Karen Barad’s Quantum Ontology and Posthuman Ethics: Rethinking the Concept of Relationality

Abstract

This article focuses on Karen Barad’s quantum ontology and her attempts to reformulate the concept of relationality. The aim is to show how Barad’s work articulates a new kind of empiricism for the social sciences, by reclaiming the creative and speculative force of experimental practice and by recentering the philosophical problem as a source of inquiry. Relationality is redefined through discussions of diffractive apparatus, more-than-human performativity, and the “polymorphous perversity” of the matter-meaning mixture.