New
Materialism

“In summary, the universe is agential intra-activity in its becoming” (Barad, 2003, p.818).

“Becoming” in a neo-materialistic sense results from relationships between multiple phenomena. Becoming signifies an enmeshment of matter and discourse and is based on the understanding that interconnections between entities form the basis of life. This notion of becoming as discussed by Barad (2007, 2003) emerges out of different possibilities occurring at each moment and comes into existence through the fusion of social and material phenomenon, which are not distinct entities. This implies that cause and effect and other dualities do not exhibit clear boundaries, but form an integral part of the world in its “open-ended” and “differential” becoming (Barad, 2003, pp. 821-829). Matter and materiality are not merely made up of substances and objects, but are dynamic phenomena, “a congealing of agency” brought about by “a stabilizing and destabilizing process of iterative intra-activity” (Barad, 2007, p. 210). Becoming is ongoing and dynamic and entails material-discursive practices of transitioning from one state to another in space and time (Barad, 2007, p. 142). It evolves simultaneously with past, present and future reconfigurations of the world. It happens between the “no longer” and the “not yet” and is fueled by desire that “traces the possible patterns of becoming” (Braidotti in Tuin & Dolphijn, p. 32). What is left behind forms an integral part of what is becoming. Rituals of performativity and reconfigurations of personal and social worlds, entangled with each other constitute acts of becoming. We become aware; we become a parent, an activist; we become eroticized, racialized, marginalized; we become sensitive, addicted, overjoyed, mesmerized; we become gendered/ungendered and so on. Excitement, pain, disappointment, despair and curiosity motivate and instigate becomings.

New becomings generate new desires, hopes, and expectations. Becoming entails embracing contradictions; such as becoming one with the other and feeling estranged simultaneously. The relationalities of becoming of which we are part require ethical responsibility and accountability that present themselves with every possibility (Barad, 2007, p. 393). Ethics embody the intertwining of knowing and being in encounters between matter and the Other and signify responsibility not as obligation but as a consequence of relationality (Barad, 2010, p. 265). No matter what happens there are possibilities for becoming through different reconfigurings of what is yet to unfold (Barad, 2007, p. 182). The state of ‘being alive’ to the numerous possibilities of becoming is an ethical response in itself (Barad, 2007, p. 396) and affirms that being attentive to the wonders, mysteries and complexities of life that becoming entails is crucial to the process of worlding.

Synonyms: process, creation, fluidity, growth, mattering, formations, dynamism
Antonyms: staticity, rigidity
Hypernyms: ontology, multiplicity, phenomena

References
Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801-831.

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Barad, K. (2010). Quantum entanglements and hauntological relations of inheritance: Dis/continuities, spacetime enfoldings, and justice-to-come. Derrida Today, 3(2), 240–268.

Braidotti, R. (2012). The notion of the univocity of Being or single matter positions difference as a verb or process of becoming at the heart of the matter: Interview with Rosi Braidotti. In Dolphijn, R. & Van der Tuin, I., New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies (pp. 19–37). Ann Arbor. MI: Open Humanities Press.