Barad Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter

“The belief that grammatical categories reflect the underlying structure of the world is a continuing seductive habit of mind worth questioning. Indeed, the representationalist belief in the power of words to mirror preexisting phenomena is the metaphysical substrate that supports social constructivist, as well as traditional realist, beliefs.” p.802

“A performative understanding of discursive practices challenges the re-
presentationalist belief in the power of words to represent preexisting
things. Performativity, properly construed, is not an invitation to turn
everything (including material bodies) into words; on the contrary, per-
formativity is precisely a contestation of the excessive power granted to
language to determine what is real. Hence, in ironic contrast to the mis-
conception that would equate performativity with a form of linguistic
monism that takes language to be the stuff of reality, performativity is
actually a contestation of the unexamined habits of mind that grant lan-
guage and other forms of representation more power in determining our
ontologies than they deserve.” p.802