Of Animacy Reading Group: Touch

Of Animacy Reading Group convenes for the first time this year to discuss Karen Barad’s investigation into the nature of touch.

Approaching matter from the perspective of quantum field theory, Barad outlines a reading of touch that perceives all particles as infinitely alterable and self-touching. Barad harnesses this queering of classic ontology and all matter as a means to come in touch with the inescapable indeterminacy of the self and the infinite alterability of all that lives within and around us.

• Karen Barad, ‘On Touching — The Inhuman That Therefore I am (v1.1)’, Power of Material / Politics of Materiality, eds. Susanne Witzgall and Kerstin Stakemeier (diaphanes, 2014)

Excerpts of the text will be read together during the session to support open discussion

For access to and further information on the readings, please email nella.aarne@ica.art

This monthly reading group led by curator Nella Aarne thinks through feminist engagements with human and non-human agents in the material world. The reading group meets every month at the ICA and is always open to all