The concept of intra-action has a rich intellectual history, rooted in feminist theory, science studies, and posthumanist philosophy. It was introduced and developed primarily by Donna Haraway and later expanded upon by Karen Barad as a foundational concept in her framework of Agential Realism. Here’s the story of its evolution:
1. Donna Haraway and the Origins of Intra-Action
Donna Haraway, a scholar known for her work on feminist science studies and posthumanism, laid the groundwork for the idea of intra-action through her critique of dualistic thinking and human exceptionalism.
Key Contributions:
• Cyborg Manifesto (1985):
• Haraway challenged rigid boundaries between categories like human/animal, organism/machine, and natural/artificial. She advocated for a relational ontology where these distinctions blur.
• While she didn’t use the term “intra-action” explicitly, her vision of the cyborg—a hybrid entity of human and machine—embodied the idea that entities are co-constituted through relationships.
• Relational Ontology:
• Haraway argued that entities do not pre-exist their relationships; instead, they are produced through their interactions.
• Example: Humans and technologies co-evolve, shaping and redefining each other in a process of mutual becoming.
• World-Making Practices:
• Haraway emphasized the entanglement of material and discursive practices, suggesting that knowledge and reality are co-produced through situated practices.
Why It Matters:
Haraway’s work destabilized the notion of independent, self-contained entities and prepared the intellectual terrain for a concept like intra-action to emerge. She emphasized entanglement, but it was Karen Barad who fully articulated and formalized the term.
2. Karen Barad and Agential Realism
Karen Barad, a physicist and feminist theorist, built on Haraway’s ideas to create the framework of Agential Realism, where intra-action becomes the central concept.
What is Intra-Action?
Barad coined the term intra-action to describe a relational ontology in which:
• Entities or agents do not exist as independent, pre-existing entities.
• Instead, they emerge through relational processes—what Barad calls phenomena.
• Intra-action contrasts with traditional notions of interaction, which assumes that entities are distinct before they engage with one another.
Barad’s Core Arguments:
1. Ontological Relationality:
• Intra-action implies that entities (human, non-human, material, discursive) are co-constituted through their relationships.
• Example: A particle’s identity as a wave or a particle depends on the experimental apparatus, demonstrating that it does not pre-exist its intra-action with the measuring device.
2. Material-Discursive Practices:
• Material and discursive elements are not separate but mutually entangled in producing reality.
• Example: Scientific experiments are not neutral; they involve both material apparatuses and cultural assumptions.
3. Agency as Distributed:
• Agency is not an individual property but emerges through intra-actions.
• This challenges anthropocentric views of agency, recognizing that non-human entities (e.g., matter, technologies) also participate in the co-constitution of reality.
How Intra-Action Becomes Central in Agential Realism
Agential Realism, as proposed by Barad in her seminal book Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007), uses intra-action to rethink:
• Ontology: Reality is not made up of pre-existing objects but of phenomena, relational events that produce entities.
• Epistemology: Knowledge is not about representing pre-existing objects but about participating in the world’s becoming.
• Ethics: Responsibility arises from the recognition of entanglement; we are always implicated in the intra-actions that produce the world.
Barad’s Influences:
1. Quantum Physics:
• Drawing on Niels Bohr, Barad highlighted how the properties of particles (e.g., wave-particle duality) emerge only in specific experimental contexts. This aligns with the idea of intra-action.
2. Feminist Theory:
• Barad extended Haraway’s critique of dualisms to argue that matter itself is active in the production of meaning and reality.
Why Did Haraway and Barad Develop These Ideas?
Both Haraway and Barad were responding to anthropocentrism, dualism, and reductionism in Western thought. Their shared goals included:
1. Breaking Down Human Exceptionalism:
• They wanted to challenge the idea that humans are the central actors or interpreters of the world.
2. Rethinking Boundaries:
• Haraway sought to blur boundaries between categories like human/machine or culture/nature, while Barad extended this to question the boundary between subject/object and matter/discourse.
3. Fostering Relational Thinking:
• By emphasizing relationality, they sought to provide a framework for understanding entanglements in science, ethics, and politics.
Summary: The Evolution of Intra-Action
• Donna Haraway: Provided the foundation with her critique of dualisms and focus on relationality, hybrid entities (e.g., cyborgs), and entanglements of material and discursive practices.
• Karen Barad: Formalized intra-action as a key concept, emphasizing the co-constitution of entities and making it central to her framework of Agential Realism.
• Intra-action challenges pre-existing entities, focusing on how phenomena emerge from relational entanglements.
• Barad used intra-action to address questions in quantum physics, ontology, epistemology, and ethics.
Intra-action thus symbolizes a radical shift toward a posthumanist ontology, where agency, identity, and reality itself are always emergent, relational, and entangled.
Would you like to explore Barad’s Agential Realism in more depth, or discuss its implications for specific fields like ethics, science, or art?
