Barad to Examine Relationship between Discourse and Materiality March 13

The third and final event in the Women's Studies Program's speaker series Feminism + Science: Neural Geographies, Digital Anatomies, and Reproductive Choreographies will be a talk by one of the program's own, Karen Barad, professor of women's studies and philosophy and chair of women's studies. On Tuesday, March 13, at 7:30 pm in Mary Woolley Hall's New York Room, Barad, the author of numerous articles on physics, feminist epistemology, philosophy of science, cultural studies, and feminist theory, will deliver a lecture titled “Digital Anatomies, Bodily Realities: The Material and Discursive Dimensions of Technoscientific Practices.”

In her talk, Barad will use the recent entry of three-dimensional ultrasound technology (which has the ability to read both the surface of the body and its interior) in the abortion debate as a site for examining the relationship between discourse and materiality. She will offer a critique and corrective elaboration of Michel Foucault's notion of discursive practices and Judith Butler's notions of performativity and the materialization of bodies in light of neglected technoscientific dimensions. The physics and epistemology of apparatuses of observation (following the philosophy of physicist Niels Bohr) will be used as a tool in arguing that what needs to come to the fore in the consideration of how bodies come to matter is how matter—not merely discourses—comes to matter. These ideas offer feminist theorizing the possibility of coming to terms with important material constraints and conditions, important not merely to science- and technology-related projects but also to analyses that promise to simultaneously take account of history, geography, political economy, and culture. Ultrasound technology then serves as a transducer across the borders and interfaces that separate the sciences from the humanities and social sciences.

Barad, who is currently completing a book titled Meeting the Universe Halfway, earned a Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics. Her research in physics and philosophy has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. She held the Laurie Chair in Women's Studies at Rutgers University for two years before coming to Mount Holyoke.

A faculty seminar has followed each public talk in the feminism and science series. The seminars were designed to encourage in-depth multi/inter/transdisciplinary conversation. Barad's seminar, titled “Meeting the Universe Halfway,” will be held Wednesday, March 14, at 10 am in the library's Stimson Room. This event is primarily for Five College faculty. Applications from a limited number of graduate and advanced undergraduate students and research associates affiliated with the Five Colleges were also accepted. Last-minute registrations are possible; contact Patricia Serio at x2257 or pserio@mtholyoke.edu.

Psychologist Elizabeth Wilson kicked off the feminism and science series October 3 with a talk titled “Trembling, Blushing: Darwin's Nervous System” and a faculty seminar the next day called “ ‘In Some Ways We Are Emotional Lizards': On Neurology, Affect, and Evolution.” The series continued February 6 with a public talk titled “The Biotech Mode of Reproduction” by Charis Thompson, a visiting assistant professor at Harvard University in the history of science and women's studies departments who writes on reproductive technologies, feminist science studies, and environmental science. Her faculty seminar was called “Reproductive Possibilities: Confessions of a Bioterrorist.”