Comments

  • Introducing Karen Barad’s New Materialism
    "matter is substance in its intra-active becoming—not a thing but a doing" -Barad

    This seems to fundamentally change materialism from early materialism which perceived a world of substances having a state of static independent being. Materialism implies substances. Substances imply essence. Essence implies individual elements. The issue here is that there is no longer a material by this philosophy until there is "ongoing intra-activity". There are no longer individual elements in the same way as the elements co-exist rather than individually exist. Therefore this theory is "materialsism" (notice plural s) more than materialism. The plurality of this philosophy renders it dramatically different from the original idea of materialism. It would have been better to identify this philosophy as physicalist rather than materialist so as to not broaden the idea of materialism as to be so vague. Let quantum mechanics end materialist philosophy rather than modify it?