Notes on: Barad, K. (1998) Getting
Real:Technoscientific Practices and the
Materializatrion of Reality. Differences: A
journal of Feminist Cultural Studies
10(2) 87--128
Dave Harris
[Obviously the forerunner of the piece in Barad
2007, esp chs 4 & 5 -- better developed ]
We start with Foucault and the power relations
involved in the body, to get it to carry out tasks
and emit signs. A body reacts to forces and can
transmit local signals or signs. This makes it
'the effect and instrument of visualising
technologies'. We see this with the Pizeo Electric
crystal [PEC]. Pressure produces an electric
signal, electric fields deform the crystals so
that if we apply an electric signal we get
expansion or contraction, or vibration and the
production of ultrasonic waves, transmission. This
capacity to act as both transmitter and receiver
is very useful in ultrasonography.
We can see it as a material instrument, and
observing apparatus which operates with not only
signals but discourses in the Foucault sense
[presumably confining it to linguistic, and not
visible results in practices?]. It can then serve
to examine the relation between the material and
the discursive more generally. This relationship
has been explored in her 'feminist framework' (89)
agential realism, inspired by Böhr in quantum
physics.
Böhr challenged several foundational assumptions
in Western epistemology, the subject/object
distinction and the representational status of
language [so I wonder if it is his term]. Agential
realism extends his insights to discuss
materiality, the relation between the material and
discursive, the whole meaning of nature and
culture and their relationship, and the issue of
agency including effects of boundary such as
exclusions. It helps explain the role of human and
nonhuman factors in the production of knowledge,
moving beyond realism versus social constructivism
debates. With this 'more robust understanding of
materiality' (87) feminists and other liberators
can see how matter comes to matter, material
constraints work, and how matter comes to be
mediated in various 'poststructuralist and Marxist
insights'. She's going to read Butler on
performativity first, reading it through and with
agential realism to get a 'richer ' account of
materiality and agency.
Butler's book Bodies That Matter sees
discourse and power as constituting subjects. The
human body is seen as material in a way which is
not at all 'foundational or self-evident'. Gender
performativity links these arguments. She begins
by criticizing social constructionism and urges a
return to matter as process, especially on the
materiality of sex and how it is produced. Matter
is a process of materialisation that can
stabilise, producing boundaries and surfaces. Her
conception is limited, however.
She still retains a 'passive/active dualism', by
arguing that it is only discourse that comes to
matter, not matter itself, and not other material
constraints and exclusions. It is not that she is
guilty of idealism nor linguistic monism as
critics have asserted, nor has she collapsed
materiality to discourse, or stressed
re-significations as the source of liberating
politics. She does analyse the discursive
dimensions — but this leaves out other components.
Of course these are exclusions which are
inevitable, even necessary, and they can be
re-articulated. The point is whether or not we can
add new dimensions of materiality 'enact a
productive appropriation and elaboration of her
theory' (91) without renouncing the whole theory.
Thinking about material constraints raises
problems. Materiality itself might be seen best as
the 'dissimulated effect of power'. We seem to
require a fixed notion of materiality in order to
explain how it constrains processes, and the whole
thing threatens to revert to more conventional
ontology. We turn to a quote from Butler on
'medical interpellation' (92) performed by a
sonogram which turns an embryo into a he or a she,
a process of '"girling"'. That initial
interpellation is then reiterated by various
authorities producing a 'naturalised effect' — it
both defines a boundary and inculcates a norm.
Barad thinks that this particular kind of
interpellation is remarkable and significant and
should be analysed further. Butler dismisses this
offhand. Can we just add appropriate material
constraints, or do we need to revise the notion of
discursive constraints as well?
Ultrasound technology has been discussed by
feminists — Adams for example says that
representations of mother fetus relationships in
medical texts provide economic informational and
ideological material. There are important issues
of different access and different impact. Someone
called Farquhar suggest that the machinery is part
of a general campaign 'to hold pregnant women
liable for causing prenatal harm' and to regulate
the behaviour of pregnant women (93) . This
reduces women into 'a mere maternal environment'
and gives the fetus rights. This particularly
impacts on 'poor, relatively disenfranchised
pregnant women of colour who are drug abusers',
and displaces the real importance of racialised
poverty.
The machine itself therefore does not just map the
body, but 'geopolitical, economic, and historical
factors as well' [which assumes its interpellative
property]. Another feminist, Ebert, argues that
gender interpolation connects to relations of
production, for example when girled foetuses are
immediately aborted in non-Western countries,
because 'families cannot afford to keep them'.
These are examples of material as well as
discursive factors. Butler would not deny this,
but she does not show us how to take account of
these constraints with their material dimensions.
As a result, she cannot see what is specific to
ultrasound technology and the way it works before
conventional girling takes place at birth.
All this is rooted in 'representationalism and
Newtonian physics' of the 17th century (94).
Language was seen as something transparent that
can transmit a picture of reality to the knowing
mind. The parallel is the idea of a scientific
theory that sees observation as a matter of
discovery, passively gazing at the world,
revealing 'an observation – independent reality'.
Both of these have been questioned.
Böhr for example challenge these assumptions and
came to investigate 'the connections between
descriptive concepts and material apparatuses… The
inseparability of the "objects of observation" and
the "agencies of observation"', the ways in which
agencies an observation and particular epistemic
practices code constitute the objects of
observation, the ways in which constraints and
exclusions are interdependent, the material
conditions for objective knowledge, re-formulating
causality. We can also read it 'through a feminist
lens'.
Böhr concluded that two central assumptions were
flawed: that objects are independent of
observation with well-defined intrinsic properties
of their own which can be represented as universal
concepts; measurement interactions between objects
and observers are continuous and determinable, and
depend on the objects. Instead, Böhr argued that
theoretical concepts are defined by particular
circumstances required for their measurement. It
follows that the emerging discontinuity in
measurement interactions suggested that there was
no unambiguous way to distinguish objects and
agencies of observation, so measured values cannot
be attributed to observation independent objects
alone — indeed there are no such 'well-defined
inherent properties of these objects'(95).
Quantum wholeness provides a new framework based
on not distinguishing objects and observers.
Böhr's term is phenomenon — 'particular instances
of wholeness'. In particular interactions between
object and apparatus cannot be neglected or
compensated for but are inseparable in the
phenomenon, so all the '"relevant features of the
experimental arrangement"' must be accounted for
and described [quoting Böhr himself] [but relevant
is a real weasel]. The physical [and conceptual,
she adds?] apparatus is 'a non-dualistic whole',
and concepts always refer to particular physical
apparatuses. There is a 'constructed 'cut between
object and agencies of observation — so that
instruments with fixed parts are required so that
we can understand the concept 'position'. Each
apparatus excludes other concepts, such as
'momentum', which requires instruments with
movable parts [and then, by entailment?] 'Physical
and conceptual constraints and exclusions are
co-constitutive' [assumes that we can cover all
the important dimensions — position and momentum
in this case].
What follows for the idea of observation? For
Böhr, there are ideal experiments which help us
understand events in an unambiguous way,
especially to '"state the conditions necessary for
the reproduction of the phenomena"'. This implies
that there is a cut between an object and the
agencies of observation, but this is constructed,
not inherent. Every measurement in fact involves a
choice of apparatus which provide the conditions
necessary to define the variables and exclude
others. The ambiguity is only resolved in
particular contexts. Resolution arises from the
wholeness of the phenomenon.
Nevertheless Böhr insists that quantum
measurements are still objective. This obviously
does not mean that there are inherent properties
of independent objects. Instead it becomes a
matter of permanent marks like those left on the
apparatus. There is a necessary reference between
objectivity and bodies which register these marks
[which seems to smuggle in observer independence
again?] However the property in question can't be
assigned to an object or a measuring instrument —
they are neither observation independent nor are
they 'purely artifactual' created by measurement.
Instead the properties refer to phenomena —
'physical – conceptual "intra actions"' (96). She
introduces this neologism 'to signifie the
inseparability of "objects" and "agencies of
observation" (in contrast to "interaction," which
reinscribes the contested dichotomy) [at the level
of scientific observations, but there is no
dichotomy at the social level, I insist].
Newtonian physics operates with strict determinacy
and is therefore able to predict physical states.
Böhr revises this idea and its implicit
understanding of causality [more quotes from him].
However, he is not presuming 'overarching
disorder, lawlessness, or an outright rejection of
the cause and effect relationship' (97). But the
traditional notion of causality is too closely
connected to human '"feeling of volition"', and
both are indispensable in the conventional
understanding of the subject object relations.
Both poles have to be rejected, neither freedom
nor determinism but a third possibility.
The wave particle duality paradox produced further
revisions. The duality is only a paradox to
classical realism which sees the duality as a
problem for the 'true ontological nature of
light'. For Böhr, both wave and particle are
descriptive concepts, relating not to independent
physical objects but to 'mutually exclusive
phenomena' — we are not recording an observation
independent object but a phenomenon. This alone
provides for objective knowledge — there are no
observation independent objects to try to
describe.
Back to Foucault where discipline makes
individuals, sometimes through an observational
apparatus — there we can see the effects of power
as '"clearly visible"'. For Böhr, apparatuses are
also productive of phenomena, but he is not clear
where the apparatus actually ends — he has not
established an outside boundary. So if we use a
computer connected to an instrument does the
computer become part of the apparatus — or the
printer, or the paper and so on? He does focus on
unambiguous communication as the key to
objectivity which refers to bodies defining the
experimental conditions which embody concepts to
the exclusion of others. So this is an
acknowledgement of the social nature of scientific
practices, 'the interrelationship of complex
discursive and material practices'. The definition
of apparatus should acknowledge this complexity
(98).
Foucault also examines conditions for
intelligibility and the productive and
constraining nature of practices embodied in
apparatuses. If we read him and Böhr 'through one
another' (99) we get a richer overall account. We
extend Böhr from the physical conceptual to the
material discursive more generally, and extend
Foucault to include the natural sciences and
nonhumans. We can also be more explicit about the
relation between the apparatus the objects and the
subjects of knowledge practices.
In Discipline, apparatuses of observation,
production and discipline appear in 18th-century
new technologies, especially the panopticon. It
produces disciplined bodies, employing new
political technology and power at a new micro
level, operating through individual bodies. For
Foucault this technologies diffuse, not easily
grasped in systematic discourse, usually only a
'"multiform instrumentation"', working through
various apparatuses. However, he has not discussed
'the dynamics of intra-action and the
inseparability of observing apparatus and
observed'. He is right to say that the objects of
knowledge, human subjects, do not preexist but
emerge, but fails to see that these are also
inseparable from the apparatuses. He does not have
anything analogous to the phenomenon [bizarre
critique — Foucault is not Böhr].
What if we consider Böhr? The panopticon might be
the best kind of observing technology for the
18th-century, but we can consider ultrasound
technology as a more contemporary apparatus. In
that apparatus the transducer both makes and
bridges boundaries. We can use it 'as the
interface for the reading of Böhr's and Foucault's
insights through one another' (100). Ultrasonics
developed in Sonar technology first and was then
applied to medicine, first abstractly and then
more widely.
Fetal ultrasound images are now widespread, but
interpreting them requires specialised forms of
knowledge, and misdiagnosis is frequent. The
transducer both sends and receives ultrasound
waves, acting as 'the machine interface to the
body' (101 the electrical signals become an image
on the screen, but there are a number of
influences — different sorts of tissues have
different acoustic resistances, the interface
geometry varies the beam, beam resolution itself
can require different transducers, since the one
has a natural resonant frequency. Producing and
then reading ultrasound images is not simple. [The
machine on its own is not very productive at all
really, without the human interpreters etc]
In other words, we are not looking innocently at a
fetus, nor are we simply constrained by the
apparatus. It both produces images and is part of
the body being imaged [I don't see how]. We can
see the sonogram images as a phenomenon,
co-constituted by intra-action between the
apparatus and the object. The referent is not
itself the object. Whether or not the fetus is
seen as the referent depends on various political
and scientific reasons, 'epistemology as well as
ontology' [so they have not collapsed here -- but
see notes below ]. Taking the object of
observation as the referent can involve political
advantages with consequences for the ways in which
scientific practices are reiterated.
To fully understand the complexity we need to
investigate the apparatuses. It is not just a
transducer, with fixed properties ready for use
the. The apparatus has to be constituted through
particular practices, a creative and difficult
matter of doing science, getting instruments to
work. There is always intra-action with other
apparatuses. Phenomena can be enfolded with
implications for the way in which they
materialise. The apparatus can undergo important
shifts as a result. 'Which shifts actually occur
matter for epistemological as well as ontological
reasons' [still separate at this stage] (102).
This means we are responsible for the actual ways
in which particular practices that we can shape
are sedimented out. Apparatuses materialise over
time, and so they are themselves 'material
discursive phenomena', only materialising after
intra-action with other apparatuses. [not
suprising that they produce material and
discursive effects really -- they must do so if
they are defined like this in the first place?]
For example transducers materialise and are
re-materialised in interaction with several
practices — those based on medical needs, design
constraints, various legal and engineering
constraints, market factors, political issues,
R&D projects, the educational background of
the designers, the workplace environment, how
receptive the medical community and patients are
to it, various legal cultural and political
constraints, how patients are positioned, how
technicians are trained [but why stop there?]. We
can see these as showing the effects of
disciplinary practices in Foucault's sense — legal
educational medical architectural and so on.
Physicians, engineers and scientists are subject
to surveillance as well as the fetus — the
apparatus both objectifies the fetus and
subjectivates the technician or engineer.
Other material configurations and discursive
formations are clearly involved as well. With
Foucault, we need to remember that observation can
involve discourses as practices forming objects.
We can now use this to further articulate Böhr.
However, Foucault also needs to be developed,
because he sees nonhuman bodies as 'naturally
given objects' (103) whereas they are really
material in an equal way with human bodies. The
division between human and nonhuman is a boundary
constituted by practices. Foucault talks about
materialisation operating through 'the soul',
which then becomes ;a certain technology of power
over the body'. A more general account is needed.
We must continue to talk about what is real, and
avoid the 'anti-metaphysics legacy of positivism'.
Developing ontology is risky because 'making
metaphysical assumptions explicitly exposes the
exclusion upon which any given concepts in of
reality is based' as a result we have to recognise
the inevitability of exclusions and also account
for them responsibly. All these are present in her
'agential reality' (104).
Petersen quotes Böhr on language and reality to
admit that we are always suspended in language and
that 'reality' is only a word as well. However, he
does not explain how he thinks this word should be
used. To be consistent, he should agree that
phenomena are constitutive of reality, a
non-dualistic whole with no independent things
causing them.
Classic realists assume that there is being prior
to significations, Kantians say that being is
inaccessible to language, while linguistic monists
say that languages all. Agential reality, connects
the material in the discursive — it is 'not a
fixed ontology that is independent of human
practices, but is continually reconstituted
through our material – discursive intra-actions'
(104) [which gets close to classic phenomenology].
This helps us formulate notions of realism and
truth that is not based on representational
knowledge, but rather to 'material instantiation
in particular practices' (105). Theories describe
not nature but 'our participation within nature'.
Realism means 'providing accurate descriptions of
agential reality' rather than some independent
reality. Agential realism covers both this new
realism and the larger 'epistemological and
ontological framework'.
Certain practices sedimented reality and make it
intelligible, so we are responsible not only for
knowledge but 'in part, for what exists'[the bits
we sedimented?]. Phenomena are produced through
intra-actions by various apparatuses, but these
apparatuse are 'themselves phenomena made up of
specific intra-actions of humans and nonhumans'.
However, the notion of human 'itself designates a
particular phenomenon' and what gets defined as
subject or object, and the definition of an
apparatus is also 'intra actively constituted
within specific practices' [so it's phenomenology
all the way down].
We can understand this in a performative sense.
[Lots of rhetorical questions here]. We are
interested in the materialisation of bodies, which
implies that not only material constraints, but
the 'material dimension of regulatory practices'
are important. Performativity becomes a matter of
'how matter comes to matter', not focused on
discourse alone.
If we think of Butler, her notion of
materialisation is not robust enough to extend
beyond humans. It may not even be robust enough to
describe things like the sexual materialisation of
human bodies. If we turn to science and science
studies we might gain more insight, developing 'a
physicist's understanding of matter and scientific
practices' (106) to extend feminist theories. This
would help us see how 'the very atoms that make up
the biological body come to matter' and in general
'how matter makes itself felt'. This might take
full account of materiality without reinstating it
as some 'natural uncontested ground' [so she wants
to take on the usual definitions of nature in
order to rescue the flexibility and non-naturalism
of feminism?]
If we read 'agential realism and Butler's theory
of performativity through one another' we are not
assuming a symmetry between subject and object or
physics and social science, but rather aiming at
'the production of mutually informative insights
that might be useful in producing an enriched
understanding'. We can do this by moving from
citationality to intra-activity.
If apparatuses are produced and reproduced in
interaction with other apparatuses as material –
discursive phenomena, then agential reality takes
on a certain temporality. 'Phenomena the effects
of power – knowledge systems, boundary drawing
projects'. practices constitute bodies such as
subject and object. Phenomena are inseparable from
apparatuses that produce them, so we can now see
materialisation as something broader, related to
the whole process of intra-activity. This might
help Butler bring bodies to the fore again as an
essential part of regulatory norms. We have to see
bodies as material – discursive that materialise
in interaction with other apparatuses, particular
practices.
Butler's existing account is still limited. She
sees the human body as 'perpetually vulnerable to
the workings of social norms' (107) but does not
adequately explain how norms materialise the body,
that regulatory practices have a material nature,
that discourse has a material effect. How is this
materiality to be understood, and is it different
in human affairs, and different from the way
biological bodies materialise? Can agential
realism help to explain why regulatory apparatuses
can also be reworked, both through recently and
new material arrangements?
Butler works with the surface of the human body,
and this is important, as is the 'psychic
dimension of regulatory practices' but we should
extend it to nonhumans. Starting with the way in
which the boundary between the nonhuman and the
human is drawn. That is a practice that is 'always
already implicated in particular
materialisations' (108) These practices
applied to all bodies, except cyborg ones [which
obviously gives problems to conventional
classifications]. The material dimension of
regulatory apparatuses should be understood in
terms of the general materiality of phenomena.
There is no outside or independence. We can see
regulatory practices as offering 'temporality',
and 'causal (but nondeterministic) materialising
effects' so materialisation becomes iteratively
interactive, sedimenting out bodies through which
phenomena become intelligible.
Speech acts become a special case. Language itself
is materially instantiated in gestures or
soundwaves, but their efficacy is not guaranteed —
nor is any intra-action. Speaking does not make it
so, nor does devising particular instruments in a
lab. However it is all the same materiality, and
this helps explain how language specifically
affects the body. We require 'specific material
discursive apparatuses' (109) [and what are these?
Althusserian apparatuses?]. Materiality does not
become effective just through discourse, but nor
is it a fixed ground — there are 'material
dimensions of constraints and exclusions'. We can
now abandon any fixed difference between animate
and inanimate matter. Materiality really refers to
'agential reality' and this is not just something
outside culture, so we cannot 'reinstate
materiality as natural' [the real issue for
feminists, I suspect].
Agential realism helps us 'incorporate material
constraints and exclusions', recognising them as
processes in their own right. This will also help
us understand 'the nature of abjection' [?]. The
material and discursive are intertwined in
apparatuses and their constraints 'operate through
one another', so we need 'an analysis of both
dimensions in their relationship to one another'
[note dimensions].
Back to ultrasound. It's not just a physical
instrument that views the fetus, but something
which 'designates specific material – discursive
practices' which limit what can be seen in
produced. These limits are produced by its
'techno-scientific, medical, economic, political,
biological, and cultural, et cetera development'
[there is that et cetera clause again]. Particular
usages in connections with other apparatuses have
also developed it. Technological improvements
helped the patient and practitioner 'to focus
exclusively on the fetus'because its image becomes
large and clear. Of course there are political
discourses which facilitate and in part condition
this focus [horrible weasel], especially if they
stress the autonomy of the fetus. This then leads
to [?] The exclusion of the subjectivity of the
pregnant woman. This shows that constraints and
exclusions are inseparable. [I think a
conventional chronology would handle this]
We have some testimony from a pregnant woman being
scanned, and how the team ignored her and focused
on the baby. Then we have a piece by Haraway about
the master slave dialectic related to objects of
knowledge and knowers, and how agency becomes
important in producing social theory. Without
allowing for agency reproduce error in all
sciences, we must acknowledge the agency of the
world including its '"independent sense of
humour"'. However, Casper argues that nonhuman
agency can deflect attention from human
accountability.
Back to Foucault. The subject is not determined by
power relations because there is conflict and even
resistance — but how are these possible? Butler
says that Foucault needs to rethink causality and
agency, but her own account can be extended.
For Foucault power is productive as well as
constraining and it operates through the
constitution of subjects, so what follows for
determinism? For Butler, the very materialisation
of the body invests it with power relations, that
materiality is an effect of power, but she does
not see this as just the effect of a discourse in
a causal sense. Materialisation is not just '"a
unilateral movement from cause to effect"'. Nor is
the subject alone the agent, somehow outside a
cultural field. Instead, agency is connected to
performativity, and this is reiterative. This
alone shows us that materialisation is never
complete, nor is subjugation to norms. There are
for example 'contradictory discursive demands on
the subject', ambivalence. In other words norms
are never finally embodied but are 'always part of
a citational chain' (112).
Let us now compare agential realism. Böhr has
already revised causality because there are
necessary exclusions to draw boundaries between
subject and object first. Material discursive
apparatuses constrain what can be produced, but
they also produce exclusions — this makes them
'constraining but not determining'. Intra-actions
also open 'space for material discursive forms of
agency', even if apparatuses themselves are not
contradictory in the implications. Agency means
intra-acting, enactment, not some possession of
subjects. It involves making 'iterative changes to
particular practices'. Enfolding is also a
mechanism [actually not very extensively
discussed]. Agency means looking at possibilities,
but also accountability, especially enjoying
boundaries.
However there is also thge nonhuman, which 'may
seem a bit queer'. We have to separate it from
subjectivity and intentionality, and see as an
enactment. This will allow for both nonhuman and
cyborg forms. For example in science the subject
matter is often nonhuman, but there is clearly 'a
sense in which "the world kicks back"', just as
social interactions intervene in the construction
of scientific knowledge. Casper works within
science studies and suggest that classical notions
of nonhuman agency depends on an underlying
ontological dichotomy — but human and nonhuman are
already '"heterogeneous entities"' [sounds like
Latour here] (113). There are political
assumptions, very clear in her work on
'experimental fetal surgery'. Here the fetus is
constructed as a patient, a potential person, and
this is assisted by ultrasound images — even the
physicians refer to foetuses as humans. This can
render pregnant women invisible, except as
'techno-maternal environments'. Casper says she
wants nonhuman people and animals to have agency,
but not necessarily foetuses — and says that she
admits she's taking sides and developing a
politics and that she is prepared to be
accountable [male heroics again].
Barad agrees with Casper, but worries about
whether there is a universal boundary. She also
implies that you're only accountable to someone
who is already described as an agent. If we
challenge these, we might reconsider fetal agency.
There might be 'a need to strategically invoke
fetal agency to counter the material effects of
sexism rather forms of oppression' (114).
Excluding their agency might come to support early
abortion of female foetuses. We need to be extra
vigilant in the face of 'global neocolonialism',
and not foreclose agency in a way that disguises
accountability. The attribution of agency 'is a
political issue'.
It's not clear that fetal agency is a universal
culprit. Some kind of feminist interventions, such
as recommending midwifery not medical berthing
might need to acknowledge the agency of the fetus.
We might need to rethink 'the referent of the
attribution' and thus the framing of agency. She
would start by asking about the fetus itself. It
has been constructed as a subject by both law and
objectivism, where scientists are allowed to
interpret the world. The pregnant woman herself is
absent, and so are the background medical,
scientific, and legal practices. It is these that
have reduced the fetus as something less than a
subject, not just the notion of fetal agency —
general subjectivity rather than specific agency
has played a crucial role in abortion debates. We
should understand the fetus in relation to
agential reality.
Viewed in this way, it is not just a pre-existing
object of investigation, but a phenomenon,
constituted and reconstituted out of intra-actions
between material–discursive apparatuses. It
includes those apparatuses — the pregnant woman is
another. This issue is boundary
articulations between the fetus and those other
apparatuses, and these are 'particular
historically and culturally specific intra-actions
of material discursive apparatuses'. They are
connected to matters of race and class — the
apparent epidemic of infertility affecting black
women has been used 'as a justification for the
expanded development of a range of new
reproductive technologies for the production of
white babies',(115) and has deflected
attention from environmental racism. These new
reproductive technologies reproduce both the fetus
and particular race relations. These are just as
important as the specific focus on fetal agency in
Casper.
Agency is a matter of specific practices, and
apparatuses are phenomena which can include
intra-actions of humans and nonhuman is. These
apparatuses of bodily production can be re-figured
after exploiting various 'possibilities and
accountability'. It is not a matter of attributing
full subjectivity to a fetus even if it can '"kick
back"' (116). Nor is it a simple object separate
from the other apparatuses interacting with it,
including its mother. For that matter, nor should
we isolate the mother as something with full
responsibility for fetal well-being. The real
questions include how fetal subjectivity is a
construction arising from particular material
discursive practices, and how accountability is
deflected from healthcare and nutrition
apparatuses, themselves the 'consequences of
global neocolonialism'. [Again this is convenient
political exploration of connections and nestings,
and global neocolonialism does seem to be the
external boundary]
We can rework these apparatuses, in ways which
include 'subversion, resistance, opposition, and
revolution'. These in turn depend upon forms of
agency of all kinds. It would be irresponsible to
think that we are the only active beings — 'though
this is never justification for deflecting that
responsibility onto other entities'. Human
accountability is not lessened but extended to
'existing power asymmetries'(117) [infinitely
extended].
For example, we can resist by changing our
practice after 'enfolding the material
instantiation of subversive re- significations'
(117) [unfortunate relapse into bullshit — we can
explore subversive possibilities once we start?].
Or we can directly change material conditions of
people's lives. E Sourbut argues that the new
reproductive technologies might be subversive, for
example in leading to 'gynogenesis'[embryos
without males], and suggest that the so-called
naturalism of sex has already been challenged by
test-tube conceptions. The technique has also
brought attention to gene imprinting, another
'form of nonhuman agency'. Again these are to be
understood performativity, not as mere
descriptions. There may be further
'techno-scientific intra-actions' if we can
understand this form and how it changes with other
agential shifts in bodily production. We have to
intra act responsibly of course and this means
'thinking critically about the boundaries,
constraints, and exclusions that operate through
particular material – discursive apparatuses
interacting with other important apparatuses' [ad
infinitum].
New reproductive technologies have already been
used in ways for which they were not intended —
implanting lesbians with embryos originally
created in the partners for example. These
subversive acts depend on 'the instability of
hegemonic apparatuses', and are a combination of
reinforcing and destabilising elements — for
example challenges to patriarchy 'are accompanied
by the reinforcement of class asymmetries' and the
'cultural overvaluation of raising children that
are genetic offsprings' (118)
The PEC is developing into a new techno-scientific
practice — 3-D ultrasonography [MRI scanning?].
This development depends on suitable computer
technology, which explains its recent
materialisation. The implications are increased as
well, and there seem to be 'epistemic earnings
potential of this virtual reality tour of the
body'. Images are lifelike, making the
representation of the object seem 'isomorphic with
the object itself', although it's even better than
natural vision because it can zoom or rotate
images, or slice them. It replaces the x-ray look
of the ultrasound scan. — 'It has no respect for
surfaces'(119) the computer integrates
two-dimensional images and this restores opacity —
the surface is constructed from the information
about the volume. This makes the new technology 'a
particularly poignant instrument and vector of
power'.
There are intra-action with other practices,
including debates about abortion, and many other
non-obstetrical uses. It will help us understand
human biology and change surgery. It will lead to
a more complex understanding of bodies — it will
no longer do just to operate at the surface. It
might produce insights into the whole relations
between surface and volume, and there might be
other consequences of different mappings,
different boundaries. Feminist theory might
provide insights here, as in the worries about the
referent and the seductiveness of visual
representations in epistemology and ontology.
There will be issues raised for patients
subjectivity and feminists need to get involved —
hence 'they need to understand the laws of nature
as well as the law of the father' (120), but must
also intra- act instead of studying this topic in
isolation.
Notes are gripping as well. Note 1
(120) suggests that epistemology and
ontology ought to collapse because being and
knowing are inseparable, as in her forthcoming
work. Note 2 says that she is interested in Böhr's
epistemology not his particular view of quantum
theory. She says that the Böhr did not originally
see that his epistemology was necessarily
applicable only to the microscopic realm, because
they were 'circumscribed by Planck's constant'. He
did say that if that constant been larger we would
have seen obvious effects to challenge
representationalism. Barad says she is not just
pursuing analogies between micro and macro, but
elaborating Böhr's insights into matters like
conditions for objectivity, the cultural factors
in scientific knowledge production and the
efficacy of science in the face of continuing
demonstrations of its contingency. Note 6 says
that wholeness needs to be re-conceptualised to
clarify issues for feminists. It does not mean
that all boundaries are dissolved, but rather that
concepts apply only in the context 'as specified
by constructing boundaries' it also implies the
material and the discursive are inseparable. But
the whole always requires 'differentness', against
the utopian dream of ending all boundaries' (121).
Note 8 points out that Foucault's real limitations
to confine his attention to human bodies, and
Rouse had already argued it should be extended
more to natural sciences. Note 9 refers to a
technological threshold in the development of
disciplinary apparatuses so that any mechanism of
objectification could be used [Foucault]. Note 10
says that she does use Foucault's account to try
and articulate an outside boundary, [a
discourse?] but Böhr will redirect us to the
inside boundaries which will provide 'significant
corrective to Foucault's account'. Note 12 says
that in intra-activity phenomena that are
materialising are already implicated in other
practices that are also materialising. This means
we need to rethink causality, but not abandon it —
'materialisation is an open (but nonarbitrary)
process. Note 13 says she has flirted with
scientific literacy projects. Note 15 says that
PEC's are used in non-medical applications as well
including the design of smart skis and smart
aircraft. Note 17 says that Böhr saw the
constitutive outside as a matter of material
discursive exclusions as well, making
intelligibility and material exclusions
'indissociable' [sic--cannot be dissociated?].
Note 18 sites a particular dispute with Butler
about what Foucault's Discipline is
arguing: Butler says that he is theorising the
materialisation of the prison as well as the
prisoner, but Barad reads that is insisting on the
material arrangements that constitute the prison
and sustain discourses which is not the same thing
as saying that the materiality of the prison is
constituted by power relations. She also thinks's
remark about materialisation through the soul is
inadequate. She repeats that but there needs a
better account of materialisation and materiality,
and the way in which is implicated in boundaries
between the human and the nonhuman. Note 19
compares Böhr and Butler in their critiques of
representationalism [notes 'parallels']. Butler
says that the body is always seen as prior to the
sign, so that significations produces the body
that it claims to discover. It follows that
language is not representational or mimetic but
productive, performative [but Butler did not
follow this through?]. Note 20 says that she is
not presuming the universal applicability of
agential realism, but she is suspicious about
anti-realism, often assumed in scientists saying
that they are just making something work, working
for fun rather than searching for truth. This has
dominated post-war culture in physics, 'especially
in the classroom' which leads her to suspect that
this anti-realism is 'yet another symptom of late
capitalism and the accompanying epidemic of
abnegation of responsibility and accountability'
(123), linked to consumer cultures pleasure in the
plasticity of bodies or morphing. Restoring
realism 'can provide a balanced against current
tendencies that confuse theorising with
unconstrained play' (124).
Note 22 refers to reading one text through another
as 'particularly appropriate' to agential realism,
while reading one text against another 'involves
reifiying or fixing of the text against which the
other is viewed' [I think the risks are the same].
This is like agential realism and intra-action as
a 'nondeterministic alternative dynamics' as
opposed to notions like influence impact or
embedding — these can sometimes 'wrongly attribute
agency to reified notions called Culture, Power,
Discourse, et cetera'. Note 24 says it is Butler's
notion of abjection she is discussing, referring
to ways in which the human is 'differentially
constituted' — this account 'privileges human
bodies from the start'. Note 26 says that Butler's
argument about different kinds of materiality,
signified by different academic disciplines is a
sign of limitation — Barad prefers to say that it
is 'the intra-action of these different
disciplinary apparatuses [that] contributes to the
materialisation of the body [so rejecting
multidisciplinary approaches and dimensions?] Note
27 says that Casper criticises ANT for wrongly
recognising the fetus as a subject. Barad says
agential realism avoids this issue because what
constitutes the subject is that if you, and agency
is not aligned with subjectivity.
Note 30 says that STS can address material agency
in a limited way because it conflates material
with nature or nonhuman and this saves what is
human for the purely cultural domain. This note
also insist that we still talk about cyborgian
agency — not discussed as far as I know in any
subsequent work. Other accounts include AMT and
Haraway, and one exponent, Pickering, sees the
tangle between the human and the nonhuman as
post-humanist — although he still retains humanism
to explain scientific choice. Note 31 refers to
other debates involving ANT. Note 32 denies that
the term apparatus means mere instrument or
technology. Instead they are phenomena made up of
specific interactions of both human and nonhuman —
what defines some phenomena as a subject or
object, while others are defined as an apparatus
'is interactively constituted through specific
practices' [very abstract and general again].
Note 37 says that MRI scanning can obscure the
patient's subjectivity, because the body can
continue to be scanned after the patient has left,
or even remotely This carries an obvious danger of
removing people from decisions about them.
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