Michael saved in Pocket: ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter’ (Barad 2003)

Excerpt

Language has been granted too much power. The linguistic turn, thesemiotic turn, the interpretative turn, the cultural turn: it seems that at every turn lately every “thing”—even materiality—is turned into a matter of language or some other form of cultural representation. The ubiquitous puns on “matter” do not, alas, mark a rethinking of the key concepts (materiality and signification) and the relationship between them. Rather, it seems to be symptomatic of the extent to which matters of “fact” (so to speak) have been replaced with matters of signification (no scare quotes here). Language matters. Discourse matters. Culture matters. There is an important sense in which the only thing that does not seem to matter anymore is matter.

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As I explore posthumanism and agential realism further, this article from Karen Barad looks to be a very interesting read.

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