{"id":3358,"date":"2016-04-04T11:28:12","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T11:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/?p=3358"},"modified":"2016-05-27T11:30:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T11:30:29","slug":"gaston-bachelards-material-imagination-karen-barads-new-materialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/2016\/04\/04\/gaston-bachelards-material-imagination-karen-barads-new-materialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaston Bachelard\u2019s \u2018material imagination\u2019 + Karen Barad\u2019s new materialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"YNG<\/a><\/p>\n

Yonat Nitzan-Green<\/em><\/p>\n

04 April 2016<\/em><\/p>\n

Text for group\u2019s discussion: \u2018\u201dMatter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers\u201d Interview with Karen Barad\u2019, (from \u201cMeeting Utrecht Halfway\u201d intra-active event, June 6, 2009, at the 7th<\/sup> European Feminist Research Conference, Utrecht University).<\/p>\n

\u2018In the imagination of each of us there exists the material image of an ideal paste, a perfect synthesis of resistance and malleability, a marvellous equilibrium between accepting forces and refusing forces. Starting from this equilibrium, which gives an immediate eagerness to the working hand, there arise opposing pejorative judgments: too soft<\/em> or too hard<\/em>. One could say as well that midway between these contrary extremes, the hand recognizes instinctively the perfect paste. A normal material imagination immediately places this optimum paste into the hands of the dreamer. Everyone who dreams of paste knows this perfect mixture, as unmistakeable to the hand as the perfect solid is to the geometrician\u2019s eye.\u2019<\/p>\n

Gaston Bachelard, On Poetic Imagination and Reverie<\/em>, 2005, p. 81.<\/p>\n

This session opened up with a performative act, entitled \u201810 minutes of making Tahini\u2019. The participants were given all the right ingredients, however only one instruction as to how to make tahini. The intention was to bring to light the dialogue between artist and material. In Bachelard\u2019s words: \u2018\u2026there arise opposing pejorative judgment: too soft<\/em> or too hard<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n

Both, Bachelard\u2019s quote and this performative act served as an invitation to engage in an interview with Physicist feminist Karen Barad in which she explains her theory of \u2018agential realism\u2019.<\/p>\n

According to Barad \u2018agential realism\u2019 is part of relational ontologies. Agency is \u2018about response-ability\u2019. It \u2018is not something possessed by humans, or non-humans \u2026 It is an enactment. \u2026 it enlists \u2026 \u201cnon-human\u201d as well as \u201chumans.\u201d\u2019 Entanglement is the consideration of meaning and matter together which questions the dualism nature \u2013 culture and the separation of \u2018matters of fact from matters of concern (Bruno Latour) and matters of care (Maria Puig de la Bellacasa)\u2019. The notion of intra-action is called for in order to re-think causality. \u2018Causality is not interactional, but rather intra-actional.\u2019 By this Barad means that causality is a process of emergence rather than a game of billiard balls: \u2018Cause and effect are supposed to follow one upon the other like billiard balls \u2026 causality has become a dirty word.\u2019 Barad invites us to find new kinds and new understandings of causalities.<\/p>\n

Barad developed diffraction as a main concept in her theory, as a practice and a methodology. She expands the classical physics definition of diffraction, by understanding this metaphor through quantum physics. On the one hand, \u2018Geometric optics does not pay any attention to the nature of light \u2026 it is completely agnostic about whether light is a particle or a wave\u2026\u2019. On the other hand, understanding diffraction by using quantum mechanics \u2018allows you to study both the nature of the apparatus and also the object\u2019. This, she claims, is \u2018not just a matter of interference, but of entanglement, an ethico-onto-epistemological matter.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yonat Nitzan-Green 04 April 2016 Text for group\u2019s discussion: \u2018\u201dMatter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers\u201d Interview with Karen Barad\u2019, (from \u201cMeeting Utrecht Halfway\u201d intra-active event, June 6, 2009, at the 7th European Feminist Research Conference, Utrecht University). \u2018In the imagination of each of us there exists the material image of an ideal paste, … Continue reading “Gaston Bachelard\u2019s \u2018material imagination\u2019 + Karen Barad\u2019s new materialism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98687,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[712514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pirg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98687"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3363,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3358\/revisions\/3363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}