Apologia for another body

quantum mechanics, feminist neomaterialisms and the body as phenomenon

Abstract

The essay addresses the issue of how to bring the question of matter back into current feminist debates on bodies, so as not to succumb to the modern conception of bodily materiality as pure biological, inert and self-sufficient facticity (a position that has traditionally underpinned anti-feminist essentialisms) and, at the same time, not to capitulate to the totalizing linguistic impulses that characterize many of the constructivisms that currently dominate the field. Through an expositive-argumentative route faithful to the "disciplinary infidelity" that has characterized feminist thought since its genesis, we intend to demonstrate that Niels Bohr's quantum theory, and its subsequent appropriation and radicalization by Karen Barad, offer innovative understandings of matter, from which we can build a new conception of the body. In this sense, we put forward the notion of the "body-phenomenon", an alternative to what we call the “epidermic bodily model”.