The Influence of Barad’s “Transmaterialities” on Queer Theories and Methodologies

This article considers the important interdisciplinary contributions of Karen Barad’s “Transmaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings” (2015). Barad adopted Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a metaphor to examine concepts of agency, empowerment, and self-birth, in ways that challenged long-established notions of queer identities and scholarship. The present article adopts the trope of lightning strikes to consider the ways that Barad’s Frankensteinesque approach has reshaped and extended scholars’ approaches to queer theories and methodologies across a range of disciplines.