Barad, Karen (1956—)
American feminist physicist and philosopher. Her work has been instrumental to the development of new materialism. Barad trained in physics, but moved towards a more interdisciplinary approach, combining science and humanities. She has written numerous articles across physics, philosophy, science studies, poststructuralist theory, and feminist theory, and is best known for Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007). This book puts forth her theory of agential realism, an ontology that refuses the representational split between object and observer and argues that we cannot think of phenomena as consisting of objects as discrete entities with inherent boundaries and properties. Rather, following the work of Niels Bohr, who won a Nobel Prize for his discoveries in quantum physics, Barad argues that phenomena are inseparable intra-acting (Barad’s term) agencies. The concept of intra-action requires a conceptual shift from thinking about pre-existing objects relating to one another to a model of relations that function with pre-existing relata. The relata (i.e. entities that relate to one another) emerge in the intra-active process. Following from this insight, Barad articulates feminist and queer theory in terms of an overcoming of the so-called divide between humans and non-humans. Barad’s approach was developed as a way to integrate feminist and queer theory and disrupt representationalist politics. While Barad’s more recent work has been designated as part of the material turn within feminist research, she prefers to understand her own work as modelling diffraction. She argues that the quantum understanding of diffraction troubles the concept of the dichotomy as an act of absolute differentiation. Barad’s innovative interdisciplinary research continues to combine physics with philosophy, and she has been the recipient of several prestigious grants, including from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.