Shifting Presence: Giorgio Agamben’s and Karen Barad’s Reflections on Quantum Mechanics

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay centres on two contributions—Giorgio Agamben’s What is Real? (2018) and Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007)—that deal with what they see as the import the quantum turn has had for their respective notions of metaphysics and its history. Notwithstanding the difference in their views, the discussion focuses on two principal claims: Barad’s claim as to the overcoming and dismissal of a certain metaphysical trajectory, and Agamben’s claim as to the full accomplishment and completion of the history of metaphysics. The aim of the essay is to question whether the horizon of constant presence (beständige Anwesenheit) that determines the domain of metaphysics in the classical Heideggerian account is overcome, fulfilled or shifted by the perspective introduced by quantum mechanics.