Abstract
The last decade has seen an increasing number of references to quantum mechanics in the humanities and social sciences. This development has in particular been driven by Karen Barad’s agential realism: a theoretical framework that, based on Niels Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, aims to inform social theorizing. In dealing with notions such as agency, power, and embodiment as well as the relation between the material and the discursive level, the influence of agential realism in fields such as feminist science studies and posthumanism has been profound. However, no one has hitherto paused to assess agential realism’s proclaimed quantum mechanical origin including its relation to the writings of Niels Bohr. This is the task taken up here. We find that many of the implications that agential realism allegedly derives from a Bohrian interpretation of quantum mechanics dissent from Bohr’s own views and are in conflict with those of other interpretations of quantum mechanics. Agential realism is at best consistent with quantum mechanics and consequently, it does not capture what quantum mechanics in any strict sense implies for social science or any other domain of inquiry. Agential realism may be interesting and thought provoking from the perspective of social theorizing, but it is neither sanctioned by quantum mechanics nor by Bohr’s authority. This conclusion not only holds for agential realism in particular, it also serves as a general warning against the other attempts to use quantum mechanics in social theorizing.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been an explosion in references to and uses of quantum mechanics outside its traditional habitat of physics, quantum chemistry and philosophy of physics.1 Interestingly, this expansion is not limited to neighboring fields
Quantum mechanics features as part of the inspiration for and justification of theorizing in disciplines and domains of inquiry typically labelled as social sciences or humanities
A prominent example of this trend is the work of Karen Barad and her agential realism as developed in Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (2007)
Summary
There has been an explosion in references to and uses of quantum mechanics outside its traditional habitat of physics, quantum chemistry and philosophy of physics. Interestingly, this expansion is not limited to neighboring fields. Phenomena (in Bohr’s sense) are promoted by Barad to be the basic ontological unit, whereas we try to document that Bohr intended phenomena to be derivative and entirely epistemic While these clarifications might come across as exegetical, they are called for by the widespread reception of Barad’s account of quantum mechanics—in the form of agential realism—in the social sciences and humanities. The expansion of quantum mechanics into the social sciences and humanities has many routes beyond Barad’s work, and many of the warnings issued here regarding Barad’s work and its use in these fields of inquiry are relevant for many of the other recent speculative uses of quantum mechanics outside of physics. Barad’s ideas are profound, interesting, and thought provoking, but like any other piece of social theorizing, agential realism must earn its merits, if any, by its utility and not by its quantum mechanical origin
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