Matter and Meaning

Abstract

Across her work, Karen Barad has argued that meaning is a key constituent in mattering. "Matter and Meaning" turns that contention inside out to explore the materiality of meaning-itself. To do so, the essay compares Barad's account of measurement in Meeting the Universe Halfway with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's description of the plane of immanence of concepts in What is Philosophy? The essay concludes that the two systems may be productively read through each other to yield a nonrepresentational account of scholarly causality that calls on their shared interest in rhythm.