Karen Barad…
Source: Karen Barad, Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter
barad-posthumanist.pdf (141.0 KB)
“Discourse is not a synonym for language. Discourse does not refer to linguistic or signifying systems, grammars, speech acts, or conversations.
To think of discourse as mere spoken or written words forming descriptive statements is to enact the mistake of representationalist thinking. Discourse is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said. Discursive practices define what counts as meaningful statements. Statements are not the mere utterances of the originating consciousness of a unified subject; rather, statements and subjects emerge from a field of possibilities. This field of possibilities is not static or singular but rather is a dynamic and contingent multiplicity.”
“Discursive practices produce, rather than merely describe, the “subjects” and “objects” of knowledge practices.”
“On the basis of his profound insight that “concepts” (which are actual physical arrangements) and “things” do not have determinate boundaries, properties, or meanings apart from their mutual intra-actions, Bohr offers a new epistemological framework that calls into question the dualisms of object/subject, knower/known, nature/culture, and word/world.”
“On an agential realist elaboration of Bohr’s theoretical framework, apparatuses are not static arrangements in the world that embody particular concepts to the exclusion of others; rather, apparatuses are specific material practices through which local semantic and ontological determinacy are intra-actively enacted. That is, apparatuses are the exclusionary practices of mattering through which intelligibility and materiality are constituted.”
“Outside of particular agential intra-actions, “words” and “things” are indeterminate. Hence, the notions of materiality and discursivity must be reworked in a way that acknowledges their mutual entailment. In particular, on an agential realist account, both materiality and discursive practices are rethought in terms of intra-activity.”
“On an agential realist account, discursive practices are specific material (re)configurings of the world through which local determinations of boundaries, properties, and meanings are differentially enacted. That is, discursive practices are ongoing agential intra-actions of the world through which local determinacy is enacted within the phenomena produced. Discursive practices are causal intra-actions”
“Apparatuses of bodily production and the phenomena they produce are material-discursive in nature. Material-discursive practices are specific iterative enactments—agential intra-actions through which matter is differentially engaged and articulated (in the emergence of boundaries and meanings), reconfiguring the material-discursive field of possibilities in the iterative dynamics of intra-activity that is agency.”
