The becoming of online healthcare through entangled power and performativity

In this article we adopt Barad’s theory of agential realism to explore how power and performativity are

simultaneously processual and ontologically entangled. We use the hyphenated term power-performativity

to mobilize an exploration of how power is not an ‘outcome’ or ‘effect’ of, but an inseparable flow within, the

processes of performativity through which the world is continuously becoming. This moves us beyond the

traditional, anthropocentric take on the relationship between power and performativity which emphasizes

human agency and linear cause-effect, toward an alternative understanding of organizational phenomena as

always enacted through myriad intra-acting more-than-human actants. To empirically mobilize this approach,

we explore power-performativity within online healthcare, enacted through personal online healthcare

communities (POHCs). We explore multiple ‘diffraction gratings’ through which particular outcomes of

online healthcare come to matter, while others are prevented from mattering. In doing so, we posit the

suitability of Barad’s agential realism for further explorations of the dynamics of power and performativity in

modes of organizing and organizational life and offer tools for how these may be done.