Quantum physicist and philosopher Karen Barad founded a new, original school of thought with her concept of Agential Realism, which is currently categorised as one of the much-discussed "new materialisms". Referring to Nils Bohr's research, she describes the world in its essence as an ongoing process of "intra-actions", at the centre of which is not man, but the creative potential of matter itself. She speaks of a "relational ontology" and argues in favour of bringing the "different (inter)disciplinary practices of understanding" of social sciences and natural sciences into conversation with each other.

Barad is concerned with the "questioning of identities and binaries, including the nature/culture dualism", combined with the realisation of the "queerness of causality, matter, space and time". In her view, queerness in this context is to be located "not in the rupture of nature/culture per se", but in a comprehensive "essence of space-time materialisation", which she describes, among other things, as a "desiring radical openness, an edgy protean, differential multiplicity". Barad's thinking is fuelled by the observation of quantum phenomena and provokes a consistent break with the traditional guidelines of Western philosophy.