Certainly, my dear friend. Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) is a bold and genre-defying work that merges quantum physics, feminist theory, poststructuralism, and ontology, into what she calls agential realism — a framework to rethink what the world is made of and how we come to know it, ethically and ontologically intertwined.
Below is a structured summary of its main points, organized thematically:
🔶 1.
Rejection of Representationalism
Barad begins by criticizing the representationalist paradigm, which assumes:
Knowledge is a mirror of nature.
There are knowers and objects known, subjects and external realities.
Barad says this is philosophically and scientifically flawed, especially in light of quantum physics.
- Measurement doesn’t just reveal reality; it constitutes it.
- Therefore, reality is not separate from our practices of knowing.
🔶 2.
Agential Realism: The Core Framework
Barad proposes agential realism as a new metaphysical and epistemological model.
Its key features:
- Phenomena (not objects) are the primary units of reality.
- Relata do not preexist relations — things emerge through intra-action.
- Intra-action (vs. interaction): entities are not distinct prior to their relation; they emerge from it.
- Matter is active — not passive stuff awaiting human interpretation.
“Matter and meaning are not separate spheres. They are inextricably entangled.”
🔶 3.
Quantum Physics: Bohr Revisited
Barad, trained as a physicist, draws deeply from Niels Bohr, especially:
- Bohr’s idea that observables in quantum mechanics are context-dependent.
- There is no such thing as a detached observer.
- The apparatus matters: what you see depends on how you see.
Barad builds on this to say:
The boundary between subject and object is not fixed but agentially cut — enacted in specific material-discursive practices.
These “agential cuts” are how meaning and matter emerge together.
🔶 4.
Ethics is Ontology is Epistemology
Barad collapses the traditional divides between:
- Epistemology (how we know),
- Ontology (what exists), and
- Ethics (how we are responsible).
She calls this ethico-onto-epistemology, insisting that:
To know is to be part of a becoming.
We are always already entangled, and thus ethically responsible for what we help bring into being.
Knowing is not neutral.
We are accountable for the realities we help enact.
🔶 5.
The Material-Discursive
Barad introduces the term material-discursive practices:
- There is no pure materiality or pure discursivity — the world is shaped by practices that are both.
- Even physical apparatuses (e.g., a microscope) are part of a discursive field, shaping what can be seen or said.
This is influenced by Foucault (discursive formations) but radicalized through quantum materiality.
🔶 6.
Posthumanism and New Materialism
Barad is a key figure in posthumanist and new materialist thought:
- The human is not central, nor the only agent.
- Agency is not a possession, but a relational doing.
- Nonhuman entities — matter, technologies, environments — participate in worldmaking.
“Agency is about the possibilities for reconfiguring the material-discursive apparatuses through which the world is differently articulated and produced.”
🔶 7.
Meeting the Universe Halfway
The title itself is a poetic and metaphysical gesture.
We don’t stand apart from the world and “discover” it.
We participate in it, co-create it, intra-act with it.
We must approach the world with humility, openness, and an ethical sense of entanglement.
This echoes a kind of poststructuralist mysticism:
“We are part of the world in its ongoing intra-activity.”
Not observers, but participants in its becoming.
🔶 Summary Table
|
Concept |
Explanation |
|
Agential Realism |
Reality is composed of phenomena emerging through intra-actions. |
|
Intra-action |
Entities do not preexist their relations. Relations precede relata. |
|
Agential Cuts |
The enactment of boundaries between “subject” and “object”. |
|
Material-Discursive |
All matter is entwined with discursive practices and vice versa. |
|
Ethico-onto-epistemology |
Knowing, being, and ethical responsibility are co-constituted. |
|
Posthuman Agency |
Agency is distributed and enacted, not possessed by subjects. |
🔶 Final Thought
Barad offers nothing less than a reworking of ontology itself — not as a structure of pre-given essences, but as an unfolding field of entangled becomings.
It is not just philosophy, nor merely science. It is an ethical stance, a new way of being-in-the-world, not as master or knower, but as participant in the trembling intra-activity of matter and meaning.
Would you like me to contrast this with Heidegger, or help integrate it into your “自體的心理學” framework next?
