agency

enslavement

identity

slave

slavery

victimhood

is a capacity for action that historically specific relations of subordination enable and create.

as a capacity for action that historically specific relations of subordination enable and create,' 'Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent,' Saba Mahmood

is a fantasy needing to be dissolved along with the subject, to be sure, but enough of the stuff must be kept on hand if only to turn it against its own system when the circumstances demand.

Deleuze and Guattari are much more thoroughgoing in their deconstruciton of the liberal humanist subject and of 'subjectificaiton' in general. As Mark Hansen comments, 'D+G do not shift the locus of agency. . . [but] dissolve the role of agency altogether' (para. 61). Surely this is correct in therms of their general intention. Yet like Dawkins, they too recuperate agency at crucial points. For example, in Plateau 6 entitled 'How Do You Make Yourself a Body without Organs,' they warn the reader against giving up agency altogether. 'You have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform each dawn... and you have to keep small supplies of significance [sic] and subjectificaiton, if only to turn them against their own systems when the circumstances demand' (TP 160 in Hayles 2001:157)

is a moral concession, a false intellectual conceit suggesting that just by showing that one could have done otherwise is the same as explaining what the actor actually did.

It is part of human nature and personhood to 'have' agency. Agency requires 'consciousness, free will, and reflexivity. Persons can relate to themselves, to the external world, and to other persons.. Human action is driven by reasons... animal behavior by causes.' (Fuchs 'beyond agency'). In Parsons, 'the actor is not a person, much less an individual, but the outcome of an intersection between four 'action systems'). 'Assuming that whatever an actor actually did, he or she could have done otherwise does not explain what the actor actually did. Free will and agency are moral concessions, not social facts' (Fuchs). . . knowing someone's intentions does not get us much closer to explaining or predicting social outcomes, since intentions and outcomes are very loosely coupled..' (Fuchs 'beyond agency')

is a moral concession, not a social fact. That is, knowing someone's intentions does not get us much closer to explaining or predicting social outcomes, since intentions and outcomes are very loosely coupled.

It is part of human nature and personhood to 'have' agency. Agency requires 'consciousness, free will, and reflexivity. Persons can relate to themselves, to the external world, and to other persons.. Human action is driven by reasons... animal behavior by causes.' (Fuchs 'beyond agency'). In Parsons, 'the actor is not a person, much less an individual, but the outcome of an intersection between four 'action systems'). 'Assuming that whatever an actor actually did, he or she could have done otherwise does not explain what the actor actually did. Free will and agency are moral concessions, not social facts' (Fuchs). . . knowing someone's intentions does not get us much closer to explaining or predicting social outcomes, since intentions and outcomes are very loosely coupled..' (Fuchs 'beyond agency'

My Archive

is a non-instrumental mode of being. It is being alive to the boundlessness and unpredictability of human action and the sheer power and joy of doing.

she makes performance central to her conception of agency because she wishes to preserve a way of being that is noninstrumental, alive to the boundlessness and unpredictability of human action and the sheer power and joy of doing'. . . 'Arendt's task in The Human Condition is to retrieve a conception of agency and autonomy in a disempowering and degrading world' (Jeffrey C. Isaac 'situating hannah arendt on action and politics Political Theory, vol21.n.3.534-540)

action

instrumental reason

instrumentality

is a part of 'the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization.

For Foucault, 'agency' is a part of 'the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization.' It seems that the changes associated with who holds power are perhaps rather insignificant compared to the differences that could be achieved if the overarching hierarchy of power was disassembled or deconstructed.

is a phenomenon limited to those instances where there is a selection between culturally determined predefined choices (i.e. Chocolate or vanilla).

agency is limited to a choice, a selection between predefined options, set out by the field and habitus.

is a struggle within the unchosen conditions of one's life. It is located within the possibility of a variation. When we pick out clothes each morning we either reinforce or subvert a norm.

For Butler, agency is not produced by an autonomous actor... nor is it contained to language. Drawing from Derrida and Bourdieu, Butler's point is that agency arises from social iterability and the fact that every re-iteration opens the potential for change and subversion. Such iteration, however, is part of the structure of signification broadly conceived (not simply language) and is not the conscious effort of an individual agent. Thus, Butler points to the effect of the body and how bodies are implicated in acts of speech and iteration. (random)'A struggle within the unchosen conditions of one's life' (Butler 2005: 19) 'agency begins where sovereignty wanes' (Butler 1997a, 16)

agency, n.Definitions

agency