Notes Towards Week 10 (Nov. 8): Mar(k)ing Time

I. Today we welcome Karen Barad
(w/ thanks to shlomo and chelsem for our snacks!)

first discovered Karen when designing "Gender and Science"
w/ Liz Mccormack in Spring 2007 --
got so excited about her work that we used
three of her essays in that course (and three more
in a subsequent one on Gender and Technology last spring;
we also used Karen's work to anchor an essay we
published in the Journal of Research Practice, called
“Synecdoche and Surprise: Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production.” 

As as most of you know, Kaye and I also chose to use some
major chunks from Meeting the Universe Halfway in our current
course on Interdisciplinarity Perspectives on Sex and Gender.

So I've been talking w/ Karen in my head for @ least 5 years now;
I first talked w/ her in person when she delivered a keynote address
@ the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts
in Indianapolis last fall, when I was very struck by her
refusal to make the microscopic "metaphoric" for the macroscopic world,
when she replied to a questioner, in no uncertain terms, that there is one world,
of which we are all a part, in which we are all agents, which we are shaping as we go.
Her insistent tying together of quantum physics and social justice work is, I think, utterly
unique in the world of academics, and so I am delighted to welcome her here tonight.

I am very much looking forward to a discussion of "Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come."

II. Coursekeeping
Judith Butler’s Second Flexner Lecture, next Mon, Nov. 14:
Gender and its Allies: Performativity in Precarity. McPherson Auditorium, Goodhart Hall, 7:30-9 p.m.

for next Tuesday's class, read three essays in our password-protected file:
Sharon Welch, “The Ethic of Control,” “Celebrating Limits, Contingency, and Ambiguity” and “The Joy of Communal Resistance.”  A Feminist Ethic of Risk. Revised Edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000. 13-37, 158-172.

Judith Butler, Chapter 2: “Violence, Mourning, Politics.” Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso, 2004. 19-49.

John Humbach, Towards a Natural Justice of Right Relationships. From Human Rights in Philosophy and Practice, Burton M. Leiser and Tom D. Campbell, eds., 2001. 1-18.

Kim's on for snacks next week...