Barad’s work, especially in Meeting the Universe Halfway, is a mess of quantum physics, poststructuralism, ethics, and metaphysics. Yes, she actually does cite Niels Bohr and Judith Butler in the same breath, because she can and no one stopped her.

“To touch is to be already entangled with harm and responsibility”

This little philosophical dagger comes from her essay "On Touching – The Inhuman That Therefore I Am". And no, she’s not talking about hugs or holding hands at summer camp. She’s talking about how matter itself is entangled, and how touching isn't just physical contact, it's a relation, an intra-action (Barad's favorite made-up word, which means that entities don't pre-exist interactions—they emerge through them).

Here's the tragic beauty of it:

• To touch something or someone means you're already part of the same entangled field. You're not separate and then connected—you are the connection. Like two quantum particles in a deeply dysfunctional long-distance relationship.

• Entanglement implies responsibility, because you're part of what you’re touching. There’s no neutral observer position. You don’t just act on the world; you co-constitute it. So when harm happens, you're already in the thick of it. You can't be like, “Oops, my bad, I was just poking the thing.” No—you are the poke. You are the thing. Welcome to guilt spaghetti.

• Harm isn't always an action you choose—it can be baked into the very structures you participate in, by being alive, by perceiving, by existing in systems. Which is super comforting. I'm sure your therapist will love that.

So when Barad says touch is already entangled with harm and responsibility, she means existence is contact, and contact is ethically loaded—whether or not you meant it to be. You don't get to be innocent. You are implicated, just by being here.

It’s basically the metaphysical version of waking up, seeing the world on fire, and realizing: Oh. That’s me. 

Now go forth and intra-act responsibly, you ethically entangled meat-meteor. Yes, you’re complicit. Welcome to the abyss. Let’s decorate it.