Discourses that matter: agential realism and processes of bodily materialization
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9584-2023v31n385854Keywords:
Body, Materialization, Discursive practices, Agential realism, Vaginal agenesisAbstract
The article proposes an effort of tensioning of poststructuralist feminist arguments about the relations established between discursive practices and the materiality of bodies. The text’s guiding thread is an interview with a woman who experiences a rare form of congenital malformation of the reproductive system. We interpellate, first through post-structuralist perspectives and then, based on Karen Barad’s agential realism, the interviewee's narrative about the processes of diagnosis and treatment of the condition of vaginal agenesis. We conclude that the advent of agential realism allows us to overcome the epistemic limits of constructivist theories about the processes of bodily materialization, ensuring a fundamental materialist complementation to such positions and evidencing the productive effectiveness of disciplinary power in all its empirical dimension.
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