Tehomic Theology and Agential Realism: A Diffractive Reading

In this essay, Zack puts Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming and Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway into dialogue with one another using what he calls a “diffractive methodology…that marks not just ‘where differences appear but where the effects of differences appear.’” Where Keller’s “tehomic theology” points to “an otherness of cosmos bottomlessly preceding and exceeding human language” Barad’s “agential realism” turns its focus to the “indeterminancy of matter” and the “possibilites for the ongoing materialization of the world.” Zack also brings in the writings of St. Augustine and Jacques Derrida to broaden his discussion. – NM