Talk:Karen Barad

'Best known', or ...?
It is my humble opinion that this article should be amended. It currently states that Karen Barad is " best known for her theory of Agential Realism." This is a subjective statement. Perhaps the phrase should be corrected by removing the word "best". Better yet, a phrase which lists her articles and/or books written on Agential Realism is more appropriate. Femsation (talk) 20:27, 16 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Or perhaps '... known particularly for ...'? --Brian Josephson (talk) 15:57, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

NPoV tag
I give no opinion on Dr. Barad's work or ideas but I add the Neutrality-POV tag because this article reads like a supporter's homage or a press release and lacks a neutral point of view. It also lacks substantial citations to show the points made are based on anything other than subjective opinion. ProfGiles (talk) 21:32, 23 October 2013 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that NPOV is irrelevant here -- to me the article reads simply as an informative account of her ideas, which is par for the course for an encyclopedia. It would be different if there had been attacks on her ideas, in which case mention of these attacks would make for neutrality, but you give no evidence in support of there having been such attacks. I go for the removal of the tag. --Brian Josephson (talk) 15:57, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I cut the verbatim quote from her university pages and removed the tag. Leutha (talk)

Fermions and quarks
I changed "Fermions and quarks" to "quarks, and other fermions". 166.137.101.155 (talk) 21:44, 12 July 2014 (UTC)Collin237
 * (IMHO, there is no point in mentioning changes such as this on the talk page, since you made the change already, rather than raising it for discussion) --Brian Josephson (talk) 08:38, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Discovery?
Her book, Meeting the Universe Halfway, (2007), includes a chapter that contains an original discovery in theoretical physics What discovery? And if a discovery requires an observation (e.g. Higgs didn't discover the Higgs boson), what is a discovery in theoretical physics? --94.222.121.140 (talk) 20:54, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I see little mileage is arguing about the meaning of discovery, but certainly if the article is going to state that the book describes an original discovery then it should tell readers what this discovery is (and for that matter, if this book is characterised as 'gender studies' or 'cultural theory' books then that categorisation is wrong, as fairly obviously it is really 'philosophy of physics (or science). This would make the comment on discovery beside the point).--Brian Josephson (talk) 21:19, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Publication date of 'Meeting the Universe Halfway'
The date quoted, 2007, is that of the second edition. The article at http://humweb.ucsc.edu/feministstudies/faculty/barad/barad-meeting1996article.pdf, presumably relating to a meeting that took place in 1996, references the book as 'forthcoming' so one must assume the first edition was published not that much later. However, our university library catalogue has a version of the book published in 2006. Might it have taken that long to get published?--Brian Josephson (talk) 20:12, 13 January 2018 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that the book was indeed only published in 2007. Works in philosophy do sometimes take a decade or more to publish! Some chapters in it did appear as standalone articles as early as the 90s but the 2007 book is the first edition. - - mathmitch7 (talk/contribs) 13:16, 2 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I've looked into this further and it seems it is as you say. My comment above was based on a downloaded version I have that says 'second printing 2007', but I also have a hard copy, and that just has the date of 2007 but no 'second printing'.  So my digital version is not actually a second edition, and it may be that the book sold so well that the publisher decided to print more copies of the original.  I've also checked out our UL catalogue now, and that also has 2007 as the date (and nothing about 2nd edition), so I don't know where my 2006 came from (a typo maybe?) --Brian Josephson (talk) 15:06, 2 June 2021 (UTC)


 * (update) Mystery solved! Our UL also has a digital version, and that was published in January 2006, so should that be given as the publication date?  It looks as if my downloaded version was actually a scan of a print edition, rather than one starting life in digital format like the one available from our UL. --Brian Josephson (talk) 15:38, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I think either date works. The entry could also just say "(digital edition published 2006)". I personally have mostly seen the 2007 date in articles that cite this book. - - mathmitch7 (talk/contribs) 15:08, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Jargon
I feel that this page contains a lot of jargon. Maybe it should have less. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oakime (talk • contribs) 14:14, 31 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I think the problem is that feminist epistemology (and social justice thought more generally) is fundamentally dependent on technobabble and the misuse of scientific and mathematical jargon. So there is essentially no reasonable way to make the article's phrasing more clear while still expressing anything meaningful. Partofthemachine (talk) 23:46, 17 November 2022 (UTC)