G5 Article dissertation
BinaryTech: On the development of a new materialist method; 
Authors: Aalto, Juho
Publishing place: Turku
Publication year: 2026
Series title: Annales Universitatis Turkuensis B
Number in series: 784
ISBN: 978-952-02-0812-7
eISBN: 978-952-02-0813-4
ISSN: 0082-6987
eISSN: 2343-3191
Publication's open availability at the time of reporting: Open Access
Publication channel's open availability : Open Access publication channel
Web address : https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-02-0813-4
To date, numerous scholarly contributions in feminist, queer and posthumanist studies, and recently also in biology, have theoretically and empirically challenged binary categories related to sex, gender and sexuality. However, these new knowledges have not been able to impact legislation and the legal order, which still rely on binary thinking in terms of sex and gender. Binary dichotomies such as nature/culture, sex/gender and man/woman have already become unstable in many fields, and their meaning has been shifting. This dissertation answers the following research questions: 1) Could binary dichotomies be understood to create connections instead of separations? 2) What kind of theory and methodology would help in overcoming the challenges? 3) What kind of method could be developed for analysing binaries as hierarchies in the manifestation of power in legal subject formation? By developing BinaryTech as a method of analysis, this dissertation continues to unsettle binary dichotomies present in jurisprudence, the legal orders and legal practices that reproduce them. The method is anchored in Nordic Feminist Legal Studies and Karen Barad’s agential realist framework. Agential realism offers a useful ontoepistemological, methodological framework for a nuanced and systematic examination of how binaries (such as male/female and sex/gender) operate material-discursively within the legal order, through structures that also impact legal subject formation. BinaryTech challenges Nordic linguistic turn postmodern feminist theorisations that still contribute to maintaining basic binary dichotomies such as nature/culture, sex/gender, matter/discourse. This dissertation argues that binary dichotomies within jurisprudence and the legal order and practices could be read as enactments of differences that are productive, and that create connections when the application of law is understood as an ontoepistemological process.