Excluded Agency. On the (in)Transferability of Some Natural Science Models into Social Sciences – МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ ЖУРНАЛ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ

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Nina N. SOSNA
Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences
12/1 Goncharnaya Str., Moscow, Russian Federation, 109240
Senior Research Fellow
PhD
e-mail: phljrnl@yandex.ru
ORCID: 0000-0002-6881-0400

Excluded Agency. On the (in)Transferability of Some Natural Science Models into Social Sciences

Abstract: In the context of the growing tendency to structure the humanities in a new way by borrowing particular terminology and argumentation of the natural sciences (i.c. information technology, molecular biology, elementary physics), the author turns to the potential of translatability between different disciplines, this time analyzing the method of K. Barad. Despite its origin in quantum mechanics, the method of agent realism is claimed to be universal, suitable for any scale and matter, calling into question the boundaries between social practices (discourse, politics) and experiments in science as such. Accordingly, using a complex of such established terms as quantum entanglement, measurement, apparatus, diffraction, as well as the inventive ones, such as "agent cut", Barad proposes to obtain a system of description and at the same time of practical action that would allow not only to objectively describe what is happening around, but also to achieve "openness of the future". Reconstructing some often not obvious connectives within the discursive "entanglements" of Barad's texts, and also briefly dwelling on one of her new examples from the field of protozoa, the author proceeds to the characteristics of a possible social approach that would extrapolate Barad's marking and exclusion operations to other levels, from the non-human to the not-only-non-human (by analogy with the category of "not-only-human" by another researcher, also working within the framework of the new materialism, J. Bennett). Noting the undoubted attractiveness of the Barad theory, first of all, the emphasis on interaction at all levels, the author shows that many of these concepts, formulated in defiance of liberalism, contain quite authoritarian potential.

Key words: anthropology, Barad, discourse practice, entanglement, inhuman, mark, macro world, microword, model, scales, technics, transdisciplinarity.

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For Citation:

Sosna, N. Excluded Agency. On the (in)Transferability of Some Natural Science Models into Social Sciences. International Journal of Cultural Research, 3 (44). 77–90. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2021_3_77

DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2021_3_77