Agential Cut

Abstract

Karen Barad’s post-humanist approach is called agential realism. Agential realism starts from the premise that it is impossible to separate the epistemological, ontological, ethical and political. Agential cuts necessarily exclude some aspects and include others. The agential cut creates exteriority-within phenomena: inside/outside are undone. Apparatuses enact agential cuts through ontic-semantic boundary-making processes that produce the properties and meanings of entities. Barad give an example of an agential cut between ‘self’ and ‘other’ in their description of how the brittle star differentially enacts bodily boundaries by retaining or losing its limbs. Barad’s work has been particularly insightful for thinking about the ‘cuts’ made through scientific research apparatus that produce knowledge about the effects of exercise on depression. Exercise as a phenomenon is materialised through the cuts that render knowable the relationship between measures of depression-recovery symptomology and exercise benefits. .