CONCEPT
Agential Realism
Barad's ontological framework in which reality consists not of independent objects but of <em>entangled phenomena</em> produced through intra-action.
Agential realism is the philosophical framework Karen Barad developed in Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007), extending Niels Bohr's philosophy of quantum mechanics into a general account of reality. It holds that the basic units of existence are not pre-given objects with determinate properties but phenomena — entangled configurations of matter and meaning produced through specific material-discursive practices. The framework integrates ethics, ontology, and epistemology into a single ethico-onto-epistemology, insisting that how we know, what exists, and what we value are co-constituted rather than separable. Applied to AI, agential realism dissolves the assumption that human and machine are independent entities interacting across a stable boundary, recognizing them instead as mutually constituted through their intra-action.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Agential realism emerged from Barad's training as a theoretical physicist and her decades-long engagement with Bohr's philosophy-physics. Bohr had demonstrated that quantum properties are not inherent attributes waiting to be discovered but are produced through specific experimental apparatuses — an electron's position and momentum cannot be simultaneously determined because the material configurations required to measure them are mutually exclusive.
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