Abstract
The most pressing questions for how the world, with its range of phenomena, can be shared in a fair and egalitarian manner, how differences can be made possible while not being essentialized and exploited, in short: how alterity can be practiced as entanglement/relatedness, is currently discussed by authors, whose – still heterogeneous – approaches refer to a so called ‘New Materialism’. In this contribution the works of one of the representatives of this approach, the queer-feminist science theorist and physicist Karen Barad, are taken as a starting point to discuss, what kind of impulses her theory project of ethico-onto-epistemo-logy and her methodology of agential realism has to offer to a practice oriented sociology. Barad’s theoretical-methodological considerations provide connection points for two concepts which are very influential in sociology: for Pierre Bourdieu’s praxeology and Judith Butler’s queer-theoretical considerations concerning socio-ontological precariousness of (human) life. In addition to these entanglements, Barad’s concepts – as argued here – enable theoretical and methodological shifts of these practice oriented sociological and performativity-theoretical approaches regarding their understanding of sociality and anthropocentric anchoring.
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- 1.
I would like to thank Natascha Rohde for her translation of this contribution from German. She also transferred the quotes from German-speaking texts into English. Thanks to Stephan Trinkaus for inspirational discussions and suggestions for this text.
- 2.
Using the oblique stroke in/determinacy deals with marking precisely dis/continuity (cf. Barad 2010), the production of intertwining, of cutting together/apart, which is ever moving and never fixed once and for all.
- 3.
This includes, for example, the slow dying out of the gender arrangements, influenced by the Fordian social and economic system of the 20th century, with the “male” standard employment contract and breadwinner and the “female” family preserver and supplementary earner (cf. in detail Völker 2008, p. 284–286).
- 4.
Butler argues in her reading for a diasporic understanding of Lévinas (2012, p. 51), which challenges and decenters its one focus on Zionism, which is connected to a nationalist ethos (2012, p. 50). She criticizes clearly, that Lévinas, rejects the encounter with the Palestinians, their potential as the face of the other, and his ethically privileging Judaism and Christianity over the “countless masses of Asiatic peoples” (Lévinas cit. after Butler 2012, p. 46), a formulation, which refers to the, not explicitly mentioned, Islam.
- 5.
Initially Butler uses the term performativity (1997) as quoting the repetition of discourse and its efficacy for the demarcation of the intelligible, especially the speech act. The dependency of the discourse on its enactment, alas on the speaking, the acting, the practice equally carries a stabilization as well as the possibility of shifts and transgressions. The repetition, the updated, present, living citation of the discourse in the practice of speech, is never identical to the (non-existent) “original.” There are shifts and entanglements, because the occurring is contingent, because its complex, diverse relationing, the effects of resonance and dissonance cannot be anticipated, limited and controlled. While the acts of performative citation can restructure and stabilize the arrangement of discourse, they can also– in Butler’s discourse theoretical words – provoke “resignifications,” which bear the chance of irritations, frictions and can therefore contain (not necessarily intentional, but mainly processual) challenges to power constellations.
- 6.
“Wie würden wir uns fühlen, wenn es das Nicht-Menschliche wäre, mittels dessen wir fühlen, uns sorgen, antworten können?” (Barad 2014, p. 173). The English translation is taken from an older, unauthorized version of the text.
- 7.
“In einem wichtigen Sinne, in einem atemberaubend intimen Sinne, ist Berühren und Empfinden das, was die Materie tut, oder besser gesagt, was die Materie ist: Materie ist eine Verdichtung der Fähigkeit zu reagieren, zu antworten (response-ability). Berühren ist eine Sache (matter) der Erwiderung. Jeder und jede von ‘uns’ ist durch die Fähigkeit zu antworten konstituiert. Jeder und jede von ‘uns’ ist als für den Anderen verantwortlich konstituiert, als mit dem Anderen in Berührung stehend.” (Barad 2014, p. 172). The English translation is taken from an older, unauthorized version of the text.
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Völker, S. (2019). “Cutting Together/Apart” – Impulses from Karen Barad’s Feminist Materialism for a Relational Sociology. In: Kissmann, U., van Loon, J. (eds) Discussing New Materialism. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_5
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