Different Kinds of Matter(s) – Subjectivity, Body, and Ethics in Barad’s Materialism

Abstract

This article questions the methodological conflation at work in Karen Barad’s agential realism. Barad’s immense appeal is first explained against the tense background of the nature/culture antagonism in the twentieth century. Then, by using some of the penetrating observations of a seventeen-century philosopher, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, Barad’s “ethico-onto-epistem-ology” is examined and subsequently criticized for disregarding the persistence of subjectivity, dissolving the ambivalence of the bodily matter(s), and neglecting the need for concrete individuality in ethics.