological and ontological ap - ertheless be suspicious about her method - proaches involved in an interdisciplinary re - ological proposal to conflate the ontologi - search field such as gender studies. All too cal, ethical, and epistemological aspects of often the individual person has been lost the interdisciplinary field of gender studies from sight in the century-long battle of na - of which their theories are a part. ture versus nurture, biology versus culture. What I admire and applaud in Barad’s thinking is, in fact, her serious attempt to establish a methodological foundation that may attenuate the entrenched antagonism between cultural and biological perspec - NOTES tives, which continues to bedevil our en - 1. If nothing else is indicated, all page references deavour to understand gender and sexuali - in the text to Karen Barad are to (Barad 2007). DIFFERENT KINDS OF MATTER(S) 65

LITERATURE beth , ed. Jean-Marie Beyssade & Michelle · American Psychiatric Association (2000): Diag - Beyssade. Garnier-Flammarion, Paris. nostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , · Zahavi, Dan (1999): Self-Awareness and Alterity: 4th edn, text revised. American Psychiatric Associa - A Phenomenological Investigation. Northwestern tion, Washington DC. University Press, Evanston, IL. · Barad, Karen (2007): Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and Entanglement of Matter and Meaning . Duke University Press, Durham, NC. SUMMARY · Barad, Karen (2010): Quantum Entanglement Different Kinds of Matter(s) – Subjectivity, and Hauntological Relations, in: Derrida Today , Body, and Ethics in Barad’s Materialism 2010/3. This article questions the methodological con - · Heinämaa, Sara. (2003): Toward a Phenomenolo - gy of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, flation at work in Karen Barad’s agential Beauvoir . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lan - realism. Barad’s immense appeal is first ex - ham, MD. plained against the tense background of the · Hines, Melissa (2004): Brain Gender . Oxford nature/culture antagonism in the twentieth University Press, Oxford. century. Then, by using some of the penetrat - · Irigaray, Luce (1984): Éthique de la différence ing observations of a seventeen-century phi- sexuelle . Les éditions de minuit, Paris. losopher, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, The Advancement of Sci - · Kitcher, Philip (1993): Barad’s “ethico-onto-epistem-ology” is exam - ence: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions . Oxford University Press, Oxford. ined and subsequently criticized for disre - · Shapiro, Lisa (1999): Princess Elisabeth and garding the persistence of subjectivity, dissolv - Descartes: The Union of Soul and Body and the ing the ambivalence of the bodily matter(s), Practice of Philosophy, in: British Journal for the and neglecting the need for concrete individ - History of Philosophy , 1999/3. uality in ethics. · Shapiro, Lisa (ed.) (2007): The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René René Rosfort, PostDoc Descartes . Chicago University Press, Chicago, at the Faculty of Theology IL/Descartes, René: Correspondance avec Elisa- University of Copenhagen